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Bona tarda, Good afternoon
It's quite hot here, do you mind If I take my jacket off?
If in one year from now someone asks you If Lluis Bassat tooks his jacket off, before his speach...
probably most of you will not remember it, but...
If I ask you again "Do you mind If I take my jacket off?" and you don't mind...
and I do like that....
very probably you will remember, that I took my jacket off.
That is the big difference between "Great advertising" and "Grey advertising"
I'm going to talk to you about creativity
but let me start showing to you,
what and how I became part of this world.
When I was twelve years old, my parents took me to a movie theater
and I saw a film called "Thirteen by the dozen".
In this film, the protagonist was a father of twelve children
and he used to work in one car company
and he decided to use in his house the same systems
as he used at the car company
in order to improve, not only the education of their children
but also the effectivity of all decissions they were taking at home.
Let me show the few seconds that change my life
... and in these experiments, large or small, mather was always at his side a partner in every enterprise.
- Stop. How long was that? - Seven seconds. - Good. Now we'll do it the other way.
- Ready? - Go
- That was better... only five and a half seconds.
This man was challenging everything in his home, even the way that he uses his vest.
Doing in a normal way, from the top to the bottom, took him seven seconds...
from the bottom to the top, a strange way of using their vest, only five seconds and a half.
That day, and I was twelve years old, I decided to challenge everyhing that was done in my home
I used to asked my mother...
"why are you doing things like that?" and her answer was always...
"because my mother did like that"
To me, that was not the right answer.
I would like to try to define creativity.
In order to do that, I will use some images.
Let me show you the first one.
At 1964 a crazy man called *** Fosbury at the Olympic Games of Mexico decided "to do it" in a very different way
Instead of jumping like everybody else, he jumped backwards
I was watching those games and I felt....
"this man is going to break his back"... but he didn't
And not only he didn't break his back, but he jump higher than anybody else!!!
Let's see it
You will imagine that he jumped backwards... and he did!!
And to me, that is a fantastic example of what creativity is
Because he did three things that are crucial in creativity:
the first one, he did something original, different....
Creativity is doing something original
and he did: he jumped backwards!!
But If doing something different he could jump only half a meter,
he would be remembered as that strange, extravagant jump athlete in Mexico.
The second condition is...
... to do it better
To do it differently and better.
And he did it better, because he jumped higher than anybody else
and won the gold medal.
But he could do that because an excepcional condition of his body...
and that will be remembered as the exception... no, no.
He was a normal person,
and everybody else that had to jumped after him,
in order to arrive to his high,
had to jump like him
So, his way of doing, his new way of doing, became the standard.
The normal way of doing.
Do something different.
Do it better.
And convert that way of doing in the standard, in the normal way of doing from that day on.
Three years before of the Olympic Games,
the major of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall,
called me and asked to pitch for the opening and closing ceremonies,
and I said....
"Pasqual, no. Thank you very much. I have seen one olympic ceremony and was awful.
I can do the advertising for the Olympic , If you want"
And he answer in a very clever way...
"No. I am not going to do advertising for the Olympic Games,
but you can do a ceremony that can change the image of Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain"
So he persuade me with that idea,
and I decided to pitch for the opening and closing ceremonies,
putting all my effort converting those three hours and a half,
in a three hours and a half commercial for Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain
One famous person of the show-business told me that in any show
"If there is no risk, there is no emotion"
So we decided to take a risk, in the most important moment of the ceremony...
... to light the torch with an arch and an arrow!!
Buff!!! When I have to accept the idea,
and I accepted,
I said "OK, we will work on that idea,
but I want to see the archer to launch the arrow one thousand times
and succeed the one thousand times"
I cannot imagine that he doesn't succeed.
It would be a disaster.
It would be a very bad image for Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain
So we rehearsal one thousand times and we did.
You are going to see those few moments.
This short moments of the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games.
You will see after that, that used to be very famous singers.
At that time, in 1992, Spain didn't have a worldwide famous singer
(maybe Julio Iglesias, that was it)
and then I thought,
"How can I put music on that ceremony?"
I want to show we are a very good country.
We have a very good musicians,
and suddenly,
I realize that maybe not in pop-music,
but in Opera we had great singers:
Placido Domingo, Montserrat Caballe, Jose Carreras,
Jaume Aragall, Jose Pons, Teresa de Berganza...
so, for the first time in history,
we did Opera in one opening ceremony
Let's see the arch, the arrow and the singers
Creativiy in advertising is infinit.
You can do thousands of different ways to sell a product,
or to build a brand
but in fact, there are no more than twenty basic creative paths
I am going to show you six this afternoon.
The six that I consider probably the most important ones.
... and the first one is the one you just saw
Popular people, famous people: Famous Testimonial
A famous testimonial gives you a lot more...
You remember much more the campaign, if the campaign uses a famous testimonial, that if you don't.
The proof is that twenty-two years ago,
the government of Catalonia asks me to make a campaign
to convince young people not to smoke, or to stop smoking.
A few months before Johan Cruyff,
the famous football player and coach of the Barcelona football team,
had a heart-attack because of his habit of tobacco, smoking tobacco.
I asked him to do the campaign for us, and he accepted
And I asked him to say exactly that
"I am Johann Cruyff,
I had to vices in my life:
Smoking and playing football...
Football has given me everything in my life.
And smoke, almost kills me".
That's the commercial
Everytime a journalist interviews me,
I know that one of the questions is going to be...
"what do you think about sex in advertising?"
and my answer is always the same...
"you can use sex badly, for instance, if you put almost nude girl on the hood of a car,
is a bad idea, because very probably the people will look at the girl and not at the car...
and you are trying to sell the car"
But sex can be used in a very clever way
because it is something so common, so normal,
In the civilization, is something that we do often
and millions of people are familiar with sex.
So sex, is a good creative path,
because is a good thing for the human being.
But, you have to use very carefully and with some intelligence
One commercial
As I said, sex is something used many, may times for many, many brands.
Specially in perfumery and other things that had make a relation, a seduction between two people.
That's the second creative path, that is (really) very useful
... what else...
Mies van de Rohe said "In architecture, less is more"
I say, "in advertising also, less is more"
When I had to make a campaign for the lottery
I saw that most of the commercials of the world,
(that) were showing very rich people with plenty of jewelry, cars, girls, big cigars...
and I thought, we have to find another idea to sell the lottery.
And I found another very simple idea to tell people that If they won the lottery,
something very good will happen to them.
One commercial
It saids "you will never listen it again, If you win the lottery"
Is what everybody wants, in fact,
not to have to wake up in the morning.
So, that is to be rich, not to have to wake up in the morning...
In fact, creativity as I said you before is...
Doing something different,
Better and
Convert this new way of doing in the standards and the new way
Thank you very much