For years the idea that a techie might be in any way creative was seen as ludicrous – how could these incommunicative, sweaty, badly dressed misfits ever think outside the box, reach the blue sky, or get anything in a row except 1’s and 0’s?
It may have been ok to think this of techies a while ago, but only in the same way as not so long ago it was ok to think that computers would only ever be used commercially.
In the same way that the house-sized, punch-card reading, inaccessible, lumbering mainframe computer of the 70’s and 80’s was replaced by something the size of a shoebox that handles hundreds of applications and processes, so the techie of old changed, and these changes are connected.
The drivers for this change were microchip size decreasing whilst their power increased, coupled with the growth of electronic communications leading to the internet. This combination allowed the computer to become personal, and in so doing enabled the population to become computer literate.
With everyone having a computer and an internet connection the advertisers jumped on the medium, so we then got digital marketing – and this is where we see the rise of the Creative Technologist.
Suddenly there was a need for a techie that watched adverts, understood them, had brand affiliations, had a passion for brands and a passion for media, and could talk to clients and teams about these new digital technologies that were and still are emerging.
The old misfit techie nerd was obsolete.
In the world of a digital marketing agency, Creative Technologists:
• are a new breed of techie, not part of the old stereotype
• are not from software houses
• understand the creative process
• are highly creative themselves
• work with, and input to the creative teams during concepting
• make things happen by being creative with technology
• are not left until the end of the project to “just build it”
These people bring much more to your project or campaign than an old techie – they have ideas, they can enhance ideas, they know the technologies, APIs, and trends, and they can communicate and deliver them all.
If you’re in the digital space and you only ever use or see your techies in the latest stages of a project then you’re not using your tech resource to its full potential, and you’re probably missing out on a wealth of ideas and solutions that could make your campaign better, more efficient and more likely to win awards.
Of course, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and interestingly this migration of techies into creative thinking and understanding has seen a movement of non-techies into the technology world. We now see account managers that understand the architecture of solutions we build, and designers that are happy using HTML and Actionscript.
Long may that continue, and long live the Creative Technologist.
About the Author:
Name: Alex Matthews
Bio: Working in the digital world for the past 15 years or so, including a short time at the Met. Office, now Technical Director at Dare
Location: London, UK
Company:
I definitely learned about virtually all of this, but with that said, I still believed it had been beneficial. Very good blog!