A Copywriter Writes

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Coca Cola in Turkey ran a nostalgia campaign with the bottle design. They remodelled them to look just like the first Coke bottles. I managed to get one while I was there. A brilliant piece of brand memorabilia.

My last project with Lucideas.

In order to show the intricacies of the creative communication industry to young people in Malaysia, we created The Adprentice, a reality TV show where high school leavers take a crash course in advertising and pitch real ideas to real clients along the way. Their final challenge to to go head to head against a professional advertising agency (Lucideas) to win a full scholarship to IACT College and RM20,000.

This was my favourite project by far.

Brainwaves or, A Nano-Second That Fuels Months Of Drive

Usually, I get home from work rather late.

Around 10:30 - 11pm.

Too late to go to the gym, too late to cook something, too late to sit down and nut out some ideas for a great campaign for the portfolio.

I usually end up reading a book chapter, watching an episode of a show I shouldn’t legally be in possession of, or thinking about how many pairs of underwear I’ve got left until I absolutely cannot forget to do another load of laundry.

I usually crawl into bed for 8 hours of humid hibernation (the air-con in my room is currently broken, and probably will be until I leave the country) that will more or less rejuvenate me for the next day. 

Sometimes, on especially sweaty nights, I’ll lie and fear that I’m losing my creative ability by not allowing myself to push the ideas in my portfolio or come up with new ones altogether.

I gulp at the thought that I’m losing my creative passion to exercise my right brain outside of the day-to-day bread and butter jobs of the agency.

I go dry at the image of today’s students soaring past my skill level with fresh drive and ambition and walking into some admired agencies and making a splash that the Kracken couldn’t match.

I turn over and allow the acknowledgement of some unsatisfactory headlines dawdle behind the rest of my thoughts as all activity exits my mind for another night.

BOOM. It happens so fast.

Wait, what if I wrote it like this? What if I said it like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? Shit, where’s my Moleskine? And where’s my fucking Artline? A Faber Castell? A Sharpie? A Bic, I’ll write with anything!

The lines come and they’re immediately scrawled across two pages of my notebook. Suddenly, the campaign looks a lot better. I feel less ashamed to put it in front of a Creative Director.

The vigour comes back. The pure ecstasy of a brainwave and a creative idea. My god, it feels good.

What was once midnight is now 3am.

I crawl back into bed. The heat is stifling and I’ve never been more comfortable.

This is what I live to do.

I would suffer through weeks, months of quiet self-loathing and frustration for a moment like that.

The more harder you work and the continued persistence of a passionate attitude will bring those moments closer and closer together.

God, I love it.

God, I love George Lois. Here’s a brilliant story about him I came across.

In New York, dozens of 1960 Renaults had to be sold to make way for the new 61’ models.

So normally the dealers would knock $500 off to try and shift them, but nobody wants to buy last year’s car. But everyone loves a bargain.

So legendary New York creative George Lois made a tiny scratch in the paintwork of each car, then covered it over with a Band Aid.

He then ran an ad with a headline saying

‘ IF YOU CAN SPOT THE SCRATCH ON ANY OF OUR RENAULTS, WE’LL GIVE YOU $500 OFF.’

Customers flooded in, clambering all over the cars, finding the plasters, peeling them up and being amazed how tiny the scratch was.

The Renaults sold out before close of business on the first day.

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What ‘Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This’ should look like when you finish reading it.

Not Feeling The Love On Valentine’s Day or, Superbowl 2012

I decided to make last week’s Valentines Day a special one and spend it with my greatest love - ads.

Having not caught up with this year’s Superbowl ads, it seemed like the perfect thing to do as I sat at my Mac with my can of Soup-For-One.

First of all, what the hell was up with all the celebrity cameos? Was there some hidden competition between all the brands to use a celebrity most creatively (most of which failed)?

God, the list goes on. It’s like the cast for the movie to follow Valentines Day and New Year’s Eve; Superbowl Sunday.

