In my grand old days of multinational ad campaigns, shoots in exotic locations, securing global music rights or model buyouts for mass media viewing and ensuring the corporate tagline was spot on across all markets, the biggest fear the creative team faced was Not-Invented-Here syndrome. Having created a most unusual response to the brief, one that would unexpectedly stimulate the target group into action and subtly reveals itself as a truly Big Idea…only to see the words and images and meaning being pared right down to Lowest-Common-Denominator clichés so that it wouldn’t offend or be misconstrued by or annoy a certain country brand manager because it wasn’t made by his local ad agency.
Dear art director & copywriter team, would you rather work on a generic global campaign with all the trimmings or on a tiny local brand with an even smaller budget, but a bigger taste for adventure? Which one will earn you that D&AD pencil or a Clio nomination?
Business-Sitter 