Passionate People or, Temporarily Living The Dream
The DDB Group in New Zealand was always an agency I wanted to work for. It was one of the top in the country.
How could you not want a piece of that?
It wasn’t until I was about a month out of leaving for Malaysia that my little dream was answered. I received a text message asking me to come into the Interbrand office to work on a couple of projects.
This was off the back of a very good recommendation from my past tutor. So I was elated. You couldn’t get much closer to a professional orgasm than that, short of a promotion to your dream job.
I went in there for the meeting on the Monday, and started work on the Wednesday.
I was nervous as hell, as you can imagine. Walking into the same building as some of New Zealand’s most awarded creatives.
But I cautiously wandered into the office, sat down and proceeded to work like I’ve never worked before. I wasn’t there long, as I had a flight to catch in early March, but it was the most productive few weeks I had experienced.
I have a couple of answers to why that may have been:
It might have been the fact that I was sitting at a desk in the big, tall building at 80 Grey St in the heart of Auckland’s CBD, or it could have been I was working for a Creative Director (Lorenz Perry) that I had heard so many good things about in the past.
However I’m more inclined toward the fact that the Managing Director, James Bickford had an amazing way of igniting the the wick of the team’s passion and shooting it up into the sky to explode in an array of colours and sparkles.
He was a great guy to work with, to say the least.
He was one of those people who was very involved with all the work the agency was doing and really liked to push ideas.
He was someone you really wanted to impress, too.
One meeting, we were discussing a look and feel and name for a particular band of lamb.
“Yes, I love that. Now, this is interesting. Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing! I’m not sure this works. What do you think? Yes, I agree, I was wondering if it would be better like this? For me that works best. Ah, yes, I see what you’re saying. What was that you said? Yes, that one, I like that one.”
Trying not to sound like a blubbering ad fanboy, but it was magic to watch.
I was asked to come up with names and tag lines and other little copy based bits for the projects I worked on. I was surprised at how I was churning out the words.
They wanted names for a drink brand, I gave them over 100 suggestions by lunchtime. They wanted me to push a few. I came back with about 50 in half an hour. I was feeling good.
This is exactly how you want to be in your working life; surrounded by people who awaken your love for your work and have you performing like you’re up for an award.*
Surround yourself with passionate people and naturally, your work begins to improve as your attitude does.
Obvious. You see it in the opposite scenarios too. There have been many times when we’ve had a client reject an idea or propose a really silly change and team is on its last legs and collectively goes,
“Fine. It’s no use fighting anymore. Just do whatever.”
How deflating is that?
Someone who is trying to keep fighting and try to get something at least a little cool out is going to drown with do support.
It happens. But if it happens often, you need to get out and go find a place where it rains positivity.
Another thing to keep in mind is you can’t depend on these people to keep you positive. It’s a dyadic process. You’re surrounding yourself with these people and in turn they’re surrounding themselves with you. They’re counting on you to keep them going too.
I’m guessing that’s how James stays so passionate: because the rest of the team at Interbrand NZ are as equally as passionate and keep on delivering passionate work.
And then you become a place to work that people like me admire, blog about and wish to work for.
*I’m not saying all the other places I’ve worked were not like this. On the contrary - every single place I’ve worked at has given me something different that I couldn’t get anywhere else. I’m not sure I have a favourite place, yet.
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