Television may be losing its place as a primary source of inspiration for many creatives who are now looking online for ideas, new research from Adobe has revealed.
The study found that only 11% of creatives in New Zealand, and across the Tasman in Australia, seek inspiration from television advertising.
Instead, the majority find inspiration online - 41% from websites or online advertisements, 35% from social media and 38% from online creative communities.
The study found Kiwi creatives are moving with the changing face of the industry with 89% of creatives in ANZ increasingly working across multiple mediums and disciplines, remaining mindful of the need to learn new tools and techniques.
At the same time traditional measures of success such as industry awards (23%) are being replaced by feedback and views on social media (28%), with business impact (66%) and personal financial success (46%) tracking as leading success indicators for ANZ creatives.
“It is worth noting the dominant role that social media has come to play in the lives of creatives, whether that’s as a source of inspiration or an important success metric," says Paul Robson, President Asia Pacific, Adobe.
"In fact, success in the socialverse is now considered an even more important indicator of success than industry awards, showing that the industry is undergoing a sea change."
Interestingly, New Zealanders, along with Australians, don’t view mobile as a large driver of change compared to the rest of APAC.
Although 52% cite mobile as making their work accessible to a broader audience, only 33% are using mobile to capture inspiration on the go when compared to the rest of APAC (48%) as part of the creative process, and only 71% feel that mobile is transforming the face of creativity and design compared to the APAC average of 80%.
“Asia Pacific is home to half the world’s mobile devices," Robson adds. "The rise of mobile brings with it plenty of opportunities and challenges for creatives to create content across platforms and devices at a pace that matches the growing economies of the region.
"We anticipate that mobile devices will become an important part of the creative process when integrated with existing desktop workflows."
According to the study, 78% of respondents across APAC say the role of creatives is changing rapidly or very rapidly with 58% citing new technologies as the topmost catalyst for change, followed by the impact of social media (37%) and new responsibilities added to the creative function (35%).
The impact of this upheaval in the industry can be seen in the 84% of respondents who feel they will fall behind if they don’t stay current with the industry.
Read more: Tablets are not mobile devices: Adobe
Delving further into the findings, Robson says that some of the things that keep APAC creatives up at night are losing inspiration/motivation (50%), pressure to deliver more content faster than ever (47%) and not being trained sufficiently in new skills (46%).
Across the ANZ region however, financial and job security were chief concerns at 52%.
The desire to learn new things (54%), seeing their ideas brought to life (50%) and wanting to do great work (43%) were the top factors motivating creatives across the whole region with ANZ respondents (61%) feeling most strongly about producing great work.
Furthermore, APAC creatives identified app development (34%), followed by digital story-telling (12%) and web design (12%) as the skills that will be most in-demand over the next 12 months while in ANZ, graphic design was also listed as a key skill (12%).