<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/6a0e115d9046c5d90ac7374e_2148909023-6a0b089f40296788290116.jpeg" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Network</span> <h1 class="gn-title">Member Blog: ‘Creative’ should be an adjective, not a noun</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>31 March 2026</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>4 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-body"> <p class="gn-lede gn-reveal">While most of the advertising industry struggles to avoid completely disappearing up its own trouser leg, one of the loudest arguments is that 'creativity makes all the difference'. And I couldn't agree more.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">But haven't we always been saying that? I'm pretty sure that Bernbach, Ogilvy, Weiden and others built their sizeable empires on words to that effect.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">So why has a long-held, proud and inspiring statement begun to feel more like a desperate plea?</p> <p class="gn-reveal">And why, while most agencies are joining in saying it, do so many of them seem happy to carry on making work that isn't really creative at all?</p> <h2 class="gn-reveal">Why does creativity seem to have lost its value?</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">At some point, advertising stopped using 'creative' as a compliment to the original ideas, the elevated thinking and the beautifully crafted, and started using it willy-nilly, as the catch-all term for whatever 'will do' to fill the media space.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Now, all of the work is 'the creative' – as a noun, rarely as the adjective.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">It doesn't matter whether the headline is a boringly functional statement about a sale being on or a beautifully worded, wonderful insight into the mind of an anxious parent. Whether it's just a cheap-arsed pack-shot, a rip-off of a Brazilian spec campaign from a 4-year-old edition of Lürzer's Archive or a 5mm high digital display banner that no-one will ever notice. It stopped having to be creative to be 'the creative'. Apparently.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Was the plan that, by calling all of it 'the creative', clients would just assume that careful and/or clever thinking had gone into it, and added value to it? Well maybe they did. For a while. Didn't last though, did it?</p> <h2 class="gn-reveal">Losing the benchmark</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">By turning 'creative' into just a noun, we've let it off the hook as our own benchmark and filter for when to say 'Yep, let's make it' or 'Yeah, no, keep thinking'. When I was a junior copywriter at Saatchi's and a presentation deadline was looming, and the Creative Director, Paul Arden, was asked if the work was ready yet, he calmly answered 'It will be ready… when it's great.' At Leagas Delaney, scripts were presented warm off the printer because you only stopped trying to make them better when you'd ran out of time.</p> <aside class="gn-quote gn-reveal"><q>Targeting isn't the right to anyone's attention, it's just a good opportunity to earn it.</q><cite>Member Blog · The GO Network</cite></aside> <p class="gn-reveal">And this isn't nostalgia. I'm not saying that everything was brilliant 20 years ago and everybody clapped. It wasn't and they didn't. My point is that, for our industry to get off the back foot, John Hegarty and Nils Leonard, and anyone else that's actually used creativity to build a great agency, are right – creativity <em>does</em> make a difference. BBH proved that decades ago, and Uncommon are doing an amazing job of proving that it's unquestionably still true now.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Nor am I bitching about the evolution in media. The problem isn't that digital and social media are bombarding everyone with advertising, it's that most of it isn't interesting enough or has no substance. So, whatever the visibility data pretends, it gets ignored. What, targeting does the work? No, targeting isn't the right to anyone's attention, it's just a good opportunity to earn it.</p> <h2 class="gn-reveal">Creativity exists to add value</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">Ah, but the perception of creativity is largely subjective, no? Not in advertising, no. In advertising, the sole purpose of creativity is simple – to add value. And however batshit crazy a concept might be, if you can't objectively argue that it adds value to the message, that it makes what the brand has to offer more noticeable, more persuasive or more memorable, then it isn't adding value, it isn't creative, it isn't a good use of the client's money and it isn't helping our industry avoid extinction.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">'Creative' shouldn't be a noun because creativity isn't a given.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">I've got some paintbrushes, but that doesn't make me an artist.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">I think about things, but that doesn't make me a philosopher.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">I decide what to wear every morning, but that doesn't make me a stylist.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">I fought tooth, nail and big overdrafts to get into advertising, because the notion that my ideas could be seen by millions of people both excited me and scared the poop out of me. And the thought that my ideas could affect the very success of a whole business felt like a monumental challenge. I love the creative advertising industry, because it's important – it's an incredibly valuable advantage for any business, if the work can do what it's meant to.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">But the day we threw away any sense of the boundary between genuinely 'creative' and 'yeah, whatever, that'll do…', we lost the right to expect appreciation and value for the things we're entrusted and paid to produce.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">The first day that I was asked to do a 'KV' and someone explained that it's sort of just a shit poster, and the day I was told to fill out a messaging spreadsheet instead of doing concept scamps, weren't encouraging. That's when it felt like the work – 'the creative' – had stopped needing to be creative.</p> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <p class="gn-reveal">So yes, let's be honest. Let's start judging the work again – all of it, not just the stuff that only exists to make a case-study for an awards entry.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Making the term 'creative' the filter again, the ambition, the adjective, not a meaningless noun, can only help make what we do (or what we can do) more sustainable.</p> </div></div>