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Let’s go surfing now, everybody’s learning how… We have all learned how to find the answer to random pub ponderings or the perfect holiday villa with just a click. But, despite the ubiquity of the internet, and the eager use of buzzword bullshit, Danny Edwards wonders if the advertising industry still has an awful lot to learn when it comes to making the most of digital’s creative possibilities
What’s the capital of Greenland? Why is the sky blue? What are the symptoms of gonorrhea? These questions and many millions more are now only a click of a mouse away. For digital natives (those born after the advent of the internet) the thought of having to leave their chair, let alone their house, to find the answers to anything must seem arcane. A library? That’s where you keep your iTunes music, right?
But, of course, it wasn’t always so. While the idea of the internet was created in the 60s, the internet as we know it today has only been part of everyday existence since the late 90s, and even then its evolution from fascinating but limited (both in availability and application) tool to a ubiquitous basic human right is astounding. The internet is, far and away, the thing that has had the biggest impact on the world in the last 25 years.
The inevitable meets the intractable
When shots first launched in 1990, shots.net was a mere glint in our pixelated eye. The site didn’t launch until 2000 and even then it wasn’t much to shout about. Video files took a long time to play and, initially, we would save stories and content for the printed publication and the DVD reel (some people even still received a VHS back then) because, well, who uses the internet?
The answer, now, is everyone. And that shift has made the world a captivating, and sometimes difficult, place to exist, perhaps especially so for the ad industry. From the outset, agencies grappled with how to use the net. Initially, its high barrier to access meant that it wasn’t of too much concern, but as more and more people purchased home computers, then laptops, then smart phones, and as the speed of the internet went from snail’s-pace to Usain Bolt-like, the advertising industry had to sit up, log on and get with the programme.
“From the moment it was created, the internet was inevitable,” says James Hilton, co-founder of digital agency AKQA. “Everyone either had or was getting a computer at home, and they already had the phone line. Petrol, meet match.”
In the very early 2000s came the dot-com bust and a reprieve for beleaguered ‘traditionalists’. But that’s when many digitally-facing agencies looked to open up, learning from the mistakes made before them. “Anyone around during that time will tell you 2001 was seminal, the bubble burst and a lot of the enthusiasm for the internet (we didn’t call it digital then) was gone,” explains Wesley ter Haar, co-founder of MediaMonks. “People lost money, pride and the faith that this burgeoning technology was going to have an impact on business at scale. That’s the maelstrom of discontent MediaMonks launched in, a direct response to the buzzword-bingo-BS that preceded it.
“As founders we were all part of a start-up before MediaMonks and wanted to stop adding hot air to the balloon. MediaMonks was about the craft of making cool stuff, and getting down to basics – more and more people were going online, and even though the buzz had died down, the grassroots nature of the internet was allowing small shops like ourselves to do amazing stuff.”
But not everyone knew how to make amazing stuff. Some people weren’t entirely sure how to make stuff at all. Throughout the noughties you couldn’t have an advertising conference, seminar or event without some reference to ‘understanding the internet’ or ‘discussing digital’. It was an industry in itself (we should know, we took advantage of it too). Some embraced it wholeheartedly, revelling in the interactivity and immediacy of this new platform. Others, not so much.
Hilton thinks that the industry’s reluctance to really understand how the internet could be a beneficial force was down to numbers. “It was old dogs/new tricks, with lots invested in the old tricks and therefore lots to lose. ‘New’ scares people, it’s a threat. The easiest way to recognise a threat is to see what the ‘established industry experts’ are laughing at, at any given moment. One day, the pioneers of ‘digital’ will be laughing at something too. And whatever it is, your best bet is to back it, as that’s what will come next.”
Ter Haar agrees: “Initially it was a DNA difference. Traditional advertising is top-down, brand-led and linear, whereas the internet is bottom-up, consumer-led and iterative. The potential avenues the internet presented were, in many cases, outside the comfort zone of what traditional advertising was in the 80s and 90s. With that in mind it’s no surprise the industry had trouble cracking the code to success.”
The words are not enough
Following the learning curve of digital education, through in-house digital teams, to separate digital arms and back again, through the introduction of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to the ubiquity of Google and the rise of mobile, the internet has been at the heart of a raft of fantastic work created for online users and viewers: Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, back in 2004; IKEA’s Facebook Showroom in 2009; Ecko Unltd’s Still Free viral film in 2006; the Bing/Jay Z Decoded campaign and Arcade Fire’s Wilderness Downtown music video project, both from 2010, are examples of how the internet has made the creative advertising industry an exciting place to live.
But, thinks Hilton, the industry still has a lot to learn and while there are people and agencies who ‘get it’ there are, in his opinion, far more who don’t. “They understand the internet and emerging technologies in the same way Mr Bean knows how to drive a car,” Hilton says. “They know it gets them from A to B, but that they ever make it to B is more luck than judgment. The vast majority haven’t got a fucking clue, and that’s the very sad fact. They all say they do. They all ‘incubate’, and ‘fail fast’ and ‘innovate’, but they don’t really. It’s just that the ad industry is so nauseatingly vacuous that simply saying the words is often enough to get you by. But this won’t last. Darwin will see to that.”
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