IPA President and DCM CEO Want Advertising’s “North Star” of Creativity Reframed as a Core Business

Amid a tightening up in the advertising industry due to budget cuts and redundancies, the Digital Cinema Media (DCM) and Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) hosted the Greatest Ad Show in London to celebrate creativity and highlight “advertising’s North Star”.

During the inaugural The Greatest Ad Show, the president of the IPA, Karen Martin, and Digital Cinema Media (DCM) chief executive officer, Karen Stacey, spoke about the importance of “reframing creativity as a core business”.

The DCM launched the Greatest Ad Show in partnership with IPA president Karen Martin, who is also the chief executive officer of the creative agency BBH.

This comes as the advertising industry is at a tipping point. The IPA Consensus 2024 has found that employee turnover is decreasing, while redundancies increased from 4.9% in 2023 to 12.1% in 2024. This is impacting 26,787 employees in the UK working in the creative industry.

In this year’s first quarter, marketing budgets declined for the first time in four years by a net balance of -4.8% of firms cut, according to the IPA’s Q1 Bellwether Report. Although budgets appear to have recovered slightly in the Q2 report, with a net balance of plus 1.9%, the industry remains tense.

The event highlighted the industry’s value to British culture and the UK economy, showcasing impactful British advertising and hosting keynote speakers and a panel.

At the event at Picturehouse Central in London, Karen Martin stated that the advertising industry is at a moment of “recalibration”. She added, “We have to be bold if we’re to redefine the value of human creativity to celebrate the most creative work, ideas and all our brilliant people to lead the conversation on craft and integrity and to shout about the commercial value of creativity.”

Karen Stacey also called creativity “advertising’s North Star”, adding, “We will get there with great creative work made by the incredible experts and talent found across our industry.”

During a keynote, BBH global chief creative officer Alex Grieve and Lucky Generals CCO Shelly Smoler explored how to futureproof creativity amid a tightening up in the industry due to artificial intelligence. Alex said, “We’re on the verge of a creative revolution, and it’s natural to find that scary. However, instead of craving safety, creativity should be about embracing doubt and breaking free of formulas.”

On the same note, the director of marketing and digital at Audi, Tony Moore, gave a keynote on how to stand out when there is a “sea of sameness”. He predicted that artificial intelligence will make this “even worse”, calling sameness the ultimate enemy. Four things to counteract this are to “use artificial intelligence against itself, make sure we’re out running it, aiming for unpredictably human in terms of all of our ideas and stay true to our strengths.”