Orlando Wood and Sir John Hegarty Break Down the Importance of Creativity in Advertising
This session with Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer, System1, and Sir John Hegarty, Creative Founder, The Garage Entertainment, focuses on an often forgotten truth in advertising. Orlando Wood proposes that the key to increasing advertising effectiveness is an emphasis on entertainment and human-centred truth.
The Golden Age of Advertising Technology
Orlando Wood and Sir John Hegarty respond to a frightening statistic. In 2023 alone, brands spent upwards of $750billion on advertising and only 6% of it is estimated to be effective.
Wood claimed that technology has given advertisers the ability to target consumers who are already somewhat interested in a given product–making advertisers slightly lazy. He mentioned that this ability to target interested consumers has led advertisers to “[Forget] that we’ve got to interest people in the first place”.
Salesmanship vs Showmanship
Orlando explains further that over the last 10 years, advertising effectiveness has experienced a stark decline. The chart below shows how this decline is directly correlated with an increase in “short-termism” advertising. This advertising approach “starts with the product and ends with the product,”–focusing on key features and short-term effectiveness. He calls this approach Salesmanship Advertising.
Wood proposed a solution to the Salesmanship approach: Showmanship advertising. Wood explains that during the 1950s, there was a similar focus on Salesmanship advertising. Advertisements were centred around Unique Selling Propositions and repetitive messaging. However, Bill Bernbach broke this mould by creating advertising that focused on novelty and entertainment.
This version of advertising uses entertaining content to discuss a greater truth. One example of this is this Ryanair TikTok, which emphasizes the airline’s lack of free wifi to strengthen their positioning as cheap, no-nonsense, flights. Hegarty summarizes the showmanship approach simply, “you don’t buy things from people you don’t like”.
Advertising Principles Explained
Orlando’s findings and research can be found in the 8-session course, Advertising Principles Explained, or a.p.e. The course provides the evidence advertisers need to make the case for showmanship advertising. The name, a.p.e. emphasizes that advertisers must focus on core advertising principles or threaten the extinction of the industry as a whole. In other words, “Ape or Die”. This was dramatically illustrated by the entrance of an ape onto the Debussy Theatre stage.Wood concludes the session by highlighting a key tenet of showmanship advertising: “Delight, teach, and entertain”.
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