Amy Carr, general manager of growth at Yango is planning to take the vibrant, chaotic, and deeply inspiring energy of the Cairns Crocodiles Festival back to the agency’s desks.
As the GM in an indie media agency, my days are generally anchored in metrics, scalability, and performance optimisation. But sitting in the audience during the second day of the B&T Cairns Crocodiles Festival, absorbing the vibrant energy and brilliant insights from the stage, I felt a sense of optimism.
We are standing on the edge of a massive opportunity. In a world that is increasingly automated and hyper-optimised, we have the chance to reclaim our industry’s most potent superpower: raw, human creativity. It’s time we focus on stepping out of the sea of sameness, reawaken our imaginations, and most importantly, bring back the ‘feels’.
During their brilliant session, Paula Bloodworth and Adam Ferrier shared some fascinating data that, rather than being discouraging, serves as the perfect catalyst for a creative revolution. Currently, our industry pumps over $140 billion into market research, navigating a 9,300% proliferation in martech tools. Yet, viewer favourability of advertising has dipped, with many people feeling “nothing” when they see an ad.
This isn’t a failure; it’s a beautifully clear runway. It shows us exactly where the white space is. We have mastered the science of delivery; now, we get to rediscover the art of connection. If we want our work to transcend media and become a vibrant part of culture, we need to design work that makes people feel, within the agency village, within the boardroom, and most importantly, in culture.
To get there, we might need to rethink how we start the process entirely. Perhaps it’s time we consider burning the brief. Creative briefs often act as constrictive “madness forms” that dictate exactly how to think before the thinking has even begun. As Adam Ferrier noted, his agency hasn’t used them in eight years because they create artificial silos and busy work. When we remove those rigid constraints, we make room for actual, unbridled imagination.
To add to culture rather than just borrow from it, we can look to the artists and entertainers who are moving the needle in incredible ways. The sessions highlighted three inspiring principles we can adopt right now:
Agility Fuelled by Passion. Culture moves fast, and we can too. When Idris Elba wanted to tackle anti-knife crime in the UK, his team didn’t wait for a 400-page consultancy report. They mobilised in weeks, relying on a small, passionate group empowered with the autonomy to act. When we focus deeply on the positive change we want to make, rather than just the communication, we can achieve breathtaking speed and impact.
The Magic of Naivety. Sometimes, the most intelligent solutions are delightfully absurd, and we need to get comfortable replacing the polished for the scrappy. When the team pitched the anti-knife crime campaign to Idris, they didn’t present a flawless, 100-page brand guideline deck; they showed him an incredibly raw, scrappy mock-up. But the idea was so undeniably good that he bought it on the spot. As an industry, we just need to give our inner child permission to play and let raw ideas breathe without over-polishing them into oblivion.
Trusting Your Instincts. Paula posed a beautifully simple question for evaluating our work: “Does it excite me?” In an industry that spends billions trying to mitigate risk, there is power in occasionally dumping the endless research for pure gut feel. If we rely entirely on testing and green lights to tell us how to feel, as Paula so perfectly put ‘we are just buying insurance’. Instead, we should channel the great Dolly Parton: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” Trust your gut; it’s usually right.
During the Make Creativity Great Again panel, a fascinating conversation emerged about how we work. Hannah McElhinney made the point: in our relentless pursuit of efficiency, we sometimes strip away the valuable “idleness” required for ideas to breathe. We need to intentionally carve out space in our packed calendars to ‘let the monkeys play’.
And the payoff for protecting this space is immense. As Matthew Michael noted, the financial value of creativity is undeniable. Data consistently shows that highly creative brands significantly financially outperform their competitors. Creativity isn’t just a nice-to-have; it is a proven, powerful engine for commercial growth.
This brings us to the most exciting tool in our new arsenal: AI. As Subhash Kamath wisely advised, we have the opportunity to master this technology and use it to elevate our craft.
Let AI do the heavy lifting. Let it handle the efficiencies, the scaling, and the process-driven grunt work. By happily offloading the mechanical tasks, we unlock the true potential of our creative minds. Humanity is our ultimate differentiator. It is our distinct privilege to inject empathy, humour, warmth, and bold viewpoints into our work.
We have the power to shape culture. Let’s take the vibrant, chaotic, and deeply inspiring energy of the Cairns Crocodiles Festival back to our desks. Let’s cultivate a culture of imagination, trust our instincts, and excitedly bring back the feels.
