The Stable has been running a series, Make Adland Greater, the slogan stolen unapologetically from the only thing that Trump has done well. It borrows, also without shame or apology, from the attention that the US election race is getting.

Johan Gustafsson, art director and partner at Differ Agency, has another campaign, one that is a side-step from Make Adland Greater, but also more important.

It’s The communicator’s checklist for creating a better world. Here it is:

Last year the global ad spending reached $733 billion. Most of it encourages unsustainable consumption.

With six of nine planetary boundaries crossed, you would think not making the planet uninhabitable for future generations would be prioritised by advertisers and ad agencies. But aside from the occasional virtue signalling, it’s business as usual.

A new type of sincerity about how the communications industry approaches the work is needed.

For the benefit of the confused, here’s a 7-step checklist on how to create a better world with creativity.

1. Are you taking actions that help solve the problem instead of just messaging about it?

Talk is cheap, why not try to solve the problem instead? Once you start thinking like this there is no way back.

2. Are you solving the right problem?

Don’t solve the wrong problem. We don’t have time for misguided efforts or low ambitions. Instead of making less of something harmful, make something good that can replace it.

3. Are you creating ideas that can be scaled?

We’re in a hurry. If you create the right solution, it needs to be scaled fast. If it can’t, ditch it.

4. Are you creating a solution with longevity?

Don’t be short-sighted. If your campaign is successful, are you and the client sincere about continuing the initiative beyond the awards circuit?

The current way of working in Adland is creating new ideas for the client every year, even if you have found the right idea that needs to be scaled already. This increasingly dated state is fuelled by the awards and trade media, always hungry for the new. Not interested in existing solutions gaining traction. 

There is something pubertal and undeveloped about creativity that is done mainly for short-term kicks. Why not think beyond campaigns and the marketing mix? Using your skills to promote sustainability is surely the most grown-up, long-term and responsible thing you can do. 

5. Are you proactive?

Don’t wait for the brief. Be proactive till it hurts. Start creating the needed solutions for existing and future clients today. It’s not only good for the planet, it also makes your CFO happier.

6. Does the idea use the full potential of your creativity?

Just because you work at an ad agency you shouldn’t limit yourself to solving the problems of marketing managers. As Rory Sutherland says, “One of the problems with ad agencies is that, much like koalas who only eat eucalyptus leaves, they only eat marketing budgets.” Your creativity, if you are any good, has the potential to solve almost any problem.

7. Remember how value creation works?

The solutions to many of our sustainability problems don’t lie in present technology or future inventions but in our minds. Why create new ”sustainable” gadgets from the planet’s limited resources when we can be more sustainable just by questioning how we think? Since value is created in the mind and not in a factory the quality of life doesn’t need to be inferior.

There you are. Now get to work.

Johan Gustafsson is art director and partner at Differ Agency and co-creator of The World’s Ugliest Lawn and Embodied Carbon Declared.

Cover image: Mathias Reding