Gen Z and creative sampling—why it’s OK to revive great ideas and make them our own

Being a young creative in advertising can be tough. Not because of the work itself, or because people’s lives are at stake. It’s because our success is mostly dependent on getting seen and heard by our superiors. If we’re not on their radar, all of our talent, dedication, ideas and even our willingness to learn are thrown right out the window. Without their approval, our work won’t ever make it out of its Keynote slide. I got lucky. Nice boss. Nice team. Flat hierarchies. A lot of attention. Some projects off the ground. But there’s still something bugging me. Imagine the situation. You get a nice brief for a big social media campaign. After a few days of brainstorming, you’re excited to knock the socks off your creative director with three different concepts. The scripts are practically ready. You’re completely confident that you’ve found an angle that suits both the brand and the target group, which is Gen Z. You are Gen Z. Your CD is not. “He should be thankful to have me,” you might be thinking to yourself. Not that you would tell anyone. However, during the creative meeting, none of your ideas survive. “Look, I really love that idea, but it kinda reminds me of something I’ve seen before … let me find that …” Your CD starts digging through old Ads of the World posts and opening the Wayback Machine. And just when you start hoping that he’s made a mistake, he finds a 30-second ad that once ran in Brazil between Christmas and New Year’s Eve and has the exact main character that you came up with just two days ago. Ad Age Gen Z Contributor Column We welcome Gen Zers to submit fresh takes exploring Gen Z within the ad industry Learn more here Obviously, I respect the reluctance to repeat even the smallest idea, but I simply disagree with this way of working. I believe that if you have to start scouring the internet for some long-forgotten ad, that’s a sign that it will have zero impact on today’s creation. Now, I’m not saying we should all start stealing ideas left, right and center. But even Picasso said: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” So, can’t great Gen Z creatives steal ideas and make them their own? According to Christopher Booker, author of “The Seven Basic Plots,” there are only that many different narrative patterns. In other words, we can’t not repeat ourselves. If an idea is strong and complex, it can live not one but endless lives. This is its true power. Every generation can make it their own because a great story resonates with every generation. So, older generations that have already read, watched or heard their versions of these stories need to take a step back and let Gen Zers make up their own—possibly in the same way they repeated the stories of generations before them. The difference is that this time around we have amazing resources such as internet search, from which we can actively unbury ideas from past generations. Instead of only remembering the truly remarkable, we can now make ourselves remember even the tiniest of ads. Which might make it feel like all of these ideas are done. Over. Out. In reality, most people will forget more than 90% of the ads they saw (within 24 hours, as one recent survey found.) I also believe that creative directors who have spent more time in the industry than I have on this planet tend to live in an advertising bubble and forget that the role ads play in their lives is distorted from that of the regular consumer—to whom we actually cater. While perhaps they can’t see that anymore, it’s painfully obvious to anyone starting afresh. Hearing feedback like “This idea won a Silver Lion back in 1998” doesn’t make any sense to me, because the first thing I consciously remember happened in 2003. Also, as one creative director once told me: “We used to quickly shoot a TV commercial purely for awards and then ran it once only for a cheap rate late at night to make it eligible for submission.” And yes, some in this industry still do this today, and will probably forever. But it also means that, from our target audience’s perspective, many “award-winning” ads have never really seen the light of day. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Or to put it differently: Many great ideas have been robbed of their big moment. And just as they deserve to have their time in the spotlights, so do us Gen Z creatives. Everyone else in the creative industry is allowed to recreate stuff—even encouraged to, if you look at things such as music sampling. There are calendars for when ideas will repeat themselves in fashion. Big movies are constantly remade even though faced with the backlash of those who don’t like to see their childhood heroes updated. The creative industry allows all of this because great ideas can shape-shift through generations without getting boring. So, agency creatives finally need to get on board. Just because you lived through something earlier than me, it doesn’t invalidate my initial reaction to it. Ideas can’t be owned by generations. Some ideas stay great, even if a version of them has been done before. And—dare I say it—some ideas might become even better if given to a young Gen Z creative for their second time around. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Gen Z and creative sampling—why it’s OK to revive great ideas and make them our own

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