A Time of waste
When I was watching the Droga/Henry/Hegarty/Trott talk last week I was struck by an unsettling notion. It was during Dave Trott’s section where he said that it takes a lot of work to be brave, and if you don’t think (your work) is going to run, oftentimes you can’t be bothered. He then mentioned this mug:
Which got me thinking: how many jobs are there where the vast majority of your output is destined for the dustbin? And what are the consequences of that?
In the early part of my career I worked at an agency where several teams were put on each brief, so you knew that unless you won the client’s favour (often by doing the work that was easiest to buy rather than the work that was most original/different/exciting) your efforts would be for nothing (I explored this somewhat in last Monday’s post). Then I moved to another agency (AMV BBDO), where it was pretty much one brief, one team, so it was far more likely your work would run, partly because of the lack of competition and partly because, in those early days, the work was almost always sold first time. God, it was great working like that.
Then as more clients required more work the lottery re-emerged and the cannon fodder system gradually took over.
But what does that do to the working mentality of the ad creative? I think that in the beginning you accept that the odds are against you, particularly on a big brief where you might be up against a senior team who know how to play the game a bit more and might get their work closer to the front of the queue by fair means or foul. Then you get to the middle point of your career, where you accept as normal the fact that your work is likely to die, leaving you with a thicker skin and a greater capacity to roll with the punches. Then you might get into the senior ‘know how to play the game’ position, where your work could well be better, but you might also be able to position it in such a way that it’s more likely to be what the client chooses. But equally you could well be a bit jaded by that stage, with a couple of decades of crapshoots weighing down your poor, delicate soul.
18 years in I definitely find myself to be more sanguine about the longer odds of getting work made (partly because I’m a CD, so the work tends not to be ‘mine’, although I certainly invest myself greatly in the hoped-for success of anything I approve), but having Mr. Trott put it so bluntly does make me wonder if the effects of the expendable reality are more substantial and insidious than I realised.
Doesn’t it seem to make sense that you will put less effort into something you think has a greater chance of dying? Isn’t that just human nature? Whether you’re aware of it or not, isn’t there a likelihood that you’ll ease off the throttle just a little bit? Go to the pub just a little earlier? Live through some version of the message on the mug?
Then again, as Kate Moss so perceptively put it, that’s the job. The screenwriting book I read a couple of weeks ago was bursting at the seams with similar tales of burning the midnight oil in the production of thousands of bons mots, only for them to be read by no more than five people before dying in a slush pile somewhere. They are playing far worse odds than advertising creatives, with thousands of scripts vying to be one of the hundred or so that get made each year. They also go though the same seemingly arbitrary changes of heart that kill a piece of work they were sure was going to win that Oscar, but for them the hopes are higher, as are the stakes. On any produced film there will have been many different and discarded versions of the script that finally got made, each one 100 pages of crushed dreams. If we think we’ve got it bad, there are worse situations out there.
The same goes for novelists. How many millions of words sit rejected and unread in the trash cans of callous and tasteless agents and publishers? And musicians, with their hours of hopeful demos cast aside by unfeeling record company philistines. Lord knows how many unwanted works of art sit unseen and unloved in studios across the world.
But, y’know, you can let it get to you, or you can listen to Young MC, get back on that layout pad and tell yourself that tomorrow is indeed another day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJKqiQCZcKg
Wanger, I am touched. Thank you.
I bet Dave Trott feels really brave when he’s doing those National accident Helpline ads. You know the ones. The ones with the little plasticine dog with the bad ear and tammy leg.
Well, without knowing the situation with the client it’s impossible to be certain of what degree of bravery does or doesn’t happen in producing its work.
My guess is they ain’t Nike blowing $20m on a global blockbuster.
No one argues with Trott’s legacy. But in recent times… well, I find him similar to Oliver Stone. Do I want to take his advice about how to do movies right now? no way. But I’d love to chat with him about Platoon and Wall Street.
