Ciro Sarmiento of Lapiz: More than 80 percent of the advertising we see every day is not creative

Ciro Sarmiento, creative director at Lapiz, had some challenging opinions for PRODU at the conference that AHAA organized together with FIAP and Circulo Creativo, to which he was invited to serve on the FIAP jury in the Radio category.As a jury member, Sarmiento believes that in any ad an agency enters, creativity ought to go hand in hand with effectiveness. “It makes no sense to do creativity just for festivals” he said.“More than 80 percent of the advertising we see every day is not creative. It’s that other, smaller percentage that motivates us and keeps us working late. I think creativity is inherent in humanity. You can’t be a good ad man without being creative, you can’t even be a human being” he said.Comparing Latin American and U.S. Hispanic creativity, Sarmiento said the only difference is basically geographic. “I come from a Latin American school where the idea comes first, the rest is geography and should not influence the quality of the product, much less if we come from the same background” he said.As for the situation that radio faces as a traditional medium amid the emerging new platforms, the creative believes that “after print, radio is the oldest. The biggest challenge for radio is the segmentation of the medium as such. Traditional radio has less and less reach, people no longer listen to it at home or in the office. We’re in the era of radio streaming”.