CREATIVE: In search of on-line creative

But it isn't so easy with internet advertising. Online research from MSN, in association with the IAB, points towards a lack of memorable campaigns, despite some groundbreaking work. MSN's Online Pulse, a six-monthly barometer of trends, discovered that marketers could consistently recall only three (Mini, Amazon and Egg) of the 170 big campaigns which they believed showed outstanding creative.

Two-thirds of media planners and buyers (68 per cent), and brand managers and marketing directors (63 per cent), were unable to think of an online ad that had really stuck in their minds over the last six months. So what's going on? Is online creativity dead? Hardly. Rather, it's a combination of factors: users react differently to online than above-the-line ads, digital is a fledgling industry, and the thriving non-commercial sector is starting to have an impact on the way brands think online. The did-you-see-that water-cooler moments, where work colleagues gossip and mention programmes or ads, do not necessarily happen in the same way for online advertising. But this doesn't mean that online ads aren't working.

"Online creativity is far from dead and we shouldn't be apologetic against such claims," says Matt Bagwell, creative director at e-business agency syzygy. "Online has its own water-cooler moments, with the 'look at this' shout from across the desk or the need to forward a link or email," he adds. "TV has no natural communication path other than a quick chat and that's why online doesn't appear to be keeping up. Good email campaigns do get discussed. You know online creative is working when the same viral mail or link hits your inbox more than once."

Glen Collins, managing director at entertainment and youth specialist new-media marketing agency Digital Outlook, agrees: "In the online environment, why wait until you're at the water cooler to chat about something great that you have just experienced when you can send it straight away?"

It is this viral or 'community' element that separates the web from all other media. You don't need to talk about it because you've already got the means of communication at your fingertips. The internet is essentially an active medium, with people researching things, shopping online, reading articles and checking email, and this is its fundamental difference to TV, which is primarily a passive medium, bar the remote, which means you'll channel hop if the ads are boring. Online, if users see something they like, they forward it and if they hate it they hit the 'close' button.

"When I'm on the web, shopping or researching, I often find pop-ups annoying and banners distracting," says Emma Lowndes, marketing manager for Mini in the UK. "I have the view that online work has to be really good and arresting."

The non-commercial sector shows the power of viral creative, and is where a lot of exciting stuff is going on. You might say it's on the fringes of mainstream, but as Rob Manuel, co-founder and site editor of b3ta.com, points out, when you get 100 million clickthroughs - cue his Female or Shemale quiz (www.2.b3ta.com/femaleorshemale) - it's hardly underground.

Let's call it cult then. "Most of the good stuff comes out of community-sharing ideas," he says. He's done fun pieces 'bigging up' Birmingham and creative featuring cats (see b3ta.co.uk). His Disco Squirrels animation for lastminute.com, which he worked on with Jonti Picking and describes as "a parody of high-energy disco", has a movie of camp squirrels dancing to a song called Disco Sauna. It aimed to drive traffic to the site's Valentine's Day pages.

Joel Veitch, founder of alternative entertainment web site rathergood.com, is a fan of the lastminute.com campaign. His northern kittens singing Independent Women, which he worked on with Elbow, had this writer hiccuping with laughter and 'We Like The Moon' with Alex Veitch playing guitar, was reviewed in Revolution's new Creative Review section (Revolution, June, p72). "Disco Squirrels has absolutely no relation to lastminute.

com, but it's funny and the company's branded it," says Veitch. "That's an inherently worthwhile way of doing it."

Lastminute.com editor Jon Davie says of the campaign: "It's pretty hard to analyse what made it successful, aside from all of us thinking it was the kind of thing we would send to our friends." When lastminute.com wanted to remind customers that Mother's Day was just around the corner, it didn't send a list of gift ideas. Instead, it worked with Rob Manuel and Jonti Picking to create a short Flash-based movie called 'Robots Love Their Mummies Too' with a Kraftwerk-style soundtrack.

"People on the net are jaded. By comparison with other media, they're also a relatively literate audience," Veitch adds. "Users don't care about production values. It has to load straight away. Animation, quizzes and games seem to work best, and creative has to have a viral capacity." For viral to take off, it has to have that 'aah' (cute) or 'ha-ha' (funny) factor, although he admits that obscene creative has impact too. Creativity can be present in words and visuals, and Veitch cites Snowmail (Channel 4 News' daily email bulletin) and Popbitch as strong examples.

Mini has both the 'aah' and 'ha-ha' factor in droves, as its recurring Mini Adventure theme shows. Mini's ad agency, WCRS, is responsible for the Mini Adventure online ads, while EHS Brann designs and manages its web site. Classics from the campaign include a maze game where users navigate Mini out of a deadly trap. For agencies, coming up with great creative can be the luck of the brand, but Mini is pretty much universally loved.

"One of the reasons why Mini stood out is that it's a brand and product that everyone loves anyway," says Marc Giusti, group creative director at Wheel:Group, whose clients include Abbey National and Paul Smith. "It is made much easier when you've got a great product."

Web sites themselves can also be creative. Manuel is enchanted with Ragdoll's Boohbah.tv. "They've created a really sweet web site, which has a kiddie sense of wonder," he says. He also rates Fanta's site (www.fanta.dk), which lets you script your own Bollywood movie and send it to your friends.

Meanwhile Stacia Smales Hill, chief executive of Fullsix, an integrated digital-marketing firm which counts Procter & Gamble and Club Med among its clients, is also impressed with how the FMCG sector is embracing digital creativity. "It used to be about finding a way of driving people to a site that offered a few games and product information," she says. "But FMCG has come far. There's the premise that consumers should develop a relationship with their shampoo or hamburger, and the sector is creating online environments where consumers feel it adds value to the transaction." She points to the Pantene Pro V site (www.pantene.com) - "It's a problem-solving site."

