Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

I’m a copy­writer and also a social media guy. So a post by Jim Mitchem got me fired up last week. And it also got me think­ing about the role that cre­ative folks are play­ing in the social space right now. The real­ity is we’re not doing all that much right now. In fact, a lot of what I’m doing in the social space has more to do with coach­ing and cheer lead­ing than it does being creative.

So I think the time for the best in my field, copy­writ­ers and art direc­tors, to help trans­form social media to a more cre­ative space over the next cou­ple of years. Right now, clients are still just talk­ing about spend­ing big bucks on social media and we in the agency world, are still try­ing to get them to actu­ally pony up the agency fees required to have a senior cre­ative do some­thing trans­for­ma­tive. And I can’t wait.

Right now the inspir­ing and cre­ative things are com­ing from devel­op­ers and tech­ni­cal inno­va­tors. But sooner or later the wiz­zbang excite­ment is going to be gone and we’re going to need these tools to be dis­trib­ut­ing engag­ing con­tent. The cre­atives role will be to step up and make make this inter­est­ing, excit­ing and well, creative.

Back in the early days of film, audi­ences were happy to sit through a screen­ing of a horse run­ning and train chug­ging along a track. And they were actu­ally afraid they were going to get hit by the train. It was damn excit­ing stuff for peo­ple who had never seen any­thing like it before. After a few years though, the same audi­ences started demand­ing a story. And direc­tors like Eisen­stein and DW Grif­fin deliv­ered with Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Birth of a Nation.

Web 2.0 is deliv­er­ing us the tools to be cre­ative in entirely new ways and it’s now up to us to fig­ure out how make the most of it. Yes there have been some inter­est­ing projects and I hope it won’t be till the One Show and D&AD cre­ate an award for Twit­ter before we see the full power of adver­tis­ing cre­ativ­ity unleashed on the space. Let’s not wait, lets start mov­ing the ball now. It can never hurt to get ahead of every­one else.