By Rob ‘angry’ Campbell.

Today, at the SPIKES, we had the absolute privilege to see the utterly brilliant Sir Ken Robinson speak.

Putting aside that some people might not know who he is [which say's a lot more about them than I could ever achieve], the fact is the turn out for this rare opportunity was a disgrace. It was so poor that even Sir Ken made a joke about it.

Were they all hungover from pretending they were rock stars the night before?

Maybe some … but it seems the majority of the delegates were attending a workshop on how to win a bloody Cannes somethingorother.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

If you want to win a Cannes Lion, all you have to do is something insightful, differentiated, interesting and real. How long does that take to tell? 13 seconds?

For an industry that talks about ideas and media neutrality – it’s telling that the biggest attended seminars were the ones where a lot of ads were shown. And putting a TVC on the web is NOT digital … it’s called putting a TVC on the web.

I’ve been a groupie of Sir Ken’s for many years and I know everyone who saw him left feeling in awe at his intellect, passion, humour and viewpoint on creativity …and quite frankly for me, he was by far the most inspiring speaker of the SPIKES and the fact he has never even worked in adland is very telling about the real state of our industry, a state very few seem to ever want to talk about publically … or should I say, talk about publically with total honesty.

[Before people get their knickers in a twist, there were some very good and interesting speakers - very good and interesting speakers who work in adland - however just like Monica Lewinksky did to El Presidente Clinton, Sir Ken blew them away *]

I’ve made the odd comment about DDB over the years because basically I’m a miserable, pedantic shit, however because they gave me the opportunity to hear the brilliance of Sir Ken first hand, I salute them wholeheartedly and I truly believe that if more people in adland followed his philosophy on creativity rather than just chase award ratings, then I reckon we might be an industry with a strong future rather than just a great past.

* Yes that is the worst analogy of 2009. Sorry.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.