So what else makes an outstanding piece of online creative? There are no set rules, according to some. Mini's Lowndes says "we don't have a tick-box" and lastminute.com's Davie points out that "different campaigns have different objectives and require different creative solutions".

However, consistency of brand and message is vital. "All our online advertising is very entertaining, rewarding and slap-bang in the middle of our brand strategy," says Lowndes. Syzygy's Bagwell adds: "With Mini, I suspect the reason it's memorable is because of the consistency of the idea and the saturation of every media channel, from outdoor to TV to online, and not as the result of any great online creative prowess."

Another example is the online work for Ikea by Abel & Baker, part of Wheel:Group. This includes a game to educate consumers about 'shlomping'; the relaxed way of living that is part of its Live Unltd initiative (Revolution, June, p8). Africa Reboto, advertising manager at Ikea UK, believes a good piece of online creative involves "the ability to transmit key messages about the brand and get our audience to participate and interact with them, thus reinforcing the communication value".

The internet exists within a particular set of restrictions and these can either hold back or, conversely, promote online creativity. First of all, the industry is still reeling from the dotcom fallout. "There is a lot of safe playing going on," observes Andrew Brown, creative director at digital-marketing agency swamp, which works with Heinz and mail-order company La Redoute. "There is still dotcom fear and marketing hasn't had a good time as far as the recession goes."

David Warner, creative director at Oyster Partners, makes the point that in its rush to grow up and make money, interactive E media has feverishly embraced standards and convention, "so now everything looks like everything else. We are in risk-averse times and no-one wants to be seen as the one who messed it up for fear of losing their job (on both agency and client side)."

But digital isn't the only industry to have had to cope with perception problems. "We are suffering something akin to what direct marketing suffered 10 years ago," comments Wheel: Group's Giusti. "Direct marketing is now commanding either the same or greater budgets than above-the-line."

Tom Bazeley, account planner at Tribal DDB, muses: "Despite advertisers spending more on online advertising, the reputation of online advertising as an unimaginative and creatively inferior channel is holding it back."

Return on investment (ROI) is king it seems. As Brown explains, 90 per cent of marketing across the board is to do with numbers, and the 10 per cent around the edges is the creativity which makes the difference between good and super-special campaigns. "The web can play around with that 10 per cent," he adds. "It should be the place where marketing managers are experimenting, where there's a little more danger going on."

This obsession with ROI is more pronounced in the online arena than in most other media and can sometimes stifle creativity. It's mainly because digital advertising is so trackable, and therefore accountable, and this is a double-edged sword for marketers and agencies alike. "The industry is working within tighter strictures, so failure within the client's terms is much more obvious," points out Smales Hill.

Giusti observes: "In the digital space we stand or fall by our results. It's less about beautiful photography on billboards, and more about who clicked through at 3 o'clock." Swamp's Brown notes: "Marketing managers are being pounded for results. They're much more clued up now and are prescriptively putting forward what they want, and that can hinder creativity. As a result, the agencies are more focused on making money."

Other issues that can hold back creativity are technological, such as download times and the range of ad formats, though the IAB is considering making more sizes available. Then there is the broadband issue. Which, depending on whether you're a glass half-full or half-empty type of person, either means that when broadband is everywhere creative types will be able to use increasingly ambitious executions, or that the lack of current broadband means designers can't use the amount of rich media they'd like.

Both viewpoints have a slightly hollow ring to them, rather like the bad workman blaming his tools. Surely, truly creative minds can come up with formats that work within the limitations of the medium and engage consumers?

Yes, according to Veitch. "People like to see glossy pictures and Flash-based things, but online isn't about that. It's about having a good idea and making it work properly. It strikes me as wrong to blame the infrastructure for not doing your job right. The answer is to work within the boundaries available."

Lastminute.com's Davie agrees: "New technologies offer new opportunities, but the technology is only a facilitator for creativity, not a replacement for it. Some of the most successful ideas on the web use the simplest technology, such as message boards and quizzes."

A particular type of creative mind thrives within these rigorous technological requirements. And when it works, it really works. As Smales Hill notes: "There are some excellent creatives working within these strictures. You get the humour, the pure un-adulterated cleverness. It takes a particular kind of talent to be creative online." And banner ads, conversely, force you to be especially creative, according to swamp's Brown.

Online's position within the idea-generation process is important too, in terms of whether creativity actually flourishes. Too often, online has been seen as an afterthought, tagged on to a creative strategy brainstormed by above-the-line agencies. Online agencies regularly have to reposition creative ideas that were created for TV and press for the online environment.

"Often, the online agency is briefed after an idea is hatched (and under frantic timings), so truly innovative work can be difficult to sell or deliver," says syzygy's Bagwell. "The worst-case scenario is where you're six weeks to launch and the client says: 'here's the above-the-line creative'," explains Smales Hill. "The best-case scenario is where you're helping to develop the gist of the campaign so that it will work in an integrated way, both on and offline." In other words, digital agencies should be part of the creative decision-making process from the start.

Perhaps what online marketing really needs at this point, is some risk taking. Words like 'anarchic' and 'dangerous' crop up a lot when people talk about what really makes the internet a place apart. But it takes real guts for an agency to pitch a wacky idea to a client, and for the client to then decide to run with it. As Manuel points out: "By the time you're with the client, you tend to water things down."

It takes guts to get your agency into top-level strategy discussions early-on. But digital is growing up. At the moment it's a bit like an adolescent, full of potential, prone to bursts and lapses in creative energy, followed by big bouts of depression. With age and experience, guts and confidence will follow.