Acura - Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno

Dannon Oikos Greek Yoghurt - John Stamos (the Knights Templar called, they have their eyes on your relic)

Pepsi - Elton John (and apparently that chick won X Factor)

Hulu Plus - Will Arnett (come on!)

Kia - Adrianna Lima, Motley Crew

Time Warner Cable - Ricky Gervais

Samsung Mobile - The Darkness (who looks like shit, by the way)

Chrysler - Clint Eastwood

Honda - Matthew Broderick

The Voice - Betty White (someone had to do it)

Telefora - Adrianna Lima

Ok, THE GOOD. (I guess there were a few).

NBC - Brotherhood of Man: Entertaining and fun.

Chevy Silverado - 2012: Nice thought. The second guy’s line is a bit of a killer though.

Kia - Dream Car: Pretty cool. Nice line at the end. Even with the cameos, it works for me.

Volkswagon - The Dog Strikes Back: Interesting, funny. Not sure if all the Star Wars stuff at the end was truly necessary, it’s just milking the success of last year’s ad.

NFL - Timeline: Kept me interested. Casual, informative and nicely shot.

Samsung Mobile - Thing Called Love: The Applephiliacs finally turn to Samsung and get out of line. An elaborate party ensues starring The Darkness. Kind of entertaining and the self-deprecating joke at the end was a nice touch.

M&M’s - Just My Shell: Funny, love the M&M’s dude.

Budweiser - Return of the King: Nice, uplifting ad.

Doritos - Man’s Best Friend: Funny. You can’t help but giggle. 

Acura - Transactions: Wacky and cool. Jerry Seinfeld does a good job in this one.

Chevy - Happy Grad: Entertaining, funny.

Prudential Financial - Day One Linda Guthrie: Simple, nice line.

THE BAD

Dannon Oikos Greek Yoghurt - The Tease: Meh. A woman head butts John Stamos for her Greek yoghurt. Could’ve saved the money spent on John and done something more exciting.

Pepsi - King’s Court: This is only mildly funny (barely) because of the celebrity cameos.

Toyota Camry - Reinvented: Cheesy. Silly.

Budweiser - Eternal Optimism: Seems like a Coke ‘Open Happiness’ ad. Even the colour reminds me of Coke. Says the same old crap: ‘we’ve been with you through all the good times.’ Nicely shot, but meh.

Cadillac - Green Hell: It looks like any other ad with a performance car being tested. Green Hell could’ve been any other race track.

Time Warner Cable - Enjoy Better: Show and tell narration technique, nothing new. And Ricky Gervais to add some appeal. Seriously, were celebrities a prerequisite?

Bridgestone - Performance Football: Since when did Kevin Butler leave Playstation and join Bridgestone?

Chrysler - Halftime in America: Big speech by another big celebrity. Too much like the Eminem one last year.

Cars.com - Confidence: WTF?

Hyundai - Cheetah: Ooh, looks like another car vs animal commercial, oh wait! The cheetah turns on the guy who opened the cage! Still meh.

THE UGLY

Audi - Vampire Party: Are you kidding me? Nail the vampire idea inside a coffin once and for all. I figured by this point, if you’re going to do vampires, it would be something different. Oh haha, I get it, you referenced Twilight. No. Still lame.

Camry - Connections: Boring! Seen it. Many, many times. Next.

Bud Light Platinum - Work: Lame, cliche.

Go Daddy: All crap.

THE REST: All get the ‘meh’ sigh.

You may agree if you check out the rest at the Ad Blitz YouTube channel.

All in all, was not impressed with the stuff put out this year. It made for a bitter Valentine’s.

Getting Life Experience or, Watching TV Is Part Of The Job

My first (creative) partner was a girl in my ad school during my third year doing a Bachelor of Communications at AUT.

She was great, we did a lot of interesting work together.

There was one thing about her that I found odd.

She didn’t watch television.

Her family didn’t have one. She was raised like this. Instead of watching TV, she’d pursue hobbies like dancing, which is all well and good because she was an excellent dancer.

And her parents took her to different countries when she was little, so she was well travelled. Phenomenally so.

