At the end of the eighties, in the small world of advertising it began to become clear that it was not enough for brands to sing their virtues in a more or less rational and bureaucratic way. The old recipes no longer worked so well. In order to differentiate ourselves in a world of increasingly undifferentiated products, the need for what we call “creativity” began to emerge, the attempt for advertisements to have something that would make them different, unsuspected, and capable of generating a more emotional affinity than rational. This creativity was developed by people, teams, who, led by a Creative Director, managed to build messages that increased the attractiveness of the brands.
Progressively, Creative Directors who built teams and created campaigns with that something more began to be the object of covetousness on the part of advertising agencies, which launched themselves after them in an inflationary battle. First the most daring, most attractive to professionals. Then the large groups, with huge budgets, that offered undeniable salaries.
The showcase in which the new geniuses competed were the advertising festivals, and especially the festival of festivals: Cannes. In the past, these events were just a review of the best of the year, where publicists got together to share work and ideas, and show off their awards. But starting in the nineties its prestige skyrocketed. They became the canon, the academy. Whoever succeeded, as a professional, had their career assured. And the agency that managed to stand out won the best clients. There the excellent was distinguished from the mediocre. Too much at stake.
What happened is what usually happens. Festivals became an insurmountable unifying force. The ads that appealed to a cosmopolitan and multilingual jury tended to be increasingly similar: based on global and generic ideas, inscribed in a dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, and possibly easy to understand without the need for translation. The anxiety was so great that advertisements were created exclusively to win prizes. The world of advertising became false and homogeneous. Almost everything looked very similar.
Those looking to do different work began to be interested in learning from agencies that broke away from that irresistible gravitational pull. Those who did not compete in Cannes, or those who competed with a personal work, unrelated to fashion, without the apparent will to succeed. The different.
These powerful uniforming forces are common. I think, for example, of the so-called digital transformation, which has trivialized entire market categories, making all products the same, because they all use the same tools. Or lists of the best, like Parker's in the world of wine, which inevitably generate homogeneous styles.
Or the Michelin stars…
Something similar to what happened in advertising has happened in the kitchen, the almost dictatorial rise of creativity since the El Bulli revolution. And the creation of a star system that has increasingly greater economic significance.
That has also obviously caused uniformity.
I don't think I was the only one who felt something like a strange disappointment on the happy day when Luis Lera and his team finally got the much-deserved star. The absence of him in the guide enrolled them in a different place, where those who walk oblivious to mandates and canons live. We thought we were different going to their house, because they were.
It is the same reason why many of us feel relief every year when the academy persists in its desire not to recognize the cuisines of Gresca, Lakasa, Tasquita, Estimar, Sacha...
Or not giving the third to Mugaritz's band of demented geniuses (if they don't deserve it, then who?).
I am not the only one who shares the fear that the effect of winning a star drags restaurants towards a certain unifying path that ends up turning a large majority of them into first cousins.
There are also many of us who have the suspicion that that star could make them change course, drag them into the crazy dynamic of aspiring to the second, of being more Michelin, of being less of them.
It may be an unfounded suspicion, because there we have Oriol Rovira, from Els Casals, who can no longer be Oriol Rovira despite having held the star for a long time. Or who for so many is the fittest chef in the country, Jordi Vilà, star in 2005, who cooks oblivious to dynamics that do not interest him, and continues to amaze us from that strange place.
There are a few rovira or jordis vilà orioles in the country (the bittores, the joseans, the aitors, the pedritos...). Too many to consider them the exceptions that prove the rule. I often share an opinion that is more that of others than mine: it is possible that the most interesting restaurants in Spain are those that have remained in that solitary and unique brilliance. The process is quite logical: Michelin has seen something and highlighted it, they have remained the same without flinching, the academy has not found reasons to justify increasing the prize, and everything is still where almost all of us want it to be.
This is an inevitably anachronistic article. I write it without knowing what happened at the Michelin Gala being held in Barcelona this Tuesday, but it will be published later. The night will grant new strange joyful disappointments, and new rare happy disappointments.
My congratulations to those who win. My infinite respect to those who continue creating new trajectories regardless of the gravity of celestial objects.
