Playback has looked back at the creative process behind today’s winningest spots. Randy Diplock, a writer at MacLaren McCann, Toronto, beams ahead several decades to reflect on the creative process of the deep ad past.

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It’s October 8th, 2035.

Two executional enablers, formerly known as a creative team, find an old book called When Advertising Tried Harder. Going against the numbers that tell them not to, they open it. Inside, they find ads done by people using a term now banned from the business. Instinct.

The book documents a time when people named Bernbach used research for fact finding rather than evaluating work. A time when this Bernbach fellow would use his God-given gift to create his ads. Amazingly, without the aid of the Quantomatic 5000tm, his ads moved people to laugh, cry and think. And despite the fact these were done so long ago that advertising wasn’t even a science then, they were much more effective than the ones we see today.

But back in the 1960s, things were so archaic that people did everything without numbers to back them up. Hockey players would deke instead of shoot because it felt right. Movies had unpredictable endings. Musicians used instruments. Artists used brushes.

Thankfully, booze still exists in 2035.

And quietly, our executional enablers put the book back and adjourn to the bar before they’re caught.

ALSO IN THIS REPORT

Winning isn’t everything. But it’s a really good thing.

Playback goes behind the boards on recent trophy-winning spots:

– BBDO puts the Doc Martens to truck touting, shows the doors to the pickup pitch, and subverts safe soup spots 29

– Y&R colors outside the emotional lines 30

– Burnett’s bait-and-switch gambit 31

– Marshall Fenn’s low-rollers gamble pays off 32

– PNMD bellies up to the international bar with milk boards 33

– Saatchi’s shadowplay and wordplay win for simplicity 35

– Gee Jeffery’s short-form meta-media features 37