But she didn’t watch television.

And to me, this left a gap in her thinking.

Sometimes, I would suggest an angle we could explore or lines we could use based on popular culture originating from a TV show, and she would come back to me; expressionless.

I think there was one time I mentioned a TV character like Captain Planet.

“Who?”

“Captain Planet. You know, the Planeteers? Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Heart? Go, Planet?”

“Nope. Are you sure people know who that is?”

“Are you serious?!” 

Good advertising messages stem from insights. Insights about the product, where it’s made, how to use it, the people that use it, an so on.

The best advertising messages stem from life insights. Aspects of daily living that transcend language, age and gender boundaries.

And the best way to come up with these life insights is to experience life.

If you’re disconnected somehow, you’re not going to reach those crucial truths you need.

In a way, this means to travel; see different people and cultures and view life from a unique perspective.

In a more realistic way, this means to branch out from what you already do.

Just because Ted, Marshall, Lily, Robin and Barney hang out at MacLaren’s Pub all the time, doesn’t mean it’s cool for you to do as well.

Read a book you by an author you don’t normally read; see a movie you wouldn’t see; watch TV, a lot; go to a restaurant you haven’t been to and order something you don’t normally eat.

Every new thing you do gives you a new perspective and broadens your thinking.

You could notice how people who can’t handle spicy food look like they’re taking a Lamaze class when they eat, or how the majority of commuters read books on the train, or all the weird tips and tricks for picking out perfect produce you learn from farmer’s market patrons.

They can all birth interesting ideas that come from simple life insights.

Another thing I would recommend is to watch a lot of stand up comedians. All and any you can. Local ones, international ones, male ones, female ones, transgender ones, old ones, young ones, Irish ones, American ones, Spanish ones, Chinese ones, Nigerian ones, bad ones, really bad ones, all of them.

Especially those who specialise in observational humor.

What these people do for a living is take even the tiniest life insight, like the faces men make when we shave, and turn it into something relatable, funny and entertaining.

Gee, that sounds familiar.

And you can tell they’ve hit the nail on the head with these details of daily life because of the immediate laughter from the audience.

Young creatives could learn a lot from these people. The more you watch, the more perspective you benefit from - it’s simple.

As a creative (especially one working in advertising), you’re not just living life, you’re exploring it. And the best way to do that is just do something different from time to time.

A friend of mine, Iain Nealie, a creative at TBWA\Tequila in Auckland, once did something as simple as using a different mode of transport to go to work each day for a week.

He managed it (walk, run, car, skateboard, bus).

Simple as that.

Or just at least make sure you’re getting enough TV each day.

When Creativity Works Against You or, An Inverse Look At Bravery

Very recently I was having a drink with Yew Leong Tan, renown film director and vintage ad man.

He said to me after a sip from his hot chocolate that he thought that the people that did Apple’s advertising were brave.

Now, any ad person immediately thinks of key campaigns like 1984, Think Different or I’m a PC, I’m a Mac and says “No shit.”

But what Yew Leong refered to is Apple’s other advertising; the billboards and posters that simply show a picture of an iPhone on a clean, white background and, although laid out perfectly, very boringly states in Myriad Pro, 

The iPhone 4. Now in white.

I walk past those posters and screw my face up in disgust at how empty it is of an idea.

“The agency that does that work is ballsy.”

Said Yew Leong.

“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

I said as my right eyebrow climbed my forehead skeptically.

Basically, the bravery came not from doing something wildly different that no one had attempted before, but from stepping back and letting the brand and the product speak for themselves with succumbing to the creative need to make it clever, smart or outlandish.

It takes balls and strength to realise when your ‘creativity’ is getting in the way of the communication and resist the urge to put an idea into it.

By stepping back and stripping the ad of everything except the product, logo and a single line, the essence of the Apple brand resounds.

I’ve experienced this a few times while I’ve been here in Malaysia on a much smaller scale.

I’ll type out some short, witty copy for a brochure, flyer or print ad. And the Account Executive would come back and say,

“We have to change the copy. People here don’t know what an ‘early bird’ is.”

