I love sheer, unbridled creativity.
I’m talking about creativity with no limitations placed upon it: no rules or regulations. No brief to stick to. Creativity for creativity’s sake.
This is why I love The Chip Shop Awards.
These awards are for creative advertising ideas which are outside of the restraints of a normal client brief. The handcuffs are off.
These are ads which are tasteless yet still funny (the stuff you know you shouldn’t laugh at, but it’s too late – you giggled), or which highlights a point that’s painfully true, but wouldn’t be highlighted in a ‘proper’ campaign.
It’s the type of stuff which, in an agency, you’d show to your creative partner and say; ‘it’d be great if we could do this…. actually, nah…’
If you’ve not come across The Chip Shop Awards before, then click on the link to see this year’s nominations, under categories such as; Best political ad, best use of honesty, best parody, and (controversial) Ad most likely to get The Chip Shop Awards in shit creek.
This is creativity with no commercial agenda. The kind of creativity which brought us Monty Python, The Goons, The League of Gentlemen, The Fast Show, the work of Dali, and so on…
But, in essence, that’s all creative advertising is: ideas slightly reined in, for commercial purposes – ‘mad thinking’.
…but that mad thinking has to be there in the first place in order to be toned down. If you rein it in at the start, what you’ll end up with will (most likely) be bland and unmemorable, and – certainly in an advertising sense – that’s definitely not what you want.
Anyway, take a look at The Chip Shop Awards and laugh at some of the ideas, but don’t tell anyone that you laughed… you wrong ‘un.