I say this with the utmost respect to GGT and the stuff they did there. But Trott’s agency right now is doing really bland stuff, to put it very mildly.
Like I said to Paul, I don’t think you can judge the situation without being aware of all the circumstances.
Even so-called ‘great’ agencies are producing ‘bland’ work right now. How come?
Where are they off to when they fuck off early. Sit in the pub and moan about work for longer.
So it’s like this.
Creatives are insecure little fuckers. If you take away all the excuses (the client won’t buy it, the brief is not good enough, etc) they could blame for not coming up with great work, they’ll rise to the occasion.
There are far too many things out of the control of creatives as it stands. No one cares, why should they? I don’t really blame them, it’s how you stay sane. If you care too much it’ll consume you. If you don’t care enough, the work will suffer. Find a good middle ground, and occasionally stand up for what you think could be a good idea.
After all, it’s just a job.
How many creatives would kill for an account man like that today?
http://www.bhatnaturally.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/DDB.jpg
But isn’t it a bit like being a centre forward? You’ve got to keep making the runs and taking up the scoring positions. Don’t expect to get a scoring opportunity every time. Or even one in 5 times. But every now and then you should get the chance to put the ball in the back of the net. And that’s as much as anyone can ask in any creative industry.
If you’re not prepared to make the runs any more, you’re either playing for the wrong team, or just plain playing the wrong game.
I have a nose for never gonna happen. It’s is the most acute of all my senses. I sit in meetings with people mindlessly throwing themselves into a project with the utmost enthusiasm knowing that that soon their ambitions will be crushed beneath the jackboot of client indifference. I pretend to be involved but I am not. I find their naivety obscene. It makes me question their intelligence. Sometimes my contempt for them shows itself. The more perceptive may notice but it is gone before they can respond. The mask goes back up. Work continues. The minimum is delivered and, in the end, I am always right.
You have to love the process and not the end product. The process of thinking up good ideas, regardless of whether a client is talented enough to buy them, needs be all you care about if you’re going to stay engaged with this industry. And who knows, you might be lucky enough to see the planets align and your idea gets made, as you imagined it. Which is all too rare. You can be the most talented creative in the world, but if your client’s shit the work will be shit.
@Butterbean “Don’t expect to get a scoring opportunity every time.”
For me, that sounds like we’re being paid to waste everyone’s time.
@steakandcheese The only person’s time you should worry about wasting is your own. Polly’s comment made me laugh, but I disagree with her. You only know if it’s a scoring opportunity once you’ve done the hard work.
And if it does turn out to be a waste of time, at least it’s not on you.
1) Polly, do you want to get married?!
2) Here’s the thing – our job is pointless. Being an Advertising Creative is totally irrelevant in the real world. You know the “ask your mate in the pub what their favourite ad is” thing? Try that with print ads – they’ll look at you like you’re a total cunt. No-one cares. That’s why Ben is so clever. He wrote “Instint” (I really enjoyed it btw) and he’s pretty much posted on here every day for the last 5 years. They are the things that’ve made him “famous” (in Advertising). I’m sure Ben would agree that he’d defo not be in the great position that he’s currently (and deservedly) in without the book and the blog. So what I’m getting at (albeit in a really fucking protracted way) is that being a “creative” is a nonsense. We sold out on the first day of placement. Mother or McCanns, the public don’t give a shit. In the book for Ambient? Nobody cares mate. I work at a far better agency than you and it’s made me see the holes in the industry even more than I ever did. Write a novel/sitcom/film – that’s what the world cares about. Adverts are a joke.
@ODCO: thanks.
Like Mark Denton, I think that you can produce really good work but in this day and age it’s not enough to make your name. When I was a nipper there were star teams who could generate excitement merely by deigning to work in a different agency. Now I see the ‘big’ movers and they’re either the same names from the 90s or I’ve never heard of them (either foreign or anonymous).
