Do something original.
Do something extraordinary.
Make something no one’s ever done before.
Create ideas that change the way people think, ideas that change the way people behave.
Ideas that change the way people work.
Make people smarter, make them happier, make them more generous.
Create an environment, a place you can tell people about with pride today and 20 years from now.
Create, invent, have ideas.
That’s why we’re all here.
There is no tomorrow, only the chance to create today.
So what are you waiting for, go create.

This is the “Create” manifiesto which welcomes every visitor that passes by my Agency, Terán\TBWA in Mexico City, part of TBWA Worldwide.

This manifiesto was written with the intention to inspire every employee working there into creating and, definitely, I believe is one of the most inspiring manifiestos I’ve ever read, at least in this industry. It calls people not to only do something creative or different. It asks for us to create something that will make people smarter, happier and more generous.

This manifiesto is not setting any limitations. It could involve any type of media, any client, any specialty. It asks us to create just for the sake of making outstanding work, something that touches peoples’ heart and soul. This manifiesto strives to move every single mind into a very specific and, in my opinion, very promising direction.

However, awards season came and went. TBWA returned from Cannes without any noteworthy participations and a few days latter a huge sign reading “We told you to create goddammit” signed by Lee Clow himself appeared in my Agency’s walls. What happened? Did we lack motivation? Was the manifiesto not clear enough? How can a vault of outstanding minds such as the Agency I work with not be able to fulfil what they asked of us in the manifiesto?

The advertising industry, at least the way it has been sold to me, is an industry which thrives on ideas. Is an industry that sports people with the title “Creative Director” with a very explicit role. Our copywriters and designers belong to a “Creative” department. The deliverables of these people are ideas. However, after seeing many award seasons come by, I get the feeling that our creatives aren’t really that… creative.

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” — Pablo Picasso

Creating is a process shrouded in mystery, of which I’m completely oblivious. I may add that I don’t consider myself a creative person. I’m an analyst and a strategist. I sort stuff and data that’s already there. I’m as creative as a DJ is a musician. Creatives can just “create” stuff out of nowhere, passing through all this complex and untraceable brain processes neuro-biologists can’t just seem to figure out. People have tried to map the process, creating frameworks and methodologies, and yet, people without that knowledge can still create concepts and ideas out of thin air, like magic.

I recently returned from SXSW. There was a conference I couldn’t attend, but my boss did, called “How Creative People Arrive at Good Ideas”. They touched several concepts, but one of the most relevant was that we need to seek inspiration in things that are completely unrelated to what we do or who we are. Our simple pattern-finding minds need different stimulus to create different “new” things.

Last week, I read an article by Rafa Jiménez titled “The Cultural Ouroboros” on which he also mentions that Digital Media has tailored it’s recommendations on our behaviour so well, that has formed this small bubbles that keep us from discovering truly different or new content.

I’m working for an Airline right now and, my client just keeps looking at what other airlines do. How can we even pretend to do something different if they are our only reference point? We are copying people that are copying us. Advertising seems to be doing that same thing. All the world I keep seeing is work that has been done somewhere else in the world. How can we hope to create work that doesn’t feel like… advertising?

If everyone is making something “extraordinary” then no one is making something extraordinary. We’re not creating ideas to make people happier, because no one else (apparently) is doing it. I always think about the two Cyber Lions I’ve liked the most because they actually showed that we, as advertisers, can improve people’s lives and build a better society (Tesco in Korea and Small Business Day in North America). To get to this ideas, the people involved probably didn’t look to advertising to search for inspiration. Otherwise, they would have just ended in a TV ad or something.

There’s a fine line between being creatives and creators. We have raised our own bars, our own work standards. We ourselves have helped those truly outstanding pieces of work that mark people’s lives come to life. The Create manifiesto is proof of that. That this is the kind of work expected from us.

We need to break off the vicious cycle of Ad men that get their inspiration from ads. We need to shed our fear to learn something that makes us uncomfortable. We need to learn programming languages, we need to learn web design, we need to understand how the Internet actually works. Let’s approach all this unknown with curiosity and interest, expand our current horizons. We can’t pretend to be a “creative” industry, which prides itself on selling creativity itself, when we only look at Japanese ads as our only source of “different” inspiration.

Let’s learn new stuff. Let’s hear new people out, that perceive a different reality and world than ours. Let’s listen to new music, do stuff differently just for the sake of doing it differently. Let’s stop the fucking Mad Men charade and realize that advertising has evolved from what it was in the 50's. Our clients demand it. Our consumers deserve it. We have the talent, the experience, the means, the resources. What keeps us, every single one of us working in advertising from crossing that line from Creative to Creator?

Let’s “Do something original” by being original ourselves first, among ourselves. “There is no tomorrow, only the chance to create today.
So what are you waiting for, go create.” Let’s create.