Feb 22, 2005 | Richard Bird | 0 Comments

Guns Then Butter

Many of the technologies we enjoy every day are descendent from military or other government sponsored sciences. Even high-tech, high-priced mattresses for a better night’s sleep. (And every time we send a man into space, we potentially get a new flavor of TANG!)

We design a lot of brands and packaging graphics here at R.BIRD. Many of the final design candidates are client-tested using an eye-tracking system that counts the frequency, velocity, duration and target of a consumer eye as it moves around and around the shelves and labeling. Almost science fiction, it’s fascinating to see. That technology was first developed as a way to target weapons in the battlefield following a human sight line. Now, it’s tracking our level of interest in jams, jellies… and butter.

Procter & Gamble has a brand new computer system to rate creativity. Using a matrix of data, such as awards per client, global presence, results per dollar, et cetera, the system apparently is built to calculate some kind of index for creativity and assign it to agencies on the list. More prestigious awards for fewer dollars in shorter spans of time, for example, might produce a higher creativity score - possibly indicating a fast-moving, high-efficiency talent with great ROI potential.

It seems we are willing to become more and more comfortable with - even dependent on - technologies, data, and logical measurement as a way to validate the creativity of advertising or the art of a branding campaign. Or is it, too likely, a very efficient way to filter out instinctive reasoning and intuition?

3D Image is by Dave Marsh with permission.

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