So we all know that creatives need to be creative. And last week I made the case for adding gumption to your skill set. But there’s one more ability you’ll require if you want to do well in an ad agency:

Diplomacy.

Just to be clear, diplomacy isn’t necessarily Machiavellian machinations, or smarmy charm. My dictionary tell me that it’s merely ‘skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility’.

Coming up with a great idea is one thing, but you need to know how and when to introduce it effectively, such that it gains positive acceptance, allowing it to move more smoothly through the ongoing layers of evaluation and execution.

If you bring it up in your office, accompanied by a subtle dig about your AD’s recent painful divorce, it may not get to the CD. Layer on the self-deprecation (‘You’ll probably think this is shit, but I did have this thought that could be dreadful, but… OK, I’ll just say it…’) and you might find that people see the worst in your idea before it has a chance to spread its wings . Chuck it into the room just after everyone’s agreed how great the other idea is and you might as well have wiped your bunghole with it.

(As a tip, I always found Friday mornings were best. There’s something about Friday mornings, and the way they tended to presage an informal half day, that put everyone in a better, more receptive mood.)

As in all areas of life, ad agency diplomacy could take many forms:

Laugh heartily to make someone look silly for even suggesting that thing you want to avoid (John Hegarty was known for doing this one).

Find an excellent piece of reference, or a brilliant old ad, to support your point (but say something that offsets the concern that you’re all about to steal something, like ‘Not exactly this, but something like the way the rabbit meets the frog’).

Add the words ‘to your point’ to make it seem like the whole thing was inspired by someone else in the room, bringing them onto your side.

Wait till the meeting’s over, then have a quiet chat with the real decision maker away from the ears of anyone who might piss on your idea.

Leave it till tomorrow because today’s vibe is just wrong.

Agree enthusiastically with the thing you don’t want, go to the loo, then come back pretending that you’ve suddenly come up with a great way of improving (destroying) that thing.

Get the other attendees of the meeting on your side before the meeting, so they’ll back you up in the meeting. Even the smartest CD or client can be swayed by unanimous supportive opinion.

Flatter your CD by telling them how much this ad reminds you of something great they once did.

You could try the ‘no diplomacy’ route, and in an ideal world these tactics wouldn’t be necessary, but let’s face facts: we all do this kind of thing all the time, often without even being aware of it, so why not do it at work?

Yes, Some people might actually appreciate you who presenting your work with grumpy aggression, because that might show how you’re so dedicated to the idea that you will not stand on ceremony. Good luck with that. I’ve seen it work, but not often. The vast majority of people prefer to avoid confrontation, and even if they appear politely receptive, that’s usually just a cover for some negative reactions that are coming down the pipe.

Treat the selling of your ad like any other brief: communicate its qualities in a way that will leave a positive impression.

Or go batshit crazy and cross your fingers.

Wifi almost didn’t happen.

Competitive oyster shucking.

The man who saved the world.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood roundtable.

How cheese is made:

Last week the peerless Mr. Dave Dye posted this on the socials:

Agree, 100%.

But there’s one more thing that I like to see in a student book: evidence of gumption.

My online dictionary defines it as ‘shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness’. What I’d say is that coming up with good ads will only get you so far. What also helps is to look at the circumstances to hand and make the most of them in a way that makes you stand out even further, and offers evidence of creativity beyond mere creativity.

Here are a few examples:

A team Daryl and I hired at Lunar were in the process of applying for a patent for their invention: a plate with a lip covered in a cloth material which meant it could be picked up straight from the oven without burning your fingers. They thought it would be especially good for Meals On Wheels, where elderly people might be more forgetful about heat, and plates are hot. Now, having that idea is good, but actually going through the process of making it is great. They learned a lot about manufacturing and bringing something to market, skills and knowledge that 99% of creatives will never have, but on top of that, they showed they had the ambition and drive to go the extra mile, a quality that’s essential when you want an extra hour on the grade, or a quick spec radio ad from your TV VO.

Talking of which, the team that came up with this award-winner had gumption:

As they filmed a longer, duller Nike golf ad, they noticed Tiger killing time by juggling a ball on his club. So they went over to him and asked if they could shoot him doing it. I have no idea what the other ad was.

When Tony McTear came up with this…

…the only way he could get a big enough budget for it was by selling it to each of the different national Playstation CMOs. They then put in each of their smaller piles of cash to until he had a big pile of cash, and a classic ad. Yes, it was a great creative idea, but it wouldn’t have happened without lots of lovely gumption.

Some of my jobs have just fallen into my lap, but others have required me to extend my own placement, or find out if another team were continuing theirs and stepping into the gap they left, or spend three years patiently moving metaphorical chess pieces around until the right vacancy opened up. Did I also have to be creative? Of course, but ‘shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness’ was often more valuable.

