With the advent of social technology come the need for Marketing, Advertising Agencies and creative talents to build new competencies for survival. Serengeti is a guide and exposition on the creative requirements that the creative industry needs to evolve and thrive.

1. Serengeti
The migration of creative game.
A Maurs ADictive paper

2. Two ECDs are reviewing campaign work. First they
analyzed the usual art and copy craft. Then they
moved to discussing brand attributes, customer
aspirations and engagement.
What’s extraordinary is the fact that both of these
ECDs area deft programmers capable of writing
and compiling computer programs at will.
This is the cognitive migration of capabilities that
today’s agency craves if it must survive the new,
digital wilderness

3. Like the seasonal migration of Gnus and Wildebeests,
the compulsion to migrate for survival is not only
instinctive, but also intuitive.

4. Darwinism is seemingly evolving. There’s no
assurance for the fittest, biggest or strongest.

5. Leave or stay, one fact is certain…
the cognitive acquisition of new skills,
the mastery of art and science to achieve
new creativity is prerequisite to survival.

6. Thus, by creative migration,
we do not simply refer to the
exodus of talent in search of
greater relevance
but more significantly, the
deliberate mental or systematic
drift towards acquiring renewed
relevance.

7. While advertising is to the creative
industry what a bull elephant is to
the thriving jungle…
..today’s concrete jungle demands a
competence driven by speed and
velocity over size and enormity.

8. The advertising industry
is in transition.
The model for creative talent is changing.
An agency either has the right 21st-century
talent, or It doesn’t.
Technology comes, technology evolves but
the art of story telling is forever timeless.
Employees either understand digital, or they
are actively pretending that they do
Age of the creative marketer is upon us.

9. Spotlight has shifted from what we know…
to what we need to know.
Prototype gets more
attention than the brief.
Big-idea people are no
longer the singular hot
commodity
Employees who
understand platforms,
media, technology,
trends, data, and “how
to generate and make
ideas” are the new
model for talent.

10. Today’s Agency Creative Force.
To mention a few
Statisticians, mathematicians and computer
scientists with commercial intuition to
develop online trading platforms;
Network engineers and behavioural scientists to create
and develop new insights, management systems and
user experience models to link communications
economists and econometricians with an
interest in the communications mix to
demonstrate the business impact of
alternative strategies and tactics
biologists, psychologists and sociologists with an
interest in human behaviour to develop new models of
segmentation and channel navigation
physicists, philosophers and linguists with
an interest in developing ways of doing
business that are socially and commercially
viable ways of doing business

11. Creativity is multicolored
“A colour is more than just a colour when it
helps a brand stay in tune with it’s time”
Jon Coen for Crayola
The same goes for talents, agencies, more
so marketers. While monochromatic prowess
may help you thrive in your core habitat,
everything changes, even your environment.
Psychedelic handiness are the new “hands
and heads” in today’s kaleidoscopic world.

12. What creative COOs look out for in talents?
“Strong Understanding of Digital
and Social Media, Knack for
Versatility, Solid Storytelling
Abilities and a Good Heart”
Advertising Age.

13. Creativity is multicolored
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but
those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”
Alvin Toffler

14. Evolve or Die Devolving.
With the advent of Social technology, the advertising
world and by extension the global creative industry has
had to evolve it’s creative process model, giving
credence to talents with “diagonal thinking” set of skills
that the prevailing competitive landscape demands.

15. The new rules for attracting
and retaining talent.
Understanding technology.
Embracing new talent
Making things, not just imagining.
Evolving traditional agency practices.
Leveraging new ways of working.
It’s about redefining 21st-century
agencies’ competitive advantage.

16. Evolving is learning.
Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the
most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills.
Fast Company.

17. Age of the
Creative marketer

18. Survival Of the most co-creative.
“If Mad Men advertising hotshot Don Draper was operating on
Madison Avenue today, he would find competition coming from
more than just other ad firms.”
Sarah Jane Gilbert, Harvard Business School.

19. All eyes on the consumer.
A recent study by Harvard Business School professor emeritus Alvin J. Silk and
colleagues finds that more companies than previously thought are developing in-house
advertising capabilities, especially in technology-oriented and creative industries.

20. Clients are flexing newly
discovered creativity and
innovation muscles–muscles
encouraged by the new digital and
social worlds and focused on
driving their businesses forward.
They are having fun and becoming
very good at it. They are building
direct relationships with the best
media and technology companies.

21. More importantly, clients are grooming and building inhouse creative units. An emerging business model called
“Vertical Integration” precipitated by structural changes in
the advertising industry.

22. Convergence. A new haven.
Survival for today's Advertising Agencies lie in convergence marketing or confluence
business model, a corporate culture where things merge or flow together, where the
obsolete gets sloughed off and strengths naturally evolve as the core becomes
enhanced. Confluence culture is multidisciplinary, nimble, and creative
Kim Bartel Sheehan, Deborah K. Morrison, (university of Oregon)
Journal of Interactive Advertising.

23. • New emphasis on account planning within the agency process
• Forming and reforming of media planning and media buying systems
• The explosion of digital media prompts agencies to evolve and change platforms
• Agencies buy small digital firms or create add-on agency units to think digitally for
clients.

24. Confluence culture thus suggests that
agencies as units and the advertising
profession as a whole face numerous
challenges to their traditional ways of
operation as they grow and morph and
react to cultural shifts, particularly when
it comes to creativity and ideas.

25. Characteristics of
Talent Intensive Organisations
• Their principal assets (talents) do not appear on the balance sheet
• These key assets are mobile. Despite contract, they can simply walk away
• Rely particularly on creativity and imagination
• The success criteria for talent intensive organisations stretch beyond the
accountant’s bottom line. Winning a Nobel prize, an Oscar, a fashion design
award or the FA cup may weigh more than profit or cash flow does
Philip Sadler
Finding and Keeping Top Talent
Business, the Ultimate Resource, (2006)

26. Case review:
Google 5.

27. Case Study: Google 5.
• Google Creative Lab calls for gifted students from Ad & design Schools
• The original plan consists of a designer, art director, writer, a film maker & a
programmer
• Out of 400, 5 multi-dexterous students were picked for the year long program
• Google 5 are immersed in live projects under intense, enabling environment
• After 1 year, The 5 are released as catalysts into the mainstream
advertising industry to change the system from the inside.
• The 5 achieved huge successes with hits like “Persian Love” & “Super Bowl;”
• After a year, a fresh breed of Google 5 emerges after the original’s tenure.

28. The Google 5 program objective/ vision.
Even if the Nobel Prize remains elusive, the Lab can successfully
claim to be creating a new template for the “creative process” as
much as it's creating work to burnish the Google brand.

29. “The 5 initiative was motivated by two things namely getting fresh,
awesome talent in the Creative Lab," and "fueling the ecosystem of
the industry.”
Robert Wong
Executive Creative Director Google

30. Google 5 Creative process.
Our job is to manage and steward the brand, find new ways
to communicate the company's innovations, intentions and
ideals, and do work of which we can all be proud. We want
people ambitious and crazy enough to think we can actually
change the world…”
Robert Wong
Executive Creative Director Google

31. …the shorter version
:
"Do epic shit”
End
Maurice Ugwonoh is a creative writer with a passion for strategy, brands and content development.
twitter handle: @mauricechike - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/mauriceugwonoh