1935 photos of painted Caduveo women from Claude Lévi-Strauss Structural Anthropologymany of you will know structural anthropology (Claude Levi Strauss) - if not I'd recommend it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_anthropology
the key idea is that society is characterised not so much by its overt content but by its dividing lines, often physical lines within the floor plans of villages separating RAW/COOKED, MARRIED/UNMARRIED, SACRED/PROFANE etc.
a modern example would be WORK/LEISURE which we have delineated in only the past few hundred years
PLANNER/CREATIVE is such a distinction
it separates the strategic intent from the artistic interpretation
some outcomes:
- advertising (and similar) is manipulative, it always has a hidden agenda
- there are separate awards schemes for effectiveness and creativity
(it's only apparent that's ridiculous when you think about applying it eg to awards for new product inventions)
- planners are over intellectual, post-rationalising everything but missing out on feeling 'it's the right thing to do'
- creatives are over artistic, cutting off their problem solving ingenuity in favour of impressive flourishes
- it is resistant to change, because it creates a set way of working (the old way) that may not fit new contexts
most interesting people and agencies of course to some extent heal this divide
John Webster was by far the most advanced person I've worked with in knowing how advertising 'ticks' (ie works)
of course without such divisions there is no organisation
and there were huge gains - groundbreaking ideas - that came from this when it was new
(although its particular effectiveness as a spreading meme might also have something to do with the fact that it is a system designed to win client pitches?)
it's just that any such structure becomes decadent and ossified over time
the thing might be to wonder how it might have been carved up differently
eg INTUITIVE/STRUCTURALIST
BUSINESS/PLEASURE
PAST/FUTURE
1 comment:
Seems that deconstruction lies at the very heart of the issue.
While we are busy dividing up advertising tasks real people are busy reconstructing them from user-generated content to social media to time shifting. The division between what a brand says and how it behaves have blurred because of technology. For consumers there are fewer lines, less divisions.
Old school structures encourage divisions and yet what brands need, and what real people want, is a simple, cohesive narrative about why they should by the brand.
Maybe the biggest future challenge for planning is to understand the whole process from the recipient’s perspective.
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