Safety last!

While reading the recent System1/Effie paper The Creative Dividend , I was reminded of the marvellous words of aviator and writer Cecil Lewis in his autobiography, Sagittarius Rising:

You should live gloriously, generously, dangerously. Safety last!

OK, making adverts is hardly comparable to flying high above the trenches on the Western Front, eyes peeled for a Flying Circus or two to bag. But nevertheless, can I be the only person in advertising who finds charts like these rather disconsoling?

Creativity is “seen as a risk”. Whether that’s the marketers themselves that see it as a risk, which is a very cheerless thought, or, more likely, the powers that be, is immaterial.  What’s more concerning is the implied attitude to risk. It’s seen as a “barrier” to creative effectiveness. Gone are the days of no risk, no fun it seems.

Timandra Harkness’s Letter on Liberty Risk and Responsibility shines some light on this. Whether it’s down to the meddling nanny state, a tendency to infantalise adults or the obsession with measuring everything and “proof”, risk today is associated with harm rather than with opportunity. In many areas of work and life. Taking a risk is seen as irresponsible. But Harkness argues to the contrary:

Far from being irresponsible, taking risks is the only way to be a truly responsible adult. To live a life devoted to constraining uncertainty, minimising bad possibilities and maximising predictability, is to live as a child. It’s not only permissible to take risks - in fact, it’s intrinsic to being a moral agent.

Surely it’s a pessimistic mindset to use uncertainty about how things could to turn out as a reason not to take a risk?

But luckily, back in the world of advertising, those clever chaps and chapesses at System1 and Effie have actually put some numbers on how creativity can boost effectiveness and build brands and profits. 

As I think we had on the wall or in the company handbook at Saatchi: