Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur.

If any of you read the Mad Men post, reached the end, clicked on the Josh Weltman link and read to the end of that, you would have seen the following quote:

“…any edge that you have that makes people have more confidence in your idea tends to help its survival. So if you’re staying ‘til 10:30 and everyone else has left at 9pm, it helps. It’s just the way a meritocracy works. You can talk about whether it should or shouldn’t be that way, but we’re dealing with a place where it’s all subjective opinion. Like what you’re wearing. If it makes the CD believe in your idea more, that’s the world we’re living in. If what we want is something that’s more balanced, then we can’t live in a place that is so subjective. Most other careers have more of a balance of the subjectivity and objectivity of the work. And there’s not much of that in creative departments.”

I love it when someone articulates that which we all know but rarely speak of.

Clothes matter.

The hours you keep matter.

The music references you drop into a pre-prod matter.

Should they matter? Should anything matter beyond the work? Is it kind of sad that those kind of things have a bearing on something that you could argue to be broadly unrelated?

You can answer those questions however you want, but the answers are immaterial. We all know that every single thing a person does creates an impression of them that affects the way you assess all other aspects of what they do.

Joe’s into football? Joe is now a little more cool/sad/boring/everyman-ish etc.

Joe likes West Brom? Joe has become quirkier/more down to earth/lamer etc.

Joe used to play for West Brom under 18s? Joe is cool/odd/now wasting his life etc.

The extent to which that impression changes how much you do or don’t like someone’s work is totally unpredictable/variable/flexible. We all know it happens so we all play the game, whether consciously or otherwise. So wear those clothes, put those posters up in your office, drop those cool references. It might help you sell an ad, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be judged more on your ability to do your job.

Or maybe not.