Content Creation: Brandland’s Creators and Curators, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

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by Samuel Pordengerg Jun 1, 2023 News
Content Creation: Brandland’s Creators and Curators, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity
<p>Representative image</p>
Representative image
I think therefore I am. I create therefore I am arrogant.Don’t be fooled by someone’s humility. Arrogance is not a side-effect, it’s a pre-condition to creation. You cannot compete in an arena of subjectivity if you’re not a bit of a snob or have a superior air. I’ve been arrogant most of my life. Until it became my job to part create, part curate.

Uppitypan's aftermath is cringe.

I wrote a few years ago about how cringe is my greatest strength. It was guided by cringe. One serves and the other returns when you're thinking up an idea with a partner. Someone misses the ball and the point goes to the other guy. In the process of creation, believable cringe replaces logic, so you have to cringe great to return a great serve. You can't waste time debating things that get thrown up in a conversation.

Creators have often been revered and idolised as Gods. As long as they are rare in the discipline in which they’re operating, they’ll be garlanded and crowned. But as more people seemingly crack the creative code and more gurus and babas set up pandals at every corner, Gods look mortal, nonexistent even.

The world of brands is not going to get better any time soon.

Nobody believes anyone is a rare or singular talent these days. Everyone is replaceable and if not then at least negotiable. Creativity is the most populous country in the world. There’s the ikka-dukka art-copy pair in agencies. Most work is in the hands of social specialists. Everyone is a creative person. And when the time period for running a creative piece was a year, it was valued. Today it’s a few hours. No geniuses needed for a shelf life of an hour or two hours. In the age of artificial intelligence and chatgpt, curation has suddenly acquired new relevance. When creativity is outsourced what is left but curation, right? I believed it’s creativity that is inherited or inborn.

For taste and for curation is what it's called.

In this context curator is someone who has an eye for the creative product. In any walk of creativity the birthgiver is the most essential and that is obvious. And equally obvious is the fact that a stupendously great idea can be seen by everyone, regardless. But all ideas are not great at birth. Curators are needed for exactly this purpose. The debate about who’s more valuable today can only be approached by bringing it to its most mundane level.

Who is picking and who is chucking?

And this is not a place when I end it with a tame argument for both sides and conclude ‘each is equally important’. I think in an era of trigger generation by AI engines I’m very clearly on the side of curation. Even as a kid in advertising when I realised my own snobbishness and that of my creative peers I would always wonder ki itni kya badhai maar raha hai, jisne pehchana woh actual dude hai. The more we see today’s world and the department store approach of ideas that is coming up, the more it appears that shopping for ideas requires a curation approach. And curators will be valued more. Sometimes a curator’s only job is to say no. I remember a particular piece of business with two seniors. I kept saying no to the work, but wasn’t able to help with a real direction. These guys’ll know what I’m talking about. But the deal is that I knew when to say yes. And that made all the difference.

What is the most important strength of a creator? Ke bhooke. It was without exception.

And this contains the germ of the creator’s biggest weakness. They are driven to create. The money is a bonus for a creator. Which is why the ad agency suffers endlessly in negotiation. You can buy any great idea from an agency for a pittance. Because instead of valuing its business potential they are actually dying for their idea to come out in the world. You happen to be the zariya, the path for their spring to flow into the world. They, fools, think you are doing them a favour.

Curators will suffer the same delusion.

At some point the creator in you comes into direct conflict with the curator. Most often this situation can happen at an agency level when the creative person for example has just turned CCO. The curator recognises the better idea which has come from say a junior but the creator wants a piece of the action. Again this is something that’s happened to me and with me. Trouble is it’s a case of selective visibility. You can’t see yourself do it but anyone else does it, it’s glaringly obvious. Someone once called me out bhari mehfil mein for being too harsh and critical and not being appreciative and empathetic enough of the hardships of the overly stressed environment of creative today.

I told him that my only job was to say no.

To the curator who matters most today, the brand owner, I’ll say this. Curation is evolution. Curation is natural selection. Your eyes, your hair, your nose got to be that way through a process of curation that chose something and rejected something. You refined yourself to this stage of evolution. And so it is with your brands. You’ll choose right, you’ll choose wrong but over a period of time if you have some of the divine touch you’ll shape something decent out of a brand through pure curation.

On the seventh, you'll rest.

I know people who’re looking forward to a charmed life where ideation will be outsourced to a server, and you act more like a stylist - I don’t really design anything, you know, I just put it together, darling. Two things I see coming in the way. One, the eye. Your taste, your discernment in picking up the machine-made idea is likely to make you pause. The mental image of a conveyor belt spewing knockoff sexdolls may seem orgasmic but you’ll learn the joy of mind-crafted maal soon enough.

The red carpet is one of the things that marketers worry about. A lot of people are interested in how they look. My portfolio is what motivates many. Imagine if you went to the Met Gala with a put together look for your brand and you saw someone in the same outfit.

What a shame : )

Allama Iqbal was the last one.

Hazaaron saal nargis apni be-noori pe roti hai, badi mushkil se hota hai chaman mein deedawar paidaCreation itself, is blind and valueless without the eye of the curator.

(This is the second part of a three part series.)

Ad land's illusionists and magicians

You are the custodian if you are a brand owner or a brand manager. Today, you and yourself have the mandate. You can see what instruments your agencies play in your orchestra. The author writes that there is no chance anyone other than you will be able to judge an idea, a campaign, a script, a slogan, a logo, or anything else.


The brand equity was published on June 1, 2023.