The Impending Creativity Chasm and the Death Knell for Ordinary PR

There’s a gap in our industry: a gap that threatens the livelihood of every individual and agency involved in PR. The gap is one of creativity, which, if it continues to grow, will lead to an unbridgeable chasm of relevancy. It’s time to get mad – not at those who expect creativity and big ideas, but at ourselves for letting what we consider to be one of our greatest attributes remain underutilized.

Reading the Creativity in PR Report, co-authored by the Holmes Report and NowGoCreate in partnership with Ketchum, the gap is abundantly clear. But whether the problem is self-awareness or acceptance, our industry seems only willing to acknowledge that the gap exists and has no real plan to bridge it. 94 percent of CEOs and CIOs, and 92 percent of CMOs will place an increasing emphasis on creatively inspired communications in the years ahead, according to Creativity an Influential Force in Business: The C-Factors Survey, fielded by Allison+Partners. But when only 61 percent of respondents in the Creativity in PR report agree that criticism of the industry for lacking big ideas is fair and 50 percent describe the quality of creativity within our industry as ordinary or worse, then we’ve collectively thrown up the white flag and resigned ourselves to mediocrity, or worse, ordinary.

Clients don’t want ordinary. Ordinary is easy, cheap, can be accomplished internally and doesn’t bring value to what an agency has opportunity to deliver. It’s time to question our own commitments and break down the barriers to consistent and actionable creativity. 95 percent of PR people in the report said creativity is a key skill and 89 percent described themselves as creative. So where’s the disconnect?

Because creativity is hard to measure, we focus on the tangibles: media impressions, ad value, site traffic, etc. Until we place as high a premium on every person within an organization to deliver, or at least contribute to unconventional ideas, clients will seek out those agencies that do. However, these ideas must strike the balance between creativity and reality. As Rick Liebling pointed out in his recent article for FastCo.Create, it requires agencies to shift their thinking when it comes to actionable creativity.

“First they must train themselves to conceive of ‘makeable ideas.’ What do I mean by that? If in an internal creative meeting the idea ends with someone saying, ‘And then the monkey grabs the dad’s cell phone!’ you’re not concepting ‘makeable ideas.’”

Creativity needs to become ingrained in every agency’s culture. What the Creativity in PR Report respondents identified as barriers — lack of objectives, lack of time, lack of budget, lack of understanding between agency and client – directly refutes those who identify themselves as creative. Wouldn’t truly creative people find a way to overcome these obstacles, or are they simply being used to shield them from the accountability for delivering new ideas?

Clients already expect more. Happiness, or the lack thereof, with their agencies’ creativity should send a sobering message to those who remain complacent in the old ways of doing PR.  Anyone who loses a client or their job for not being an active participant in the process of delivering actionable creativity can’t say they were not warned.

Creativity exists among PR agencies, but has yet to be fully realized. Closing the creativity gap isn’t going to be easy, but it must be a priority. It’s time to eliminate the barriers to bigger, yet actionable, ideas and implement a process that makes every member of the staff accountable and involved.  PR is as much about the ideas business as it is the results business. However, without a commitment to the former, achieving the latter will soon become that much more unattainable.