"What the fu©k are we doing, man?"

You can’t go home after experiencing something like that and write a long copy ad for an insurance company expecting to be satisfied – Pandora’s box has been opened, and if you’re not at least trying to create and add to the playlist of cool sh!t you see there then you’ve got to ask yourself, what the fu©k are you doing, man?

Well, I’ve been making sh!t, sometimes I make a lot of sh!t, sh!t and sometimes I make okay sh!t. The okay sh!t usually ends up on my office walls to remind me that I can also add to the playlist of cool sh!t made by the inspiring individuals we all look up to. And in between it all when I’m not making sh!t, I sit around sulky, asking myself, “what the fu©k are you doing, man?"

The work has changed. And not in a good way. We’ve started taking ourselves too seriously. We answer briefs instead of ignoring them. We give our clients exactly what they want instead of what they could have never imagined. We easily throw our work into research and develop clutter that consumers expect to see and we’re okay with it all. Account management protects the clients and manages the creative, it should be the other way around. Deadlines tighten and the respect, desire and love for really, really good, strong creative work just doesn’t seem to be there anymore.

What’s worse is that we’ve started to specialise our creativity, give it a formula, a method and with it, titles like content creator and head of social engagement. “Creativity isn’t a department” – I saw this tagged on a wall in an independent ad agency in Kenya and thought it to be true. You know, when the television was invented agencies didn’t form breakaway TV-only specialised agencies called "Aqua On Television" and do their own thing, instead they embraced the new medium and then mastered it. We’re outsourcing creativity when we have copywriters and art directors in our agencies that are talented enough to make great content for all the mediums at their disposal. Because these people know that content is more than just a linked canvas ad that links to YouTube, that links to your Instagram account, they know that sometimes content is as simple as a beautifully art-directed print ad for a pair of Diesel jeans on a billboard, or a well-crafted radio ad to celebrate genius men with simple inventions. They know that it’s everything insightful and everything relatable in an ad. They know that ultimately, the big idea is king and given half the chance, they can apply that thinking to the ever-growing and exciting medium known as online advertising, just like they do in other mediums.

We’ve all got to take a long, hard look at the industry and ask ourselves… what the fu©k are we doing, man?

I like the simplicity of it. I’d like to see it brought to life as an app that plugs into other instant messaging apps and acts as a moral compass/conscience of the user because that will actually change behaviour.

Go be inspired and when you’re done, have a drink at the Gutter Bar for me, please.

This month marks my one-year anniversary at Ogilvy Cape Town. It’s a place where I’m hoping to learn, grow and stay inspired but most importantly, it’s a place where I’m surrounded by a very strange bunch of human beings, each very different and weird and smelly. Some are short and ugly, others look like mutated beasts from a radiation spill – one thing that's true about them though is, you won’t find ’em sitting around asking themselves, “what the fu©k are you doing, man?” too often.

Here's wishing this year’s winners, Amri Botha and Carina Coetzee all of the best competing in the Cannes Young Lions competition. Keep an eye on our Cannes Lions special section for all the latest updates.