The concept of ‘good creative’ within the ad industry is subjective, however both David Brown, managing director at DDB Melbourne and Darren Spiller, chief creative officer at DDB Melbourne, believe you just know when creative will blow some socks off. But sometimes that creative doesn’t always get results.

“My view is,” said Brown, speaking to B&T when he and Spiller were in Sydney a few weeks ago, “is that you generally have a feeling you just know when something is good.” He added you can also look at the post-campaign results, whether it shifted the brand score, sales and the like to see if the creative worked.

However, even if the creative hasn’t delivered the projected expectations for clients, Brown said it should still be recognised.

“We talk about creativity being the most powerful force in business,” he said. “But we then get into that issue where we think good creative is good creative, but it hasn’t worked and it gets awarded.

“I sit back and I’m okay with that, because I think good work that’s still well crafted and well written should be acknowledged.”

That’s not to say agencies should only write creative to win awards though. Spiller said he would be bored senseless if that was the only reason he created creative.

“I do not wake up every morning and think ‘what award-winning work can I write today’,” said Spiller. “That would bore the shit out of me.”

Rather, Spiller said he gets butterflies in his stomach when people are talking about a campaign he’d been involved in.

“The greatest form of advertising is word-of-mouth,” he said. “Whether you’re sending something digitally… or the old word-of-mouth around the dining table, that’s so exciting. And that to me is what makes great work.”

Referencing advertising veteran Ted Horton and his comments around awards destroying the creative industry, Brown believed this was quite closed-minded.

“If you get out of bed every day wanting to win an award, then that will destroy it.

“But if you want to get out of bed and make a difference to your clients, and then do it in a way that enables you to attract better talent – I think that was quite narrow-minded view,” he said, adding though that he’s not dissing Horton’s work as he firmly has the results to back up his genius creative.