What Creative Slump?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about an industrywide creative slump. During such adverse conditions, it only seems natural that advertising’s creative product would suffer. Right?

I’m not so sure. Conventional wisdom would tell us that the period we lived through not long ago, when budgets were plentiful and creative was allowed to run wild, provided optimal conditions for creative greatness. But how did that turn out? Occasional brilliance was vastly overshadowed by a myriad of entertaining but ineffective ads.

Here’s the thing: Historically, the real creative revolutions—not just in advertising but in all art forms—have often happened during times of adversity.