Is Australia in a creativity crisis?

Australian brands are at risk of drowning in a sea of sameness, as tried and tested formulas win out over a lack of failsafe methods to get cut-through concepts across the line, according to Australia’s top marketers.

DDB Melbourne’s group ECD Psembi Kinstan says the industry needs to do better at proving the efficacy of cut-through, ambitious creative campaigns to spur the market on.

“I’d say the average is fairly low in Australia for the standard campaign, versus a market like the UK or the US where the competition between brands is fiercer,” he says.

There’s a trust in marketing to make the right calls for campaigns, Uber & Uber Eats APAC director of marketing Andy Morley told AdNews.

“Trusting in the experts is absolutely critical to enabling any organisation to do their best work and move quickly, getting those concepts across the line.”

Morley has seen the opposite scenario at other businesses, where the marketing department has to take their campaigns through five levels of non-expert management, and each stage sees them managing pointless subjective feedback which waters down the brilliance of any idea.