Ben Lilley Live From Vegas: Where Product Eats Purpose For Breakfast

Ben Lilley, Creative Chairman of HERO + McCANN, is representing Australia on the LIA Integration and Direct jury. Here he reports on his time in Vegas exclusively for Campaign Brief.

I know there must be a buzzword for purpose-laden creative, but I have no idea what it is. Cause-washing? Multi-samaritanism? Purposplaining? Whatever it is, at award shows there’s a ton of it. The LIA’s is no exception. But a lot of it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I’m not talking about genuine cause-related marketing here BTW; the kind of life-affirming work that’s authentically baked-into a brand’s DNA and sees a business doing real good for people and the planet. I’m talking about the work where the case film opens with something like “as a brand dedicated to [brand purpose here], we know that [major world problem here], that’s why we [ludicrously tenuous link here].” There suddenly seems to be a lot of brands going to a lot of trouble to squeeze their way into causes, crises and places where they just don’t fit.

Don’t get me wrong, when it’s good, it’s truly great. But unfortunately a lot of purpose-driven work just isn’t that good. And that’s the work now littering the floor of our jury room as we start to narrow what’s in or out for metal contention. Creatively it’s kinda lazy TBH. It often seems like the kind of work that’s been conjured up because the agency just couldn’t find something good to say about the product. So instead they decided to try to say something good about doing good.

The great brand and product-inspired work on the other hand, is truly great. Making this work is harder. And it works harder. Consumers reward brand creativity and so do award juries. It’s the kind of work that takes an otherwise unremarkable product and transforms it into amazing, inspiring, irresistible culture-bending creativity. Maybe just for a little while. But in the best cases, year on year, campaign after campaign, smashed sales target after smashed sales target.

That’s the true power and purpose of great creativity, whether for product or for purpose, or ideally for both. And that’s the creative that’s making its way towards metal as we work through the judging process.