Creative Futurism – All You Need To Know

January 29, 2018

Creative futurism is a concept, a mantra, an idea. We think it actually started as an impulsive scribble on a Post-it note, but creative futurism and Swagger just fit together. And now, we can’t really see one without the other.

If having swagger means being confident and forward-looking, then it goes hand-in-hand with creative futurism. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, dogs and tennis balls, whiskey and ginger beer…okay, going off on a bit of a tangent there.

Creative futurists don’t adhere to any one medium or way of doing things. We see every process, every assignment as iterative. The world is always changing and evolving and so are we. We look to the future as a map of how we are to think, act, create. While everyone else is going left, we go right. But it’s not just to be different or odd or to get attention. It’s because we saw something in the brief, the data, the focus group, the results that led us there, even if no one else can see it. Sure, maybe the trend now is to make videos shorter and shorter. But look further and we also see long-form content in our binge-watching habits and the emergence of branded content as a viable form of entertainment for the YouTube generation, as we sometimes call them.

And that’s just one example. Creative futurism is the ultimate creative license because it allows us to take brands where they’ve never gone before and perhaps where they’d never have thought to go. And we back it all up. These aren’t decisions we make on a whim. Because another thing about creative futurism is that it’s insight driven. What’s happening today by nature impacts our tomorrow. To say otherwise would be ignorant. What’s different about us is that we interpret today differently. We want to start the trend, not follow it. We want to break the ground, not dig where there is something existing. But at the same time, creative futurism doesn’t get too wrapped up with new technologies. It’s all about what’s best for the assignment, and that doesn’t mean VR or holograms for every brief. That wouldn’t make much sense. Creative futurists see beyond the budget but also know how to work creatively within one, whether it’s big or small. Here, every assignment is an opportunity to make our best work yet, and we don’t settle for just an okay outcome. If something doesn’t work (and let’s be honest, that’s going to happen to everyone at some point or another), we want to sit down, regroup, and find out why so that history doesn’t repeat itself.

It’s all about creating a brighter, more insightful, better prepared future. That’s the creative futurist mantra. It’s our swagger.