When he was a student, Ridley Scott was one of the stars of the Royal College of Art and he wanted to be a director.
After graduating, he worked for the BBC, it was a foot on the ladder in film production.
But it was all too slow for Ridley, so he began making commercials.
In those days, advertising had a terrible reputation for pumping out cheap, tatty ads that only third-rate people worked on.
The best people wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole.
His friends asked Ridley how he could bring himself to work on such dross.
Ridley said “I’ll elevate the medium.”
I love that, it never occurred to Ridley to work down to the level of bad work, he’d work up to his level, and ‘elevate the medium’.
And it worked, when others noticed what he was doing they saw what was possible.
People like Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, and Adrian Lyne followed in his footsteps and UK advertising became the best in the world.
The people that followed Ridley did such great work that they went on to Hollywood. Alan Parker making films like: Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express and Evita; Hugh Hudson making Chariots of Fire; Adrian Lyne making Fatal Attraction, and so on.
Meanwhile Ridley was making Alien, Blade-Runner, Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster and dozens more, his films won 5 Oscars.
At the same time, Ridley also directed over 2,000 commercials including the 1984 Apple MacIntosh ad voted ‘Best Commercial Ever’ by AdAge.
The point being, Ridley didn’t lower himself to advertising’s standards, he ignored them and performed up to his own standards.
In so doing he ‘elevated the medium’.
Whatever your environment, you can say it’s difficult and let the situation drag you down, or you can ignore the excuses and perform up to the level you want.
We don’t have anyone around who’s doing that, right now everyone is performing down to the standards of the industry.
Online and social media have made advertising as cheap and plentiful as door-drops: the stuff that used to get stuffed, unwanted, through your letterbox.
The brief for online and door-drops is the same: “Who cares, they cost next-to-nothing and they’re only going to get ignored anyway.”
But if one out of 1,000 works it’s seen to be worth it, quantity not quality.
That’s why the only way to get someone to watch even a fraction of an online ad is to have a button that says “You can skip in 5 secs” so they can charge the client by proving people watched a few frames.
And given that standard, it’s no wonder everyone performs down to that level.
Don’t bother doing something people actually want to watch, there’s no money in that.
And of course, money is the over-riding factor, how fast and cheap can we fill this space?
If we can make more money doing it cheaper, crappier, and faster, we’ll do that of course, it’s a no-brainer.
The amazing thing is I see people putting up old ads in online posts, on Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook, of old ads that everyone loved.
And people click on the old ads and watch them voluntarily.
How strange is that?
A medium where modern ads are ignored or blocked, but people are re-posting old ads that everyone loved and want to watch again.
Maybe that’s because, for people like Ridley, money wasn’t everything.
Fun, style, humour, intrigue, all things that don’t go on a balance sheet, but make the advertising enjoyable, the things that make it actually work.
Advertising that isn’t seen as cheap, mean-spirited and greedy, advertising that’s seen as charming and engaging.
Maybe we have to wait for another Ridley Scott to come along, someone who wants to ‘elevate the medium’.
Until then we’ll all just have to perform down to the level of the industry.
Carry on filling up space, the fastest and cheapest way possible.