Friday, December 02, 2005

Lego: bring on the brief!

We were made to write a creative brief. (what?!?!).

Explanation: in the world of advertising, when a client (the advertiser) meets the client servicing executive (the guy representing the agency to the client) and takes notes on why he wants to advertise and what is he expecting the agency to do for him, is called ‘taking a client brief’. The other department, ‘Creative’, requires to know what kind of an advertisement they are to create for the client. When the CSE converts the client brief to a sheet of paper which gives the creative department the relevant information, it is known as ‘the creative brief’.

Our assignment was to write a creative brief for an ad already made. In effect, work backwards to know what influenced the creator to make such an ad. The ad was that of Lego.

The ad:
Two cars (limos if I am not wrong) roll into a compound and black suited men step out in regal style. They make their way to a room and open it with utmost care and walk in. they stare from behind dark glasses at the activities of a five year old who is sitting on the floor playing with his toys. A lady dressed formally (probably the boss of these men) walk in while the men make way for her to come up front to the child. The child looks at her and hands over a simple white box. The apprehension builds and the lady looks at the men before she anxiously opens the box. Just a peak and the light through the box delight the people watching. They are impressed and the next thing you know is this child being hounded by press reporters. He is made to sit in a press conference with a hundred mics in his face and camera flashes all over the screen. He is being loved and respected by the entire country. His picture is in every magazine, on every news channel. He is shown parading through what looks like London, in a sedan and with guards in front and behind.

The screen now has a Lego logo on it and the punchline that reads: "every idea begins with imagination".

Now I might have killed the ad for those who have watched it but that’s the best I could do, so, sincere apologies.

Everyone had their own way to draw up the probable brief. Some wrote poetry and some wrote three lines as their assignment. I don’t know how many others have done what I did. I recorded a speech and gave it some music; something like ‘Sunscreen’, if you have heard the song. It’s a pity I can not play that brief but I can post the text at least. So this is what I said:

I once asked a child, what is your dream… what do you want to be.
He said, “I want to be an engineer”.
On asking him why so, he replied with eyes that had the glimmer of a creator, “I want to build the world”.

Children have dreams, when they grow up they have aspirations. The difference between the dream of a child and the aspiration of a grown up lies in the fact that the child has no preconceived logic in his dream… no rationale… no inspiration from that which has already been created. It is independent of logic, of gain, of selfishness, of winning the race against humanity. The dream to create resides in the area of impossibility and the truth of the dream has more credibility in his mind than the credibility of matured logic in the mind of a grownup. I once saw a child play by himself. He was talking to the floor, to the air, to the light, to the sky, to himself, to the fictitious man who in his imagination was the hero of the world. He was pretending to be the partner of this superman and went around saving the world. He had his own flying car, his own speed bike that could turn into a robot, his own light saber, his own jet that spoke to him and obeyed his commands, his head quarters from where he operated. As I watched our young messiah answer a call on his very own voice activated computer, he jumped up and shouted out to his car. I was watching him as he strapped on his jet packs and took of to the crime scene. Then I watched him as he blasted the bad guys with his specialized ray gun with proton beam mode and then I watched as his mother took his hand and dragged him outside the room to feed him his boiled vegetables. The words I heard from her tore me into shreds. “you look crazy when you keep jumping around shouting to yourself. Don’t be such a retard, you are ten now.”

I stand by it; no man can think like a boy. If each dream that a boy had, was given shape, if each child was given a tool to make his dream a reality, if each little brat was given a chance to be heard, the world would have found ideas that would make these children take over the government, the business, the people… the world. We can not be those dream weavers but what we can do is to give the child a gate to take his imagination one step closer to reality. We take children seriously because the world is built on bricks of thoughts and all thoughts are built on ideas but all ideas start with imagination.

The track I used is called Ave Maria. It’s an old Celtic kind of a song by a composer who’s name I forget. This particular exercise really opened my mind up to possibility. I have always been a nice observer but this is the first time I put it to some creative use. What I was proud about was the fact that I actually managed to pull it off well, all by myself and I like this piece of literature I typed out with no predominant consciousness or any particular reasoning affecting my flow of thought.

Oh well, the grades should be up in a while so, more then, or before that, if I have any other ‘proud works’ to display, which I sincerely hope I do.

Weave your dreams with a strong thread and they will become reality, and this time around, for once, a reality you can possibly handle and take responsibility for.

Cheerio!

1 comment:

banthehyphen said...

oi! the celtic music!