‘IP’ Of The Advertising And Marketing World
In many ways, the troika of Creativity + Tech + Innovation is the Three Musketeers, to whom we so readily pay obeisance daily through our desires, thoughts and actions
Reams have been written about the increasing role of tech in communication, and I cannot even pretend that I am a savant of this arcane world, but more a tyro, to whom A+I are two vowels. But sometimes we tyros can come up with a view from left field, as it were, and so here it is.
Superbowl 2024
Did you see the ads from the Superbowl 2024, supposed to be the epitome of America’s creative talents? One would think that we would say ‘that’s a wow’ like the lady in Lajpat Nagar, but instead both critic and couch potato panned them in no uncertain terms. Yet today we stand at the latest frontiers of tech in all fields of human endeavour! So what went awry? Why were 99 per cent of the commercials uniformly fit for become garbage liners? To me, the answer lies in what we so casually miss when we are star-struck by ChatGPT and Autocomplete.
The Three Musketeers
Here’s an analogy: How many of you have read Dumas’s classic The Three Musketeers? And how many remember that there was a fourth musketeer without whom the story would have been pedestrian, the plot mundane and the action insipid? I refer to D’Artagnan, of course, the dashing young man who was the least experienced of the band but was actually the main protagonist, the catalyst, the spark through whose motivations, actions and decisions the events of the novel unfolded and made it a classic.
But the book’s title was simply The Three Musketeers. In many ways, the troika of Creativity + Tech + Innovation is the Three Musketeers, to whom we so readily pay obeisance daily through our desires, thoughts and actions. It is an easy relationship to navigate, because of tech.
Imagination + Passion
Want to upload a reel on Insta or a jibe on X or order butter chicken sushi (aargh)? Just the press of a button. But what’s on the reel or the jibe? Whoever thought of that sushi abomination? Why? Ay, there’s the rub, as the Bard said. What’s the grit that creates the pearl in the oyster, which otherwise would be simply swallowed with a dash of lemon juice? What’s the ingredient that has steered mankind’s course through history…because C+T+I have been always present in some form from the time of cave paintings. Those will always be there. And to my mind, such as it is, it’s what I term ‘IP’. Imagination + Passion. Yes, even that sushi job. ‘IP’ is the D’Artagnan of the marketing and advertising world. And like the character in the book, so easily forgotten.
Superbowl 2024 is a supreme example of this missing link. The tech was ballistic, the FX moon-rocket stuff, the acting American, and the ideas MIA. Back in the 1960s there was a comic series called Magnus – Robot Fighter, where, as you are all QUT, he’s trying to prevent robots from taking over the world. Quite perspicacious for that period, when even computers weren’t quite there. But what it highlighted even 60 years ago was the danger of the unbridled use of tech. I firmly believe that we are teetering on that precipice today, extolling how ChatGPT can write Shakespearean sonnets in a flash. But that’s the exact irony: we still say ‘Shakespearean’. We still do cover versions of the Beatles and the old Hindi songs. No one has or will make the unique music of The Doors or Jethro Tull…because they had what no tech can give you…I+P.
Finally, as William Shatner (Captain Kirk) said in a TV talk show when asked about his opinion of AI, his laconic one-word reply was “Artificial”. So by all means use all tech’s bells and whistles, but make a symphony, not a cacophony.
(The author is Sunil Gupta, who is Managing Partner-South Asia, RI Advisory Regional Associate – Aprais Worldwide)
