David Baldwin interviewed by Boards Magazine at Shift Disturbers

David was recently asked to speak at a conference in Toronto called ‘Shift Disturbers’ presented by Stimulant. He was interviewed by Boards Magazine. Click here to read the interview or see it in its entirety below.

David Baldwin, ECD of Baldwin& and president of the One Club, considers the history of advertising, which began with the creative revolution of the ’60s up until the present day, as Chapter One. Chapter Two, he says, is yet to be written, and those who are bringing advertising forward into uncharted territory are this chapter’s authors.

Here, five questions with Baldwin on his role in creatingArt & Copy, the One Club-produced feature on the industry’s creative innovators, and why tough times like these are the best times to innovate. Hear Baldwin speak at the Boards Creative Workshop in Chicago on May 19.

What’s the idea behind the movie?

The idea for the movie was really to celebrate the figures behind this cultural movement over the last 30, 40 years. They’re anonymous to most people. They know the work, but not the people behind it. There’s something really fascinating about that. We wanted to talk about the art in the work.

It starts with this eureka that Bill Bernbach had back in the ’60s to put the art director and a copywriter together and let them figure it out. That had never been done before and it seems so simple, but it was a revolutionary idea. That’s where the creative revolution in advertising started.

The movie goes up through this creative revolution all the way though to the iPod ad, Goodby Silverstein and those guys, Cliff Freeman, right up in to the modern era. But it really does stop at the end of chapter one. Someone asked Lee Clow why didn’t we include interactive in this thing and he said because the interactive world is only now being turned over to the artists. It has been ruled by the scientists up until now. That’s the next the movie to be made.

An interesting piece is that advertising people and an advertising association is behind the making of the movie, which is very unique. You’d never have seen that 10 or 15 years ago. Now, suddenly in this new world you can do that. You can do anything…

I think a lot of people talk about needing to be thought-leaders. But you can’t say it; you have to be it. I think this is a great example of being a thought-leader. And it’s a great chronicle about why we got into this business and love it.

You’ve said that what’s happening now is not the death of advertising but the death of a business model. Can you explain?

What’s happening is that advertising is not under assault; the business model is under assault. Agencies are getting paid revenues in the millions of dollars for doing mass media television. That’s what’s under assault. There is still a need for clients to communicate their brand and communicate messages. The recession has not helped for the amount of work that’s going on. What’s happened is that the money has shifted around and into a lot more places.

Does the recession put a hamper on innovation?
Any kind of crisis puts pressure on business as usual. What you see is processes start to crack in a crisis period that normally wouldn’t crack when things are good. Certainly, from that standpoint there’s a quickening going on with some business models that could have been around for another five years if things were rolling. But I think from an innovation standpoint, tough economic times actually create innovation because you have to work harder to figure things out. Nothing causes new thinking like crisis. That’s really when new things start to happen.

Even me, starting a new company right in the center of the crash happening, I was very aware about that but kind of excited about it. What better time to create a blank slate, a white page?

Companies are struggling for answers. Is there a right answer?
I don’t know the right answer. But there seems to be this feeling that there has to be one right answer out there. I think we live in a time where there are a ton of right answers and that because of the way everything has fractured, there are all kinds of different business models and ways of approaching this that are going to come out. We’ll let evolution sort out the ones that work and don’t work but of the business models that are out there, there are a lot of right ones. Just look at companies like AKQA, RGA, Crispin and the Barbarian Group, they all have different models but they’re all enormously successful.

What can audiences at the Boards Creative Workshop in Chicago expect from your presentation?

Hopefully hope.