So if you’re a young team, and for some strange reason you want to impress me, produce a YouTube clip with a million views, or make an app, or create a podcast where you interview Idris Elba and Vivienne Westwood about cheese. Dave’s advice is essential, but if you all follow it you’re going to need something else to set you apart.

And if it’s any good, it’s going to take gumption.

Etsy is becoming Amazon.

The scrunchie.

The loneliness epidemic:

If you go to jail, you want to know how to get your drink on:

Interesting way to do a Kickstarter:

I was just reading this interview with recently-appointed VP of Apple, and 17-year R/GA veteran, Nick Law.

There’s a bunch of stuff in it that I’m not quite sure about, but I currently have four day jobs (at least one of which actually pays), so I’m going to concentrate on a single paragraph:

It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of more programmatic or digital advertising is bloodless. These platforms and technologies transform in the hands of creative people. Unless creative people are engaged and manipulating these things every day, they can’t create a new grammar. The grammar of Instagram Stories is not being created by agencies, it’s being created by kids. If people think technology right now is being used in a mechanical and uninteresting way, that’s because we haven’t figured out how to manipulate it. It’s all technology and we need to learn how to wield it and use its potential. When we do that, then the work will be vivid.

Programmatic advertising has existed for a couple decades now. Thousands of very smart people and billions of pounds have been cast in the direction of making it brilliant. ‘Creative people’ have been engaged with it, and have been trying to manipulate it, for about the same amount of time.

We don’t want to make shitty banner ads, but something powerful keeps dragging them down to that level. It might be lack of investment, it might be lack of interest from clients, and yes, by now it might be creative ennui. But the idea that creatives have just been picking their noses instead of trying to ‘engage’ or ‘manipulate’ seems to miss the point.

And yes, some of the ‘grammar of Instagram Stories’ is being created by kids, who have no brief other than to impress and interest their followers. Tell them to launch the new Sainsbury’s loyalty card and they might just find their grammar manipulation drying up.

Or, if they really are rocking the grammar manipulation, we could learn from them, couldn’t we? After all, advertising is rarely above a little bit of ‘borrowing’ from our betters. So are these kids really laying waste to the vagaries of Instagram Stories, or do 0.00000034 of them occasionally fluke a success?

And we’re not usually the remakers of media anyway. Was film stretched by Godard, Scorsese and Jarmusch, or DDB, BBDO and JWT? What about words? Much as I love Abbott and Bernbach they didn’t exactly compete with Amis, Vidal or Delillo. Comparing us to the people who have the whole vast canvas to play with is a little unfair, and makes the criticism less than constructive.

Beyond that, TV, press, radio and posters have been around for decades, and people still regularly fill them with crap, but then so does tech. By definition quality is rare, so the idea that we’re just waiting for a key of genius to unlock a magical box of wonder that we can all choose from is either fanciful or naive. It’s literally never happened (it partly happened once with Bernbach), so it’s not going to, no matter how well we learn to wield the potential of anything.

Good ‘voice’ ads await us, but so does a tidal wave of dull voice ads. ‘Twas ever thus, and no amount of guilting the ad industry into an alternative is going to bring one about.

The weirdness of Goop.

Webcam of the crossing at Abbey Road.

Debauchery (thanks, J)

Merman competition (thanks, J).

Llamas with hats:

Nuggets:

If you’ve been in advertising for a while you’ve probably noticed that the number of ads has proliferated:

This shows that, despite the number of advertisers halving over the last decade, the number of advertisements has increased sixfold.

Clearly this process began as digital came to the fore: one press ad or poster became many standard banners, queen banners, Instagram posts, Facebook Stories, Snapchat whatever-the-fuck-happens-on-Snapchats etc. Each TV ad became a rich media this or a preroll that, and even radio ads found new ‘leases of life’ on podcasts and Spotify.

So has the industry taken on six times as many people to handle all this extra work? No (with a little bit of yes). I think we can all agree that you don’t need a new person to make each banner, so most of the extra work has just increased the hours of each copywriter and art director, for no concomitant increase in pay (sigh). In addition, feel free to look back over those years and see if the ads have improved (spoiler alert: they haven’t). That’s because producing six times the work in the same amount of time for less pay is not a well-trodden path to larger amounts of brilliance. So to be a little more accurate, the number of shitty ads has proliferated.

Thanks for nothing, Tim Berners-Lee.

Returning to that ‘little bit of yes’: there are more people involved. The press, posters, TV and radio used to be done by a few teams working into a single CD. Now we have digital, social, experiential, SEO, global and many other kinds of CDs and creatives.

But in the interests of keeping costs down, there’s been a general policy of having them all smoosh up together, tackling briefs that are some way outside their wheelhouses because that saves money. Sure, we’re all ‘creatives’ and sure, we can all apply ourselves to producing ideas and executions in newer media (let’s face it: a banner is just a tiny digital poster and a pre-roll ad is just a short, woefully underfunded TV ad), but the barrier to entry used to be very high. When there were fewer jobs they tended to go only to the most talented and driven. Now you can find your way into the Ritz wearing ripped jeans and a baseball cap, scratching your arse and… you get the picture.

