Future Impact: How will strategic creative thinkers have the biggest impact on the future?

I had an end goal, a clear “why” starting the Creative Strategy Diploma offered by Miami Ad School Europe; finding out more about my way of doing strategy.

As I’m writing this future impact essay, I’m proud to say that I caught a glimpse of the future of advertising and my potential role in it as a creative strategist. As part of the graduation requisites, we had to answer the following question:

How will we, as strategic creative thinkers and problem solvers, have the biggest future impact on brands, products, businesses, culture, and communications –given the challenges, we as a global society and economy face today?

Businesses are facing extraordinary challenges, the big agency model that brought us iconic, memorable campaigns is cracking, and advertising as we know it is in decline… Google, Facebook, large consulting firms, mobile phones, shrinking attention spans, digital dominance, and “data-everywhere” are changing the very nature of communication. And when rules, attitudes & behaviors that have held firm for decades undergo rapid change, there’s an urgent need to innovate and transform.

As Darwin stated in Origin of the Species, written in 1869, “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change”. Human beings have been the ones to evolve and survive because of our ability to adapt to change. The same goes for businesses. Businesses need to be aware of the changing landscape within which they operate, adapt to the threats and opportunities presented, and evolve in order to continue to create, deliver and capture value.

As creative strategists, in order to help businesses to continue to adapt, evolve and thrive, and assist them through their transformation journey, first, we need to adapt ourselves to the new evolving models. Increasingly empowered consumers and ever-evolving technologies are redefining how advertising is sold, created, consumed, and tracked. In this environment, we need to try our best to A/B test, and balance tried and tested methods of communication with new and upcoming ways to reach and engage consumers, and discover the hundreds of moments in today’s messy and convoluted customer journeys where brands could show up for (e.g., in search, on…