McCann's CSO on Looking Back & Looking Forward

As I reflect on what’s influenced and defined creativity in 2016 and think about what might be in store for us, I can’t help but look back to see how far we have come as a creative industry. A lot has happened in a year. And it has offered us valuable insight into ourselves and what we’re capable of making.

 It is true that 2016 has been a year when technology has had an exceptionally transformational impact on creativity as it relates to our business.

It is true that almost every piece of work that we have loved, applauded and celebrated as an industry has had a strong tech-based element to it. I was recently at a future forecasting type conference where the message was loud, clear and delivered with evangelical fervor – that technology, computational creativity, machine learning, and the rest of the tech alphabet soup is poised to revolutionize our business. In fact, in years to come it might even make creative people redundant across various industries. From entertainment and popular culture, to marketing and advertising. There’s been so much pomp and show around technology being the most definitive, and influential force in our business and its role in making some of the most creative and remarkable work we’ve seen in 2016.

But that’s not entirely what’s made the best work remarkable. And not enough has been said about that for what I suspect is fear of stating the obvious. I love the obvious. I love finding the brilliance in the obvious. I love making the brilliant obvious.

It is obvious to me that the most creative work in the past years and the years ahead will continue to be made by curious and courageous minds because a strong and fearless desire to know something and make something is all we need to be ready and willing to boldly question everything; and create something that’s both useful and original – helping brands earn and play a meaningful role in peoples’ lives.

Ultimately good work is obviously and instantly recognizable as being good because of very obvious characteristics.

Good work is brave because it sets the bar. It is powerful because it makes brands famous. It is influential because it elevates culture and it is compelling because it makes us care in new ways. I don’t see 2017 being any different.

The truth about what we’ve seen in 2016 lies in the abundance technology has offered us. The abundance of new and interesting ways to connect people and brands. And the abundance of behavioral information to craft the most artful, surprising, commercially successful ways to help brands, products and services earn a meaningful role in peoples’ lives.

The most creatively regarded work will continue to celebrate and recognize that a brand’s point of view is its biggest point of difference, because what brands mean will continue to be just as important as what brands make. The best work will continue to use data as a means to tell a story, solve new problems, or solve old problems in new ways, create a product, instigate a new conversation or instill new vigor into an existing one.

I believe we will continue to see that the most surprising and effective work be an outcome of carefully orchestrated relationships between several partners who choose to trust and enrich each other. It will defy, challenge, and blur boundaries as we may have known them and experienced them in the past – as a business and as a society. Technology will continue to inform and inspire some of the boldest work we are yet to see but the best work will still be in service to an idea, and in service to moving people as a means to moving the market. Technology will be like salt. Invisible but palpable. And often quite essential.