If you want a bigger standing in this industry, do good work by all means, but maybe you need to do something else.
If you don’t, good luck to you.
I never understood the soul-searching some ad folks seem to endure. maybe i’m just shallow. well, I know I’m shallow.
UK advertising sounds grim. Is it really that bad?
@butterbean I get your point. But while client research takes two months and planners take two weeks to read the results, creatives get two days to come up with an idea. Yet they’re still being told to “work hard” and “create an opportunity” where there isn’t one. It seems a bit unfair to pin everything on the creatives while everyone else around them gets a free pass to “churn it out and fuck off early”, don’t you think? I have nothing against “working hard” (whatever that means) as long as everyone does it, not just the people who can be easily exploited because of their insecurities and introverted nature.
It’s easy to forget that resilience is a creative quality.
Party on.
@steakandcheese
My policy has always been: Turn up with a smile on my face, put my back into it and then fuck off at a reasonable hour. When absolutely necessary, I’ll do the overtime. But generally I simply refuse. Aside from the occasional tense conversation, my employers tend to be more than happy with this arrangement.
Generally, the pricks I leave ‘working hard’ in the office until 8 every night are the same ladies and gentlemen who like to spend a healthy portion of every day bitching about the work/ briefs/ staff/ coffee/ loos. Perhaps it’s a coincidence.
I do brave work. It never runs. But I don’t bust a gut trying to get it to run. Life’s too short. I let it die and do some work the client wants. It is invariably pretty bad. Who cares? I get paid.
I was sitting in a meeting the other day thinking that everybody just needs to take a couple of weeks off work and go back to school.
for me, it’s not always about adding value to the real world or being famous. it’s about taking proud in your work and putting your all in what you do.
that was my MO when i was washing cars or loading delivery trucks and it’s my MO right now.
sure, it gets frustrating. but when i think about about washing cars or loading trucks, it’s doesn’t become so bad.
w/that i agree w/nobby. enjoy the process and just hope good works come out of it. if not, then blame the CD. works for me!
Good post Ben, I started writing a longer reply, but it got too long, so made it into a post:
http://sellsellblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/are-ad-agencies-wasting-talent.html
[…] Sell! Sell! Ben Kay’s latest blog post is interesting. You should have a read if you haven’t already. Loosely, it’s about the […]
I don’t work in this area/at this level, so this is a genuine question: do ideas get recycled?
As far as I can see, if you’re rejecting ten decent ideas for every one that runs, you’re building a stockpile of viable ideas that you might as well go back to.
In fact, I always think that about ads that HAVE run. If people aren’t paying that much attention, and the creative is still relevant, why not just return to a great ad from a while ago? I guess it’s pretty obvious why agencies would not favour that approach, but still – is new always better?
Keep up the great blogging.
Shut up me!
As Janis Joplin said: You are what you settle for.
I’ve noticed, mostly amongst our clients but also starting to creep into agencies, an unwillingness to think or work at an idea. I wonder if this is evidence of a wider malaise. An inability to read subtexts which leads to very literal work, work that relies on execution to lift it instead of strategy, insight or ideas. I know our job is to communicate simply, but brave work by its very nature is challenging and demands an engagement from the viewer. Its a strange contradiction that we talk about engagement and conversations but end up with the lowest common denominator served up to people as though they’re thick.
There is still talent in our industry. Talent that was responsible for brave work in the past. So something else has changed. Whilst we were staring out of the window thinking the morons took over. We just have to think twice as hard to take it back.
Yes, as a creative you do a lot of ‘wasted’ work. Especially compared with, say, a bricklayer – every single brick he lays, actually goes into the wall.
But I hope I might be able to cheer a few people up by mentioning that this is also true in many other professions.
Examples: Investment banking (most deals you pitch don’t happen), architecture (most designs don’t get built), music (most tracks don’t get released), and product design (most prototypes never become real).
Or you could listen to Stalley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX1rVQnVWcg
Isn’t he good?