Alien Baby co-founder and leading Aussie creative strategist Paula Bloodworth delivered a scathing critique of the modern advertising industry.
She warned the sector has become “homogenous” and “boring” as marketers increasingly prioritise frameworks, process and risk mitigation over instinct, culture and creativity.
Speaking about creativity and culture at Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest, Bloodworth argued advertising had drifted away from the kind of culturally defining work that once made the industry influential.
“Cars are starting to look the same. Logos are looking the same. Details are starting to be simplified,” she said.
Bloodworth is the co-founder of Alien Baby alongside actor Idris Elba and led strategy for Nike for more than seven years across EMEA, China and globally.
The Aussie has also worked as head of international strategy for Uncommon Creative Studio and held several senior strategy roles at DDB and Ogilvy.
Bloodworth pointed to declining public sentiment towards advertising as evidence that the industry’s obsession with optimisation and control was backfiring.
“Your favourability of advertising is the lowest it’s ever been; 81 per cent are trying to tune out ads,” she said.
The creative leader said marketers had become consumed by “strategic frameworks”, templates, and systems designed to manufacture effectiveness, but the process was stripping advertising of originality and emotional impact.
“We’re trying to figure out the process and control it,” she said. “How many frameworks have you tried to sell? It’s another bit of technology that’s going to tell you how to do things.”
Bloodworth warned that many agencies and brands were now in the business of creating “insurance” rather than culture-shaping ideas.
“If you need a green light and a test thing to tell you how to do stuff, all you’re doing is creating insurance,” she said.
“It feels like we’re doing a lot about creating insurance, mitigating risk versus hoping for great success.”
Three critical creative traits
Instead, Bloodworth advocated for what she described as three critical creative traits: “impatience, naivety and instinct”.
On impatience, she argued brands needed to react to culture in real time rather than planning campaigns years in advance.
“If you are briefing over a year in advance, you are probably just creating work, not culture,” she said.
Bloodworth used an anti-knife crime campaign, led by Elba and created with Fold7, as an example of how speed and instinct could create genuine cultural impact.
The campaign, which included a protest installation outside the UK Parliament and a music video release, was conceived and executed within weeks, helping drive political and legislative attention to the issue.
“I guarantee [it] wouldn’t have happened if we planned this like a year in advance,” she said.
Bloodworth also championed “naivety” in creativity, arguing some of the world’s best ideas emerge from absurdity, innocence and irrational thinking rather than rigid logic.
“We can still be boring,” she said. “Meanwhile, we love stupid things in culture.”
She cited examples ranging from Crocs (the sandals, not the conference) to Labubus and pointed out that the Sydney Opera House was inspired by a sliced mandarin.
Bloodworth said agencies had become too reliant on workshops, committees and consensus-driven thinking, which often watered down the most interesting creative ideas.
“Committees suck,” she said bluntly. “If there are about 50 people that have to sign off an idea, you’re doing it wrong.”
She also argued the industry needed to reintroduce more “instinct” and “chaos” into the creative process.
“There needs to be some chaos, and if we don’t make room for chaos, the work feels boring and dull and ineffective,” she said.
Bloodworth believes that instinct is the most undervalued creative muscle in modern advertising and urged agencies and marketers to stop waiting for perfect briefs and start engaging more deeply with culture itself.
“It’s so easy to be a critic, it’s so easy to tear down work, but it’s really hard to get behind something,” she said.
“Don’t let [frameworks] constrict your output. React and ride it instead.”
