Why a human made Ocean Spray’s best commercial of all time

I’ll be the first to say: there’s a disconnect between agencies, creativity and the market.

We have an incredibly fascinating state of advertising today, where the Madison Avenue-type creative taught in school, and the historical way of making ads, is put on a pedestal. It’s remarkable how much subjectivity underlies creative awards, reports and headlines. Along with boardroom politics and behavior, this is where “creativity” is happening.

It’s laughable, and it’s audacious.

When the industry understands why Doggface208’s recent TikTok video is the single best “commercial” in the history of Ocean Spray’s brand, then it will start to wake up and understand what’s going on.

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It’s incredible that people in the industry don’t recognise that this video was more impactful than the tens of millions of dollars Ocean Spray has spent on advertising over the past decades to drive general awareness, be considered by people and keep their interest.

That’s because, the reality is, creative people that go into the traditional, creative ad agency world get the creativity completely sucked out of them.

Their creativity is put into boxes and broken down by subjective opinions. That starts with their boss, and then their boss's boss, and then their boss’s boss’s boss. After that, it’s broken down by the client, and then by reports, research and testing. Creativity is sucked away by all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the actual customer’s opinion.

This at least had some logic in an analog world. But until the advertising industry accepts that the internet exists, and recognises that the cost of production or the technical execution of a creative post does not matter as much as they wish it did because of their training or history, we will continue to be a creative advertising industry that is anything but.

But I’m hopeful. I can taste a sliver of potential that the industry finally understands that Madison Avenue has hit a pothole. I hope that will lead to better and more open, collaborative and creative work, from brands and by brands.

Because as of right now, brands are just going to have to hope that a real human being does their best ad.

Gary Vaynerchuk is chairman and founder of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia.