For Goodness Sake

Steve Vranakis of Google’s Creative Lab tells Austyn Allison how creatives can make “a dent in the universe”.

- Austyn Allison

Creatives are, by their nature, the right people to make the world better.That was the premise of Steve Vranakis’ address to the Dubai Lynx, when he spoke about “creative activism”. When Campaign quizzes the executive creative director of Google’s Creative Lab after his talk, he repeats this assertion.

“I feel we are sort of best positioned to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems,” he says. “The theme of my talk is: I believe that we are much more powerful than we think we are – we need to give ourselves more credit – and that we are at the most very basic natural-born problem-solvers.”

The industry spends most of its days earning a crust by solving challenges for brands, he says. “But by the same token we can apply that thinking to tackling some of the world’s biggest problems, whether they are social, economic or environmental.”

Although such altruism has been around for a while, now it is coming more into the spotlight, says Vranakis, who maintains doing good can be more than corporate social responsibility. CSR was seen as “that thing on the side that you had to do to make it look like you were making some sort of a contribution positively”.

“What’s happening now,” he adds, “Is that brands are seeing it as much more integral to their business. They are seeing the new millennial generation and mindset who actually care that brands are doing these type of things.”