IF WE LOSE THE ART IN WHAT WE DO…

The Advertising Industry Has Changed
(And We’re Not Sure It’s For The Better)

Forbes recently declared that advertising has changed more in the past few years than it has in the last few decades.

To which we say: Yeah. No kidding.

Everyone knows it. We feel it. The tectonic plates have shifted. Clients want TikToks. Budgets are tighter than a boomer’s grip on the aux cable. AI is churning out headlines that sound like they’ve been lifted from a fridge manual.

And yet, somehow… despite all this “change”, we’re still being served the same lifeless wallpaper, disguised as brave new creative.

No humour.
No feeling.
No reason to care.
And definitely no reason to click.

So. Where’s the art?

We know — “art” is one of those words that gets tossed around a bit too easily by creative directors who’ve recently taken up ceramics. But hear us out.

If art is deliberately arranging stuff to stir feelings and influence behaviour, why has advertising — a discipline quite literally designed to do just that — decided to bin it?

We’re not talking about the odd sexy 30-second TV spot with a budget the size of Greenland. That’s the easy bit. Give any agency a drone, a slo-mo shot, and a Florence + The Machine track, and they’ll spin gold.

We mean the everyday stuff.

The bread-and-butter posts.
The banner ads.
The CRM emails.
The “This offer ends soon” clutter that clogs up our feeds like emotional spam.

That’s where the spark is dying.

Welcome to the age of creative mediocrity

Somewhere between the brand strategy slide and the sixth stakeholder approval round, we started mistaking “safe” for “effective”. And it’s costing us.

Because if we lose the art in what we do, we’re just glorified middlemen with Canva accounts.

The art is what makes people feel something. It’s the clever twist. The weird metaphor. The unexpected truth bomb wrapped in a punchy one-liner. It’s the thing that makes advertising better than just “content”.

It’s also what justifies the invoice

But lately? It feels like we’re all playing it safe. Chasing templates. Dumbing it down. Cutting and pasting our way to creative oblivion.

And the result?
Everything looks the same.
Everything feels the same.
And worst of all — it doesn’t move the needle.

As plenty of seasoned ad folk have pointed out lately:

If we stop investing in our creative talent, we lose the one thing machines and management consultants can’t replicate.

Exactly

Because while we’re busy optimising banner ads into blandness, tech companies, consultancies and platforms like Amazon are casually strolling into our industry and hoovering up the real creative opportunities — with stuff developed outside the agency world.

And if we don’t protect the weird, clever, left-field thinkers?
The ones who add the sparkle?
The ones who fight for the unexpected?

Then we’re just another department in a larger machine. And that’s not why most of us got into this game.

So let’s bring the art back

Let’s stop creating work that could be done by a ChatGPT prompt with the creativity dial turned to “mild”.
Let’s fight for stuff that actually stands out — even if it doesn’t test well in the first round of focus groups.

Because the industry might be changing.
But standing out?
That’s still the point.

SHA is a strategic advertising agency, creating brand strategy, advertising, design for print and content for web and social. If you want to know more, get in touch with nigelh@sha-agency.com or visit our contacts page.

The opinions in this article are that of the author alone and in no way, reflect the opinions or viewpoint of the agency. Unless of course we happen to agree with those opinions completely, in which case they might, but otherwise they don’t.