(Or something like that.) 

“Ugh. Really?”

“Yeah. Like, I know. But probably not the average person. They’ll think we’re talking about birds. Maybe just keep it simple and just say ‘Sign up today.’”

“Really? Ok, that’s fine, I suppose.”

That small frustration that you get when your little embellishments get stripped away and the ad is a straight-forward message. It’s a thorn in your side as a copywriter, but it’s for the greater good that the communication will be received better.

Something that one begrudgingly accepts eventually.

Sometimes you have to step back and admit that even though it’s not witty, visually amazing or provoking by your standards, it works.

And it works better that way.

This Is What I Love or, The Kind Of Copy I Strive To Write

One particularly sad fact about advertising is you don’t come across great long copy ads very often anymore.

Sure, you see some astounding campaigns that gracefully utilise a plethora of relevant media and capture the imagination of consumers and invoke an unhealthy jealousy within industry professionals.

But what I love is the reserved delight of finishing a long copy ad because the writer succeeded in keeping my eyes snagged to their words from the rhetorical question to the concluding thought.

This writer did that for me and if I can write something as creatively conversational as this during my career, I will taste sweet life satisfaction.

11HP/29” Snowblower
Price $900.00
Address Moncton, NB, Canada

Do you like shoveling snow? Then stop reading this and go back to your pushups and granola because you are not someone that I want to talk to.

Let’s face it, we live in a place that attracts snow like Magnetic Hill attracts cars, only that ain’t an illusion out there. That’s 12 inches of snow piling up and, oh, what’s that sound? Why it’s the snow plow and it’s here to let you know that it hates you and all the time you spent to shovel your driveway. Did you want to get out of your house today? Were you expecting to get to work on time? Or even this week?

You gave it your best shot. You tried to shovel by yourself and I respect you for that. I did it, my parents did it, some of my best friends did it. But deep down inside, we all wanted to murder that neighbor with the snowblower who was finished and on his second beer while you were still trying to throw snow over a snowbank taller than you are.

So, here we are. You could murder your neighbour, which could ensure that you won’t need to shovel a driveway for 25 to life, but there are downsides to that too. What to do?

Here’s the deal. I have a snow blower and I want you to own it. I can tell you’re serious about this. It’s like I can almost see you: sitting there, your legs are probably crossed and your left hand is on your chin. Am I right? How’d I do that? The same way that I know that YOU ARE GOING TO BUY THIS SNOWBLOWER.

I want you to experience the rush that comes with smashing through a snowdrift and blowing that mother trucker out of the way. The elation of seeing the snow plow come back down your street and watching the look of despair as your OTHER neighbour gets his shovel out once more while you kick back with a hot cup of joe (you don’t have a drinking problem like that other guy).

Here’s what you do. You go to the bank. You collect $900. You get your buddy with a truck and you drive over here. You give me some cold hard cash and I give you a machine that will mess up a snowbank sumthin’ fierce. I’ve even got the manual for it, on account of I bought it brand new and I don’t throw that kind of thing away. Don’t want to pay me $900? Convince me. Send me an offer and I’ll either laugh at you and you’ll never hear back from me or I’ll counter.

You want a snow blower. You need a snow blower.

This isn’t some entry level snow blower that is just gonna move the snow two feet away. This is an 11 HP Briggs and Stratton machine of snow doom that will cut a 29 inch path of pure ecstasy. And it’s only 4 years old. I dare you to find a harder working 4 year old. My niece is five and she gets tired and cranky after just a few minutes of shoveling. This guy just goes and goes and goes.

You know what else? I greased it every year to help keep the water off it and the body in as good as shape as possible. It’s greasier than me when I was 13, and that’s saying something.

You know how many speeds it has? Six forward and two in reverse. It goes from “leisurely” slow up to “light speed”. Seriously, I’ve never gone further than five because it terrifies me. I kid you not, you could probably commute to work with it dragging you.

