T h e I m p a c t o f T e c h n o l o g y At the same time, the new media, especially social media, are offering forward-looking creatives new opportunities for unique and novel solutions. One of them recently created an animated conversation between two four-story-tall electronic billboards on facing buildings in downtown Tokyo. Through these, people could tweet (send text or photos), responding to cues on the billboards, and get rewards. Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook and Linkedln also offer new creative opportunities. This means that 21st-century creative teams must be better equipped to think of how ideas can be expressed across a variety of media platforms. The creative challenge to contemporary agencies is how to find individuals and assemble teams with a wide range of expertise across all channels of communication. Production, on the other hand, requires the exact opposite. Rather than a general knowledge across media platforms, production managers must be expert at dealing with the detailed processes of each medium, each of which has its own unique challenges. Projects that require cross-coordination of all media today are the rule rather than the exception, and require an even higher level of expertise to coordinate. The overall result is that creative professionals must undergo greater media training—just as they would learn letterpress or Adobe InDesign—and spend countless hours staying abreast of current technologies. Without this discipline and education, they will be unprepared to approach a media-neutral creative process. In sum, what remains the same is that creative professionals must rely on their conceptual skill. What changes is the method of execution. Technology is having a dramatic impact on nearly every agency function: research and writing, design, information architecture, delivery (eg, digital channels— ACKNOWLEDGMENT With special thanks to Rafael Lena Vice President, Group Copy Supervisor, Draft FCB. 95
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