A Creative Communications Agency

Decades ago, the Benton & Bowles agency insisted “It’s not creative unless it sells.” Now, several senior industry leaders are reworking that maxim to assert that it won’t sell unless it’s creative.

Creativity as the pathway to consumer persuasion — and profitability — was a major theme here yesterday at the opening general session of the 2007 management conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

The creativity being celebrated by the speakers was not of the artsy, award-winning variety, but rather an accountable kind that is rooted in insights derived from hard data about customer shopping patterns.

“Every agency has to become fully accountable for its work, every day, on a real-time basis,” Mr. Draft said. “The way to great creative, and to great results, is not to run away from accountability but to embrace it.”

“The single greatest divide in our business is not the gap between client and agency,” said Howard Draft, chairman and chief executive at Draft FCB, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. “The most damaging distance has always been the split between creativity and accountability.”…

Read more via: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/business/media/20adco.html posted on April 20, 2007.