The Importance Of Creativity

Despite what many digital natives would claim, experts believe creativity is still fundamentally driven by people and that the demand of creative talent will go up in the future. As consumers' attention span shortens the need for attention grabbing creative outputs remains on the rise.This in turn leads to an increased importance of people who can think clearly and creatively on a consistent basis, according to Richard Bleasdale (pictured), regional managing partner at The Observatory Asia Pacific.Going forward, he adds, "the importance and value of talented creative people within the industry will remain and likely increase."Since the industry's earliest days, the creativity it has been paid to practice is in the "generation of communications ideas which seek to take advantage of an identified business opportunity."Steven Watson director of digital strategy, TBWA\Singapore adds that the industry's focus needs to now be on stirring the air to have a "positive, useful or entertaining long-term effect.""I believe we should be focusing more on establishing the stuff we can create that will lead to propagation and a change in behavior," he adds.To turn a customer into a brand ambassador is rare, and time consuming, he says adding that it requires much more than the regular campaign flight. Instead Watson advices that the focus should be to "create many light interactions taking place in all channels over a prolonged time period and not shout."He cites the numerous everyday requests for complex microsite builds, complicated Facebook applications, mobile applications all shouting ‘look at me', but no one does.Zayn Khan, CEO, FutureBrand Asia Pacific, however, adds that being creative is simply not enough.To survive and succeed in the ever changing competitive and sphere, brands need to not only "create engaging experiences at every touchpoint" but also "have a genuine desire to make people's lives better.""Our daily preoccupations are shaped by a tension between what we want and what we need and brands can play a vital part in resolving these forces and helping consumers achieve some form of equilibrium in our lives," Khan says.