As always, it was a packed house last week for the latest instalment of #CSpresents. This time round we’d given our speakers a magic wand for the night and asked them what they’d change first in the world of advertising.

Here are 5 things we took away from the night:

Don’t be ruled by ‘what if’s’

As the creator of some of the most memorable virals in recent years, Ed Robinson (The Viral Factory) has had his fair share of run ins with the brand police. He showed some great work including Diesel’s ‘SFW XXX‘ and Extreme Shepherding LED art. Both nearly got killed because of ridiculous overreactions and fear mongering individuals. Doing something interesting and remarkable should result in a reaction from people, some of which may be negative. Don’t let great creativity be destroyed by ‘what if’s’.

Less advertising, more value.

Andy Cutbill made the case that in a world where advertising is often ruled by analytics and data, creativity has become a commodity that companies like PicknClick have gone as far as turning into a formula. He believes that it’s up to the creatives to come up with creative solutions that help to generate income for their clients. He showed us a couple of great examples of this including Bleep Bleeps, an amazing set of parenting products created by our very own Tom Evans.

Don’t be afraid to ask for more time.

Being in a rush when it comes to work has been scientifically proven to be detrimental to your health. Abi Eliss (LBi London) is also positive it can be hugely negative for the ideas you come up with. She encouraged us to ‘date the idea’ before adding it to the finished pile. This will in turn stop the lazy ideas making it to the client presentation. Simplicity can be the ultimate test for creatives; if you can’t boil an idea down to a sentence then the chances are that it still needs work.

You don’t need to have an opinion on everything.

Pete Petrella (Black Book London) also touched on the pace of the advertising industry. In the world of digital this becomes even more apparent with the speed in which technologies develop. This relentless speed creates a huge amount of noise with little substance, and there is a pressure to have an opinion on everything that’s happening around you. There comes a point where you are focusing far too much on just keeping up and not enough on improving the red thread that joins it all together; creativity.

Be inspired by broadening your horizons.

Patrick Collister (Google) has experienced the advertising industry for long enough to know the few things he’d like to see change. He discussed how one of the longest running industry publications has always chosen to face inward rather than tackle the bigger issues that affect us all. He urged us to be broader in the cultural content that we ingest. As advertisers it is our job to influence people, without this understanding of the bigger picture, we are much less equipped to be able to successfully do this with our work.

Check out the Slideshare from the evening:

Creative Social Presnets – The 1 thing i woud change in advertising. 3 September 2013 from CreativeSocial

Take a look at the photos from the night here.

MASSIVE thank you to our partners:

Because Source is all about Connected People, Connecting People, Creative Social is the perfect platform for people to network whilst benefiting from leading industry knowledge.

We would also like to say a special thanks to our venue partners LBi for providing us with ‘The home of Creative Social Presents..’ a top notch venue for creative thinking.’

Our next event will be:

CSsessions – Technology Is Evil. Is it negatively impacting our lives?