New York City-based writer and editor, Jim Hanas, has an interesting piece in this month’s Creativity about where the next generation of interactive creatives will come from. According to his article, and several others I’ve read, there is a dearth of talent avaialble.
“We cleared out an entire generation of talent when the bubble burst, so the true believers and the ones who had enough talent to make it through have become rarer and rarer birds,” says Matt Freeman, CEO at Tribal DDB Worldwide. “You layer on top of that the fact that now the most prized skills are not just pure interactive skills but the ability to integrate interactive thinking with broader marketing thinking, and those people become rarer still.”
I’m glad I moved my work to the interactive realm when I did. It’s hard to see the progress sometimes, but we’ve watched interactive go from a curiosity on the fringes of the agency business to its centerpiece in no time at all.
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Advertising folks see interactive as less sexy – and in some ways it is. It has an element to it that is very direct marketing centric and the potential to become even more so. I’ve seen a lot of interactive sweat-shopery going on too. So many versions. So many sizes. So much tweaking and fiddling.
Then again, there are agencies out there like EVB and Anomoly doing unbelievably cool work.
Maybe if the agencies paid a little better and figured out the right way to staff interactive they wouldn’t have this problem. That also means the clients need to know that interactive, done right, can cost a little more (in staff) on the front end (but pays out much much better on the back end.)
Yes, it’s good to be moving to interactive.
Good interactive stuff is found in the most unlikely places sometimes. We had a Grand Prix winner at the inaugural Cannes-style Dubai Lynx Awards which was voted by all 14 judges unanimously. The winning ads and agencies are on my blog if you want to have a look…
farrukh
copywriter, journalist, ad blogger
http://farrukh.wordpress.com