You know what else is crappy about clearing snow in the morning? That you have to do it in the dark. Well, not anymore! It has a halogen headlight that will light your way like some kind of moveable lighthouse (only better, because lighthouses won’t clear your driveway).

Oh, and since it’s the 21st century, this snow blower comes with an electric starter. Just plug that sucker in, push the button, and get ready to punch snow in the throat. If you want to experience what life was like in olden days, it comes with a back-up cord you could pull to start it, but forget that. The reason you’re getting this fearsome warrior was for the convenience, so why make it harder on yourself?

By this point, you’re probably wondering why I would sell my snowblower since the first snowpocalypse is upon us today. I’ll tell you why: because I heard it was time for you to man up and harness some mighty teeth and claws and chew your way to freedom, that’s why.

This is my snow blower. Make it your snow blower.

Direction or, The Type Of Creative Director I Wish To Be: Part 2

So as I’ve previously pointed out, my happy place is my own office, with my own desk and my own door that says my own name on it and ‘Creative Director’ underneath it.

It can also just say ‘Creative Director’ without my name. I’m not picky. I have very flexible life goals.

Aside from doing great work and earning my keep in the ad industry, I’ve taken to preparing for the CD role through observation of the many I’ve met and worked with so far in my budding career.

Approachability was the first quality I figured was important to have. The next one is an obvious one and almost goes without saying.

Direction.

To state the perfectly obvious, creativity needs direction like a burger needs a bun. Especially in a commercial industry where the message needs to be bold and more obvious than what you would find at your local modern art museum.

So if you’re a young creative mucking around with a brief, judging by the job title, you’d expect a Creative Director to look at your ideas and direct your creativity in the right direction.

I’ve had my share of meetings with CDs, where they’ve looked at the work and sighed a vague response:

“It’s not ‘there’ yet. Go away and come back later.”

Or something of the like.

What the hell is this ‘there’ place? It’s funny because I’ve talked to a couple of CDs who know when you’re not ‘there’ as if they know where ‘there’ is, but they’re not about to give you a map and a compass.

You go away from those meetings being just as confused as you might have been before and with no grounding to start round two of cracking the brief. And a creative who doesn’t know what they’re doing isn’t likely to produce some awesome work.

Now, I’ve had some absolutely brilliant meetings before. I was once sitting with a CD who was giving be a speech about pushing beyond the first thought after I showed him an idea for a campaign. Not only did he tell me to explore the uncharted territory but he gave me an example, he took my idea and said,

“What if you made it about [such and such] and said something like, ‘[blah blah blah]’. You know? That way, it’s not your usual campaign about [whatever].”*

My art director and I were simply inspired. There’s nothing better than coming away from a meeting with enough open windows to air out Buckingham Palace.

Another brilliant example is a CD I was trying to get a job offer from. I met with him and showed him my portfolio and he went through it, critiqued it and then we sat there and brainstormed for another 30 minutes or so! A CD who will give 1st rate direction to even unemployed creatives is absolutely top of my charts.

He even apologised that he had to wrap up the meeting and get back to work! Brilliant.

Sure, not every CD is like that, and not all CDs can be.

As much as I’d like to sit with my future creatives and nut out the brief alongside them, there may be times where I’m too busy or whatever.

But if I can at the very least leave them with a good starting point to come up with ideas that even I as the CD wouldn’t have considered, then I would consider my day’s keep earned.

*I can’t give all the details because it’s an idea I’m currently working on to go into my portfolio.

"I like the creative community. I mean, as much as it drives me fucking bat shit on a regular basis just like everyone else, I don’t want to be in another community. I want to be in this community."

—

- David Norbay, Creative Chairman/Partner, Droga5 Sydney

That’s it. He hit the nail bang on the head for me.

Budget or, Sometimes, We Kill It For Ourselves

Recently, as is my usual experience since entering the ad industry, I learned something new.

I learned about the way clients tend to work which, in a lot of cases, could prevent a lot of problems agencies tend to have with idea approval.

