Martin Bihl is the Executive Creative Director at LevLane \u2013 an advertising agency in Philadelphia and has worked with national and local clients for a number of categories and in his spare time, he runs a site called the-agency-review.com where he reviews books on advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interview with the 2023 MUSE Creative Awards Winner \u2013 Martin Bihl<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q1. Please give us a brief bio of yourself and your creative background.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was born on a small island off the coast of America. My father and grandfather were in advertising. My writing has appeared in several publications as diverse as McSweeneys, Advertising Age, MORE, New York Magazine, Adweek and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q2. What made you become\/why did you choose to become a creative?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It turns out I\u2019m not really capable of doing anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q3. Tell us more about your business\/company, job profile, and what you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m the Executive Creative Director at LevLane, an advertising agency in Philadelphia. We have national and local clients in a variety of categories \u2013 hospitals, banking, insurance, auto, senior living. Also, I run a site called the-agency-review.com which reviews books relevant to advertising. And since I believe that advertising is where culture and commerce collide, that pretty much covers all books. From time to time I teach advertising at universities. Once in a while I sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q4. What does \u201ccreativity\u201d mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Creativity has to do with inventing something that doesn\u2019t exist to solve a problem that does. Could be an idea, could be a process, could be a painting, could be an advertisement, could be a joke, could be a cake. It could be anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q5. To you, what makes a \u201ccreative\u201d idea and\/or design?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lots of things I suppose but the two that come to mind are surprise and risk. If a thing doesn\u2019t surprise you, it\u2019s probably not solving the problem in a new, innovative and, dare I say it, \u201ccreative\u201d way. It\u2019s probably solving it in a slight variation of the ways people have tried to inadequately solve it in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One sees a lot of examples of this because they\u2019re comforting, and often, I suppose, \u201ccomfort\u201d feels like a solution to a problem, because a problem by definition involves some form of stress. But it\u2019s not. It\u2019s like you break your wrist and so you drink a tremendous amount of whiskey until you can\u2019t feel the pain any more. You didn\u2019t fix the broken wrist, but it doesn\u2019t hurt so, hey, problem solved right? (Full disclosure \u2013 I am not projecting this example from my own life. Probably). Me, I\u2019d rather fix the wrist than just anesthetize the pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSurprise\u201d of course is imbued with \u201crisk\u201d. And risk has a lot to do with vulnerability and re-contextualizing and thinking about things in ways that others are telling you are wrong or inappropriate, and telling people that they\u2019re thinking about things the wrong way, and\u2026 oh man, no wonder this stuff is so hard\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Martin Bihl is the Executive Creative Director at LevLane \u2013 an advertising agency in Philadelphia and has worked with national and local clients for a number [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":19930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[372],"tags":[9,12,382],"yoast_head":"\n