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Ben Malbon of BBHLabs (follow ‘em!) posted something of a manifesto on all the things we are doing WRONG — or at least, could be doing better — in creative digital communication. Worth a read.

I read with interest point eight, ‘Not invented here’: “We’re frequently seduced by the temptation to want to invent from scratch rather than borrow (&, critically, credit) with pride.” — as in, why reinvent when the tools we already have work perfectly well?? Ah, Comrade Malbon, I agree — and I went on and on about it my 20 March rant Fish where the fishes are.

There is an element of the ego to this game that we need to, well, defenestrate. This is NEW media. The old rules, they don’t apply so much. In fact, to get just a teensy bit tangental about the whole thing… We need a Warhol, a visionary doer just the other side of McCrazy to tip the old paradigms that we still use (‘I must invent’ and ‘only marketers market’ and ‘there is a direct correlation between unique and valuable’ and ‘I must keep processes secret, otherwise they could copy me!’) on their greasy little heads and help us see what our new toys are capable of.*

But better than hoping this will happen, I would like to hope that WE do it — that the second coming is a coming-together of the best and brightest in the industry, an iterative approach to creative revolution. Anyway, who wants to be saved when you can save yourself and tweet/blog/blab about it to everyone afterwards?

A further comment along the how-we-can-do-better lines comes from Made By Many’s Tim Malbon (relation? could it be?!), in his blog post How to be better at digital, or interactive, or new media or whatever it’s called….There may be a Malbonian mind-meld at work here, with these points supporting and complementing and further developing the the BBH Labs piece, and then back again, but there’s also a different, more web-orientated perspective at work. Again, it is uncommon sense and worth listening to.

Final (ha!) word on the subject: we’re all learning together on this one. We have a lot to learn. But we are making strides — indeed, debate like this is hugely useful — and we will likely make even greater strides in the near future, media messiah or no.

*I realise this would enable the rise of a whole race of new media Damien Hirsts, but such is the price of progress.