It’s probably one of the most annoying aspects of dealing with clients; you’ve presented to the Marketing Managers, they’ve given their approval and you’re in a great mood because your work is going to get run. When all of a sudden, you get that email that says the idea has been canned because some random manager from higher up was on a different page.

What I didn’t realise is that in many cases, the indirect cause of this is the agency themselves.

It’s to do with the budget.

Simply put, when the client sets their budget and the agency sticks to it, sometimes approving the idea generally lies with the client’s marketing team.

However, when an idea requires more funding in order to execute, the budget increase has to be approved by a manager higher up.

And any decent manager (no matter how much you’d love them to) doesn’t just sign things willy nilly. Especially when money is involved.

So just like that, you have another pair of narrowed eyes, fine-tooth combing through the idea. And should that manager find something they don’t quite agree with, another change is proposed.

The further up the chain you go, the more sensible-minded and less risky the bosses tend to become and you may find that it gets harder and harder to relate the creative concept to them.

So your ideal plan would be to avoid getting these dudes involved if you can help it, for the sake of not dragging a project out for months on end.

This scenario played out with a client of ours. In late 2010, a ballsy idea was pitched to them and approved. However, the idea exceeded the original budget.

The concept was then presented to a Managing Director for approval of the budget increase, but, being a cautious businessman, he had some issues with the idea, so it came back to us with revisions.

We then requested another budget increase and so more bosses got involved with more watchful eyes on the project and more opinions to consider. Too many people were getting involved at this point and too many concerns were arising.

This difficulty continued until August and as misfortune would have it, a certain international political incident killed our idea completely as it may have suggested an association with the event, which was unideal.

Had we stuck to the budget in the first place and kept the involvement from the higher-ups to a manageable minimum, we could have run the campaign swiftly and long before the political incident took place.

The funny thing is, from where I sit, these changes look like they come out of the blue and it’s just the clients being clients needing the opinions of the entire staff before the go-ahead can be issued.

It wasn’t until I had a chat with our Strategy Head about the matter that I learned that if we were as creative with our resources as we were with the idea, then things may have been different.

It makes you think twice about whether asking to up the budget for your brilliant idea is the easier road to take.

Hi Anonymous,

Personally, I don’t think the Nolita ‘No Anorexia’ ad is as good as it could be. 

I think the media placement is very good. To run the ad during Milan Fashion Week, probably next to billboards featuring models for other very prestigious designers, is brave and bold.

Next, the imagery used is powerful. It’s eye-catching and controversial and sends a very powerful visual message. Although, I think it shouts at people, rather than engaging them.

Where I think the ad falls flat, is the copy. No anorexia.

First, what does this mean? What is Nolita saying? That it’s against anorexia in general? Against using anorexic models? It it saying that they themselves don’t use anorexic models? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem clear to me.

Second, this doesn’t really leave me with much to think about afterward. Had there been a smartly crafted line, then I might walk away with something a little less superficial than,

“Holy shit, a naked anorexic woman.”

The copy, which seems a tad imperative, coupled with the intense visual, makes the message seem forceful in a way. It’s discomforting.

I understand this ad campaign received a colossal amount of press, which I wouldn’t doubt; overall, it’s a brave piece of communication. I also don’t doubt that it raised the issue of anorexia to the light for that period of time.

But the question I ask is how long did the heightened awareness last for and did anything come out of it?

Four years down the track, I’m not sure if there were any long term ripples that ad caused. I hear that it gets brought up in an advertising class or two as a case study. I’m also not sure if a whole lot of people can recall the ad. But maybe they can, I’m probably just out of the loop, to be honest.

I would welcome contributions to this.

That Damned Client or, Stepping Up Your Game

It seems that there is a new reason to quit the advertising industry each week.

It could be you’re fed up that at the end of the week, there were more days than hours sleep you got.

It might be that nagging Account Executive has brought the deadline forward for the last time.

Maybe it’s the fact that if you’re not talking about advertising when with your friends, you’re not talking.

A lot of the time, as far as I’ve noticed, it’s the clients.

They can be real bastards sometimes.

