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Who Killed Creativity?
Something happened to advertising.
It got bigger. Richer. More sophisticated. More measurable. More efficient.
But did it get better?
For the return of The Fuel Podcast, Keith Smith abandons the traditional business interview and turns investigator in a 48-minute documentary examining what happened to creativity in advertising, and who’s responsible.
Inspired by Steve Harrison’s provocative book Adland’s Progressive Gaze, Who Killed Creativity? assembles the witnesses, examines the evidence and lines up the suspects.
Did advertising lose sight of its original purpose: selling?
Did corporate short-termism and procurement turn creative ideas into commodities?
Did HR professionalise the industry while inadvertently filtering out some of the unconventional talent that once made it extraordinary?
Did purpose and virtue signalling replace persuasion?
Did data make advertising smarter, or simply more cautious?
And now, having spent decades pursuing efficiency, is the industry about to make its most consequential trade yet: human creativity for artificial intelligence?
Featuring advertising legend Dave Trott, author and creative director Steve Harrison, psychologist Rachel Laws, BLUP founder and creative director Dines, former Saatchi & Saatchi and GGT advertising executive Simon Derungs, and Paul Grubb.
This isn’t a nostalgia trip. And it isn’t an argument for returning advertising to some imaginary golden age.
It’s an investigation into how an industry built on extraordinary ideas became increasingly concerned with process, measurement and efficiency, and whether the pursuit of all three has become a Pyrrhic victory.
Because perhaps there isn’t one murderer in this story.
Perhaps this is Murder on the Orient Express.
Maybe we all had a hand on the knife.
The Fuel Podcast: Who Killed Creativity?
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