Is there a 2.0 creativity sap?

I was looking for comedic inspiration on YouTube last night and it struck me that it could be renamed CatShow.com. The 'most viewed' tab is always chock full of people doing stupid things with their cats at home. Or clips from the news. In other words, boring, uncreative videos.

I'm guilty, too. I put up a video last year of my cat playing fetch to show off his skeelz to my parents back in the US. Admission made.

But this brought me to ponder the question - now that 2.0 has been around for awhile, are we starting to experience a creativity sap? Do web-philes only have so many creative ideas in them, and have already used them up during the first few years of the 2.0 revolution? I feel as if I haven't seen many creative bits of content lately on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. But I'm only talking about content, not about startup business ideas, where creativity has abounded in recent months, potentially as people have lost their 'real' jobs and gone off to start the company they've spent years imagining. One great source of this type of inspiration is KillerStartups.

I know that in PR, when things get really busy and I'm asked to churn out sometimes ridiculous amounts of content in the form of snappy, sharp writing, in short spaces of time, my 'snappiness' gets seriously sapped.

Or maybe it's just the winter doldrums.

If I'm wrong, please prove it to me by posting comments of the most creative content you've seen in awhile. Would love to see it. Would love to LMAO at something today.

Advertising for the age we live in

I've seen two really creative new ads this week which do a great job of tapping into the times, in their own ways. I always look forward to January when the advertising industry turns over; always a fun time of year for the observant media consumer, but now, as we're facing our most challenging times, it's interesting to see how advertisers are reflecting our global fears, our struggles and our loss in confidence through ads.

And so the creativity abounds. Veet, whose tagline is 'World's number one depilatory products' nailed perhaps the best media placement imaginable with its 'Goodbye Bush' ad in the Daily Telegraph Australia on Inauguration Day. It captured the feeling of that day perfectly, through humour.

Another new ad which isn't humorous at all, but extremely powerful, was created for AARP - a huge American organisation dedicated to improving the lives of people aged 50+. The video ad must be watched in its entirety to get the message. It's been viewed more than a million times on YouTube and in the past day already has received 100k more views. It's about the "Lost Generation" and how young people feel about our role in changing these challenging times. It fits in perfectly with Obama's messages. I'll say no more as I can't capture it in words - this one's a must see.

One remarkable thing about these ads is that through digital sharing tools, Twitter, YouTube and email, the audience balloons, at exactly the moment it should be viewed rather than months or years later. How can advertisers capture this digital impact? Unfortunately the measurement tools of the advertising industry continue to be a real stumbling block - the technology has evolved much faster than the ways in which we measure impact.