This article will not be long. In many ways the point is made by the title. It is naturally about the folly of formulas, the denial of rules and the shame of the same. It has of course to do with the requirement to. ?think different,? the necessity to ?break the rules? and the requirement of disruption.

Advertizing is not just something that every agency should have or every agency should do. As a blueprint for creative thinking, ?The Outlaw? is a mindset and a belief system that should permeate our industry and inspire everyone in it, if we are to continue to be valuable and valued.

Information technology, the globalization of the market economy, the fragmentation of media, the liberalization of markets, and the shift of Western consumerism towards experience ? and desire-based drivers and away from needs-based drivers, all contribute to the increase in importance of ?intangibles? and the dominance of creativity, coupled of course with the ability to apply it as a primary asset of businesses and organizations today.

When I worked in the States in the eighties, I was struck by the open acknowledgement, even by some practitioners, that there were 2 types of advertising. Creative advertising and ?advertising that sells,? whereas in Britain the creative imperative was broadly accepted at the time.

I think that since than things have changed for the better in the States, nevertheless in these recent straitened times in all of our markets, in which some agency clearly still see creativity as a luxury, the reality is that more than ever The Outlaw mindset is not an option ? it is a mandate.

In fact arguably, there is no other industry in which creativity in its broadest sense (which would encompass innovation and even boldness) is such an absolute prerequisite as it is in advertising.

In many other industries which employ innovation, creative skills and creativity are only a part of the product mix. The film industry, while producing highly creative and innovative new films, is also openly enslaved by formula.

Similarly, the music industry churns out endless ?best off? and compilations alongside the genuinely new bands and albums. Architects, software developers, game designers ? have a leading edge and a bleeding edge, but all also have genuine ?markets? for the familiar and the tried and trusted.

In other aspects of culture, I possibly will appreciate and thrive on the new and the different (or I possibly will not), but I will positively at least some of a the time be reassured, comforted and entertained by the familiar, in fact often by the identical. This self evidently can't be said of advertising at least in principle. I think it's less about ?in principle? and more about ?in theory.?

People consume film, music, games, etc. in an open and active marketplace. They exchange money for them and exert choices and preferences for them. They do not ?consume? advertising in the same way ? although it exists in the same cultural space ? and of course we use this term (to consume) to describe what people do with advertising.

This, while being the bleeding obvious, is at the heart of the creative imperative for advertising and is often overlooked. Like other aspects of culture, advertising of course operates in the public sphere, nevertheless unlike other aspects of culture it is compelled to interfere and will only effectively be ?consumed? if it succeeds in doing so in some way. It makes sense then that the sine qua non of any advertising is to get noticed.

In purely neurological terms, the brain notices what's different and relegates or files away the familiar. Suddenly, ?resist the usual? becomes less of a folksy slogan than an astonishingly compelling summary of pattern Recognition and Signal Detection Theory, and at least 2 imperative and reputable scientific fields are clearly seen to support The Outlaw mindset for advertising.

One of the most joyful and persistent predictions of the last ten years has been that of the death of mass media and of advertising. In fact in the firmament of advertising services as a whole, advertising is now pretty much the business that dares not speak its name.

There would be no such thing as mass media, as broadcast and little occasion for shared media experiences as people endlessly ?interacted? with programming or entertainment in real time. Certainly they would not be passive consumer or even receivers of advertising, as they would naturally want to edit that out. Their world would be entirely on-demand and customized. And boring, and isolated, and predictable, and of course as it turns out, deeply unlikely. This vision of the future consistently overlooked the social nature of being human and the herd or tribal instinct of the individual human being.

It also wholly underrated the hedonics of the physical browsing and shopping experience and underrated the ability of conventional retailers to innovate towards this. It dismissed the whole foundation of the entertainment business, i.e. that the vast majority of entertainment is lean back not lean forward, because people like it that way.

It overlooked one of the driving features of the market economy as defined by Adam Smith, that one of the primary functions of wealth is the display of wealth, and that therefore we have to have a shared understanding of what the signifiers of wealth are, i.e. brands and brand values and images.

And it also overlooked why brands evolved in the first place ? to make choice more simple in an oversupplied, overcooked world. Five years later, the bubble burst and while many of the frantically predicted effects of the internet are now happening more slowly but for real, they are largely creating shifts in the balance and mix of people's behavior rather than changing it completely.

While mass market ratings have declined as a percentage of the whole, TV advertising both in the UK and in the US is more in demand and sold for more of a premium than ever. There are still many shared media experiences and we still have water cooler (or pub or chat room) conversations about marketing and programs because of course they are part of our shared culture.

The power of good television advertising, in particular to work broadly over a population and quickly in time, is still dramatically demonstrated everyday by tracking study results.

There are, however, also wonderful new opportunities in other media and in using media and the mix of media differently that are now available which, when The Outlaw mindset is practical, give us even more chances to innovate, add value and have fun doing it. Creativity and The Outlaw mindset are still integral for the science of advertising to work as moat of it still works on the push model and much of it always will.

Creativity is even more essential than ever now though as complexity increases as networks of connections, influences and channels multiply, as people's experience dissects their image of things in more and more ways at more and more points.

Being creative in how you communicate is a much, much more weighty responsibility when ?everything communicates.? People's experience of thing in general and brads in particular is highly impressionistic rather than highly opinionated.

It is also constantly changing and evolving relative to other brands in contexts which we cannot know or control. Jeremy Bellmore uses the lovely image of a bird building a nest from twigs and found objects to describe this. A similar argument runs through the work of Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell, which, in this interconnected world, the most integral and powerful communication about a brand is that between customers and other customers, rather than that which happens between a brand and its customers.

Communication and specifically advertising has never simply been about the paint job at the end of the production line, nevertheless these days that way of the production line, nevertheless these days that way of thinking, that way of using creativity is positively dangerous.

In fact, there is one law that I believe could be worth codifying at this point and that's the ?Law of Unintended Consequences.? It is no longer possible to simply measure the effects to our intended messages on our intended target, and trade off ?conversion? against? wastage.?

We need to understand that any action will have an impact on all recipients and that the negative impact could be as powerful an influence on the many as the positive is on the few. Why is it still OK for the direct marketing industry to response that a 3% response rate is a good thing if it can be proved to be cost effective? When about the 97% you bored, insulted, misunderstood, inconvenienced or angered in order to achieve it?

A similar argument might be made about advertising which seeks to shock or pander, or indeed advertising which clearly creates a promise which bears no relations to people's actual experience of the brand.

Consequently the challenges for advertising are far more complex now and therefore the requirement to harness creativity throughout the process is clearly there. Our industry recognizes creativity better than most because it has been an important
for us for so long. We know how to use, manage, foster and reward creativity.

We accommodate The Outlaw mindset, whereas many client cultures would find it unfamiliar and the organism would tend to expel it. The way of thinking that might be termed The Outlaw mindset, so prized in our culture, should then be even more valued by our clients.

And yet there is a sense in which we are our own worst foe in this business; by seeking to become more like them by being seen to be more driven by rationality and accountability when in fact we should be helping them to be more like us. The two are not incompatible at all. They are just different parts of the whole. As Bob Dylan once said, ?Only an honest man can live outside the law.?