I think that whilst the narrative can be a negative the sell is always a positive. Here is my final 10. But that might change.

Freedom & Individuality
Style, Grace & Beauty
Success
Health
Purity
Complexity & Simplicity
Progress
Trust
Quality
Power

Tell that to people who need to advertise life insurance, cars with air bags, and funeral homes. Having worked on a couple of life insurance accounts, I can assure you we want to sell death...or the fear of death...

I do not believe that you are selling death in this scenario. Or fear. Fear and death in this context are narrative scenarios. What you are selling is trust in the product.

I believe that in all cases the sell is a positive. The narrative may be a negative.

Yes fear gets you attention. That's what I mean about it being the narrative. It's the story. It's a powerful narrative.

But it is very clearly not what you are selling. What you are selling is a concept of trust.

It's really disappointing that the intellectual merit of what was said is not being debated here.

As an illustrator, I usually feel left out when I see most of these guys speak. What they are saying usually doesn't have a lot of relevance and kind of concerns me that I'm not part of the conversation. I'll admit that I didn't watch the whole video, but just a general observation.

Reminds me of the idea that there are only a certain number of basic, archetypal plots in all of literature. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

There have been some advertising takes on this: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/7-basic-types-stories-which-one-your-brand-telling-144164

This might be the kind of stuff that forms the basics of Klein's thinking, in a Chinese whispers kind of way, though I have to confess I didn't watch the video.

Edit: Links

Curious, that already looks like 16 to me (accepting that youth and old age are subsets of age)

If you read down the log you will see that I revised that list. This was as close as I could get for now:

Freedom & Individuality
Style, Grace & Beauty
Success
Health
Purity
Complexity & Simplicity
Progress
Trust
Quality
Power

What would your list comprise ?

The way I currently see this: there are the concepts which advertisers sell. These I think are always positives. I think that these are what the 10 would be all about. So my 10 (or 14 if you want) would be about trying to approach the subject headings. I am sure that you can see that where I have more than one concept on a line it is because I have not been able to reduce those elements to their lowest common denominator.

And then there are narrative concepts - e.g. the themes around which a story is told. Eg - love, friendship, fear, anger, frustration, wealth, happiness, communication, growth, family, journey, the environment etc etc. This list would be much longer. But I am going to guess that it would still reduce to maybe 20.

Whether or not we agree with Jonathan Klein it must be clear that this is an interesting, positive and useful thinking process.

Well I finally got around to seeing what the video is about. My take is this - It's basically a little presentation to the movers and shakers in the advertising industry to say "Hey, we're Getty Images, you used to use us all the time in the glory years and we're still relevant today. We need each other, so please don't leave us behind." So you take off your suit and tie and hang out with the young advertising hipsters. (who are too young to know who Princess Diana is, thank god Mr Klein explained it to them) Yes, images are important and are powerful, that's been going on for thousands of years even before the camera. The problem here is with every passing year of new technology, Getty Images is becoming more and more a thing of the past for the advertising industry. It's true, it's quite possible for almost anyone to make a great image. And thanks to the internet, you don't have to go to Getty and pay $600 (or more) for a single image for your ad campaign. More and more I see corporations turning to low cost models to get more value out of their ad dollars. Tim Hortons I recall asked their customers to submit photos of themselves holding a cup of Tim Hortons Coffee. They compiled the best images and created a commercial out of it. How many "Shoot your own commercial for our product and win $1000!" have you seen? Expect more in the future.
 
Getty Images is stuck because their old model is failing. But to turn to the new model (microstock) will open another can of worms, that there is a lot of low cost options out there like shutterstock. So now Getty is trying to sell itself as the "Great Advertising Image Guide" with the insider knowledge of "concepts". The problem is that the creative people in the advertising industry know all about the events of istock, and the corporation of Getty Images, not to mention the failed business of "istock selling logos". (they also have shutterstock accounts) The last people in the world you can try and Bulls**t are the advertising creatives because they're in the business and they know what stinks.

And the mention of the "10 concepts" in advertising is nothing more than a gimmick to make him seem like an industry insider. It has no more value to me than the "Mr. Senator, in my hand I hold a paper that contains the names of 130 communists who are in American government today!" Advertising is simply two things: A need/desire/question. And an answer/fulfillment/benefit. So in the case of the funeral home, you plant the question: "What will happen to my loved ones when I die? Will they suffer because I don't have a plan?" and then give an answer "But if you buy a prearranged funeral plan from us... no worries."

With regards to illustration in the ad industry, I would think it's mostly commissioned work for the big stuff and Getty can't address that need with stock illust. You'd be better off selling yourself for that market.

But then when he talks about "crowd sourcing" it is clear he doesn't get it. He shows really famous images that have earned a lot of money, but he doesn't know the name of the artists. He belittles "cliches" without appreciating the very hard work that goes into creating them. These images sold because they are so useful. But artists that consistently produce these images are very few. Anna makes fantastic stuff and her story is just as interesting as that of the editorial artists that he happens to know personally.

We just see the same thing again, there is no real understanding how crowdsourcing really works.

More than anything else I detected underlying resentment at Istocks disruption of getty's original market. He is trying to make the turn but the resentment is tinging the air.

To bad we can not get past this energy in our own discussion, as bunhill mentions several times there is more to discuss.