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Note: This really is first draft stuff. It’s just a bunch of notes.

So, the title of the thesis as it stands now is something like “Exploring Creative Processes in the [Digital?] Advertising Agency – Client Relationship: Insights from an Ethnographic Perspective”, but this changes most days, normally several times before breakfast (Or as Tony Jordan was saying the other day on Screenwipe (S4 E3), as a writer he tries to have a regular 9-5 day: you wake up, have 14 cups of tea, play solitaire, have another cup of tea, bit more solitaire, then its 1 o’clock and you break for lunch, then you play a bit more solitaire, another cup of tea, maybe a game of hearts…another cup of tea, and then it’s 4 o’clock and you think fuck I better get some work done….etc etc etc)….

And anyway, the main themes within it at the moment are:

Something to do with creative boundaries, and Margaret Boden’s idea of bounded creativity

eg

New [and old] creative boundaries in the dACR (Digital Agency-Client Relationship) eg the role of technology in bounding creativity; Facilitative and Restrictive creative boundaries; Multi-constructed layers and processes in the ACR as multi-constructed boundaries.

The general idea that creative processes (from a sociological perspective) are bounded in various ways. These boundaries can be considered as both facilitative and restrictive, in different circumstances.

The creative process in advertising is bounded initially in the sense that it is commercially oriented and inherently designed to fulfill a specific purpose eg to increase sales of x, to drive traffic to website x, to encourage browsers of a website to order a brochure; rather than being purely artistic. This initial bounding sets the scope of the creative process to take place – as opposed to unbounded ‘blank canvas’ creativity – which is however in some way still bounded eg in fine art by culture, history etc – usually in the form of budgets, deadlines, and the client requirements (eg client brief, matching ATL creative).

Thus the context for the relationship, and the work to be completed, is defined, at least loosely (‘Define the Space’).

So a creative boundary might be Time (Rapid turnaround in digital?), Technology (Is it possible? Or eg A Minimum File Size?), Client (Closeness, honesty, interpersonal chemistry), Budget (Does a smaller budget constrain or encourage creative thinking?), Resource (Projectization, Recruitment), Concurrent/prospective projects, Knowledge, Network (eg client, media agency, partners?), understanding (mutuality of experience, sympathy?)…

…And then the idea of Exploring ideas of boundary ‘objects’ as mediators between bounded contexts (eg in developing mutual understanding) – may be gatekeepers, documents eg creative brief bridging planning/concepting/strategy and design….as well as linking in deliverables…