About 20 years ago, I guess, advertising took a dramatic turn for the worse.
We stopped doing comps, tissues and storyboards.
And started setting type, finding stock and making rips.
We sold our clients, en masse, that re-hashed, re-used and re-heated was creative. The idea no longer mattered. What mattered was not what was presented but how it was presented.
This is now accepted as the norm.
But wait.
Things have gotten even worse. And again, we've done it to ourselves.
Now, when we show work internally, we need to make sure it looks beautiful. We forget, once again about what we're communicating. We care only about what it's wrapped in.
We spend more time working on an internal presentation deck than we do on the idea. We have scores of art-directors combing stock sites.
We drop shadows. We retouch. We create effects and make type move.
We trained first our clients and then ourselves to value form over function.
None of this has produced better work.
Just tighter comps.