Bartle Bogle Hegarty was the London ad agency every ambitious Australian creative wanted to work at in the 80s. They made a series of great ads for Levis including “laundrette”, came up with "Vorsprung durch Technik" for Audi, "The Lynx Effect" for Unilever and "Keep Walking" for Johnnie Walker whiskey.

BBH creative founder “Sir” John Heggarty will speak at a global advertiser conference in Sydney in March. He has already given an idea of what advice he has to for Australia's advertisers.

What is the state of advertising creativity today?

“It’s one of the best times ever to be in advertising but why is it the work is poor,” he told AdNews from his organic and biodynamic vineyard in France. “I don’t know of any other industry in the world that would say the way to succeed is to make a worse product. And we seem to be in that situation in advertising."

CEOs in Australia say they want creativity 

More than anything else, a recent Australia wide survey of CEOs shows they want their marketing agencies to be creative. Yet one look around shows how poor ads are today.

The CEO of a financial services group asked me recently what killed the Australian ad industry? "The Internet?" he asked. "Globalisation" I answered.

The fact is, in Australia the biggest brands mostly run ads from somewhere else. They don’t care if their ads don’t work very well here, in the global scheme of things one year’s revenue in Australia can be surpassed in one long-weekend in Florida.

So I wasn’t surprised to see Sir John identify the cause of mediocre advertising. “You can talk about technology being the reason but for me the biggest issue is the globalisation of our industry. We don’t seem to be able to create work globally that has impact. I think marketers today are losing contact with people despite the fact they have many more ways of communicating with them.”

Meanwhile home grown ad standards are going down, down

We are increasingly bomdarded with ads produced in-house by Australia's retailers, further driving standards down, down. Over 30 years creating ads has taught me great creativity sells. Especially when developed by local writers and art directors who are in touch with the essence of what makes Australians tick. I believe clients are best served by ads that tap into human insights, no matter how small. When told with humour or compelling gravitas a human truth will cut through where so called big ideas with big budgets and big name stars fail to connect with real customers.

Are you more inclined to buy from someone you like? I know I respond better to brands that have an endearing conversation with me, rather than a list of claims shouted at me, even when put to a jingle. The answer to appealing to customers doesn't lie in more data.

Sir John also warned about the dangers of data and analytics –

“Clients are desperate for salesmanship to be a science. They would love it to be. They would love to be able to say this equals that and this will be the return on investment so let’s do it. But they can’t. In the end it’s a judgment call you still have to make.”

Lets all hope more advertisers re-embrace the power of creative story telling, it makes better viewing.