It’s supposed to be a time of conservation, of frugality, of watching every penny. Certainly, it’s not supposed to be the time for grand, ambitious plans. But somebody apparently forgot to notify the One Club, the New York-based not-for-profit advertising industry organization that hosts the One Show, one of the world’s premier creative competitions, as well as the One Show Design and One Show Interactive awards. Rather than tighten its belt, the One Club decided to let its waistband out a few notches in 2009 by launching the inaugural Creative Week NYC, with events stitched around its awards shows.
“We’ve just got to show some strength,” says One Club president Kevin Swanepoel, of his organization’s decision to flex more muscle even as the economy goes spaghetti-limbed. “The industry’s contracting, but there are lots of creative people looking for jobs or networking opportunities.”
Swanepoel wants Creative Week to be a source of such opportunities. In addition to the three big awards shows, Creative Week—which took place in Manhattan from May 4-8—featured student awards shows and pitch competitions and the first-ever Creative unConference, which eschewed a predetermined speaker agenda and instead had attendees break into small groups for discussions on industry issues. The week was also open to creative people outside the ad business, with several groups, including an African poetry organization and a novelist, organizing events that were promoted by the One Club but otherwise run independently. “Creatives love museums, music, arts, theatre, so we thought, let’s just talk creative,” says Swanepoel. “Any organization that’s got something to do with creativity can host an event.”
That anything-goes mentality also applied to the unConference, where the agenda was set spontaneously by participants in the morning before smaller discussion groups were established. “It was like having a coffee with people,” says Jo-Ann Munro, co-creative director at Montreal’s Sid Lee, moments after leaving a session on social media branding. “It was more engaging because it was more participatory.”
Business issues, along with social media, were among the most popular unConference discussion topics, but the economic downturn undoubtedly cast a spectre over the week. Swanepoel admits numbers at the One Show gala were down roughly 150 compared to last year, with a not-quite-full auditorium at the Jazz at Lincoln Center watching entries such as DDB Vancouver’s “Canadian Car Chase” spot take home Gold Pencils. Even the night’s Best of Show winner, a campaign for Australia’s Queensland Tourism by Brisbane agency CumminsNitro, was a testament to shrewd expenditure. It consisted primarily of newspaper classified ads promoting a contest in which the winner received a six-month contract to do “The Best Job in the World”—serving as caretaker on an island near the Great Barrier Reef. The contest generated media coverage around the world, a buzz that the winner will keep going by filing on-the-job blog entries.
That such a modest effort could wow the international judging panel was a positive sign, according to Steve Mykolyn, chief creative officer at Taxi and one of the two Canadian judges—along with Rethink’s Ian Grais—on the panel. “Basically, someone took a very small budget and created a global campaign out of small-space ads,” he says. “It was inspiring to see that you could do whatever it takes, and it didn’t have to be laden with production or spectacularly art-directed.”
Mykolyn was hinting at a notion that was floated by more than a few whisperers during the week—that straitjacketing creatives with tight budgets might actually make the best of them more ingenious. Whether that is true remains to be seen, as does the future of Creative Week and the unConference—the latter suffered from a notable dropoff in attendees on its second day.
But Swanepoel and Mary Warlick, CEO of the One Club, refuse to be discouraged. Business—and budgets—will pick up again, they say, and when it does, clients will depend on the confidence instilled by this week-long celebration of creativity. That’s because, as Warlick says, “Good creative is good for business.”