And yes, I get to use the word concomitant again: that has come with a concomitant reduction in quality. Sorry, but it has. It’s just maths. No judgement on any of the newcomers.

The real issue here comes at the CD level: with lots of disciplines involved, the person who rises to the position of CD might not be entirely qualified to do that job for every medium. And that means great TV/print CDs might not be wonderful at judging and shaping influencer-led social takedowns that dovetail into a global experiential airline tie-in. But equally an influencer-led-social-takedown-that-dovetails-into-a-global-experiential-airline-tie-in CD might not be a great judge of TV. Or radio. Or art direction.

And yet they might have to be the person that makes those judgements because they are the CD. And they might have risen to that position because the rest of management likes them. And the rest of management might like them because they smile often and are ‘good in meetings’. And when no one really knows or cares if the work is 7/10 instead of 9/10, all of this is permitted and encouraged.

Six times the work, some less extensive multiple of staffing, no increase in salary, diversity of skillsets applied to inappropriate tasks…

Now that’s how to fuck up an entire industry.

When John Grisham’s movies were king.

Posters for movies that were planned but never happened.

The future of Instagram.

Funkadelic album cover designer’s obituary.

The speech Nixon was supposed to give if the moon landing had gone wrong.

Prince near the end.

David Abbott near the end:

I once worked for a client who would stop anyone who said ‘Just playing devil’s advocate…’

He would explain that he didn’t want anyone giving The Devil a place at the table.

This raises an interesting question: is it OK to point out what doesn’t work, or does that just make you a curmudgeonly Grinch who’s dragging the whole process down?

On one side, if something’s not working, surely it makes sense to course correct and improve it. If you’ve produced a piece of work it’s usually a good idea to ask someone what’s wrong with it so that you can fix it. Compliments tend to lead to complacency, after all, if something’s supposedly brilliant then there’s no need to put any more effort into it. But there’s always some detail you can make better, and sometimes a fresh perspective is what you need to find that wood that’s obscured by the trees.

A couple of years ago I was looped into a Facebook group that was crowdsourcing ideas to prevent gun crime in America. Lots of ideas poured forth, but few if any seemed to be driven by the need to actually change behaviour. Most were the kind of Cannes-winning bullshit that leaves the status quo exactly where it started. But when I pointed this out, correlating it with the group’s stated intention to make a real difference, I was shouted down for having a negative attitude.

And I sympathise. Having someone in the room who goes around strangling ideas to death isn’t helpful (although I didn’t shit on anything specific and instead just reminded the group of our supposed goal). I thought I was helpfully keeping things on track; some of the others just wanted to blast out thoughts and assess them later, otherwise known as the ‘there are no stupid ideas’ ethos. A safe space to regurgitate whatever you want is essential for people to bring up the kind of crap that can then spark a brilliant thought in someone else, and so on until gun crime is vanquished.

So which is right? Perhaps the best path is to be increasingly critical as the process continues, but even then you kind of need to start the Safe Place For Ostensibly Stupid Ideas at every new stage. If the director suggests using Cotton Eye Joe as the soundtrack for your deeply serious manifesto, you should all feel OK with the time it will take the sound engineer to sync it up.

Or should you? There’s only so much time in the studio and perhaps it should be spent as wisely as possible. Maybe you should laugh in his face and suggest Comfortably Numb instead.

A few years ago I replaced a Creative Director on a job. After a round of reviews had been completed the rest of the team were amazed that we’d only been going for three hours. They explained that the other CD had been taking the entire eight-hour day to assess the hell out of every single script in every single idea from every single team. I had quickly discarded what I thought was mediocre or limited in favour of the ideas that merited further attention. If you pursue everything to the nth degree you can’t give sufficient attention to the ideas most likely to succeed. I think it’s best to go wide and shallow to begin with, then drill deeper into the best stuff as the deadline approaches. Yes, that might result in some well-hidden greatness being discarded, but part of the job of being a CD is making decisions: they might be right; they might be wrong, but you can’t proceed without them.

If you’ve worked in advertising long enough, you’ll have witnessed plenty of occasions where people have made suggestions you thought were dreadful, only to see the room unanimously praise their excellence. Equally, you’ve probably seen ideas you thought were brilliant biting the dust for reasons that made no sense. Nobody’s ability to appraise work is perfect, so even if you get the best people taking the longest time to make the most complete judgement, there’s still no guarantee it’ll be better than flipping a coin.

And you could have the most welcoming and open environment for idea generation and people will still feel like they don’t want to speak for fear of looking stupid, or being unfairly assessed.

So it looks like we need a space to feel secure in making creative suggestions, however dumb they might appear, AND a simultaneous critical faculty that can assess the quality of such suggestions, killing them if required, but not in such a way that will make anyone feel inhibited about offering future ideas.

No one said this was going to be easy…