10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 2

27/03/2007

Number 2 - You can just do stuff

OK, you have to know some stuff to put things on the Internet, but not that much. Just look at the people in 80% of YouTube videos, do they look like they know how to do complicated computer stuff? Or use a VCR? Or open a tin? In spite of this the girl on the left and her friends have had over 12m views of their video clip.

Basically if you have an idea, good or bad, you can make it happen online. There’s not that many people who can stop you. You really can just do ‘interesting’ things – globalrichlist.com and cock-a-doodle.co.uk are 2 projects that we’ve done just for the hell of it (with a degree, however small, of social conscience).

Of course you can still do those things and not work in a digital agency, you could work anywhere. But imagine how much fun it would be to have that kind of creative freedom, every day, in your job.

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  • That's probably the most powerful argument of all and really the promise of the interweb and all that. But it's also the most problematic because crap ad agencies can also 'just do stuff' in their ad agency way, which is usually awful.

    User generated content can be wonderful (though we really need to come up with another phrase for it - I seem to remember using 'interactivity' eons ago) but not when it's faux user generated content ('fuser generated content'?). It's also prone to spikes that make little sense - The Evolution of Dance was really rubbish. Not just nearly rubbish, but really rubbish. Yet it remains the biggest YouTube hit ever.

    So, what goes with the above that you can just do stuff is that it also takes some skill to do stuff that is good and to get it seen by the right people, not to mention some enormous dollops of luck. Interactivity is hard to do well - not many manage it and it should no surprise as it is still the new part of new media (to use an old term). It has become easier to do shit stuff too these days don't forget.
  • I had line breaks in there an everything before I posted it... :-(
  • That's the problem with just being able to do stuff - chumps like me can run blogs and then not figure out how to get the css in their comments working...
  • The thing is, when an ad agency pumps out "stuff" - it's expected. That's after all what they get paid to do. This expectation dumbs down the actual execution. You're average Joe, on the other hand, is neither expected nor paid to create powerful content which makes it all the more viral.

    When chumps create great content, we love it all the more because it puts the possibilities in the hands of the ordinary people. We feel we can compete, so we do.
  • drjt
    I quite like the the idea of imperfect advertising. Perhaps the great ideas are the ones in the bin, the ones that didn't quite work... the ones that should't work.

    Afterall, shit does float.
  • Andrew
    "Perhaps the great ideas are the ones in the bin, the ones that didn’t quite work…"

    Nahh, they're the even bigger shitty ideas...

    I don't know about you, but I don't want more 'banal noise' entering my stream of consciousness... There's already too much and I don't want to hear the ramblings of EVERYONE, most people/companies/advertisiers have very little to say, and what they do say is pretty much worthless to me, most of the time...

    Shit might float, but normally it floats a long way away, in some sludge pond...
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