Between demanding the work be done yesterday, cutting the budget and wanting the logo to be large enough so that the magazine ad will be noticed by the guy walking his dog 500 meters down the street, dealing with clients can be taxing.

A lot of the time, these people don’t seem to be in tune with what people like and respond to, or what will make their brand stand out from the thousands of others they battle for attention each day.

They cower at any idea that is remotely controversial, or unique and insist we tailor their communications they way everyone else is doing it or how they’ve always done it since the business started in 1946.

They are the reason we don’t get to do cool work.

If you agree, you just activated my trap card.*

“Cool work gets done because of cool clients.”

This is a common mistake that most junior creatives tend to make. I shake my head in disappointment to think I strongly believed this once.

Yes, I suppose there are exceptions where there is a friendly and trusting relationship, like Leo Burnett Malaysia shared with Petronas.

But I have a theory.

Every single client in the whole world is shit to deal with.

Yes, even the one you just thought about with really cool advertising; yes, the Skittles, the Old Spices and the Coca Colas of this world are all crap and wouldn’t know an really creative and awesome idea if it crawled in their ears and introduced themselves.

There’s no getting away from it. Those marketing people were simply not taught to think like those at an advertising agency does. They think about making money and selling product. That’s why ideas get whittled down.

However,

The agencies they work with bust themselves to give them work that is so phenomenal, that even when it’s whittled down to something a little less that the client can deal with, it’s still diamond-studded gold.

I like to think that Wieden+Kennedy pitched something far more fantastically creative to Old Spice than ‘Old Spice Guy: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’, but when the client had a go at it, rejected some of the more outrageous ideas and changed a few things, they were still left with a piece of creative treasure.

That’s what happens when the only thing the client has to choose from, is quality or more quality.

My theory may not be right, and Old Spice might be on the same page as W+K and a dream to work with, but that’s the picture I prefer to paint.

I’ve been in numerous presentation situations where the strategy was to present a really good idea and a safe idea to under sell and make the good idea look better. Then everyone gets pissed off when the client chooses the safe idea.

That’s easy to solve. Don’t give them a choice between a good idea and a bad idea.

Clients don’t think like you. More times that not, they’ll choose the idea you think is bad.

To further illustrate:

Last year my art director, Kishan and I were working at JWT Auckland. We were doing a small job for Nestle as part of a campaign for Milky Bar to search for the next Milky Bar Kid.

Our task was simple: do up some concepts for an internet banner ad to inform people that the top 10 kids who auditioned were chosen and it was time to vote for the winner.

We did a whole bunch, naturally, and two were put forward. One was a bland concept with straight copy using the stock campaign imagery. The other was a neat little animation about a classic western ‘baddie’ dressed in black coming out of the saloon, looking around and then jumping into a nearby barrel and the line comes up:

The Milky Bar Kid is gonna be back in town.

and then,

Choose who it’s going to be here.

Or something to that effect. 

Also, there was little budget for this so, the illustrations I did would have to be used. The concept was funny, it was likable, and it meant that something I drew could get on the internet.

I was excited. The Account Director happily took it to sell.

She came back and said the client bought the safe, bland one.

A good client can recognise a cool idea.

A better suit can sell a cool idea to a hesitant client.

The best creative can work around a client that still says no.

*Yu-Gi-Oh reference. Anyone? No? Ok…

Hahahaha!

Please forgive me, but you couldn’t be further from any real worries. Having said that - it’s actually really cool that you’re concerned about your skill level so prematurely.

Not to worry. At all.

You’ll graduate high school and take up your course at university or specialist ad school and that’s when you’ll hone your skills as a creative. Once you start getting closer and closer to the industry, you’ll see just how little you actually have to worry about.

The industry is competitive, yes. But as a junior you just have to be really hungry to do well and work at the agencies you want. And hungry people get fed.

You seem to have a lot of passion to be a skilled creative. That’s a really good start. It’s passion that will drive you to eventually become a great creative at a well known agency that you might one day head. 

If you’re really interested already, try giving these books a read to give you a better idea of how to prepare yourself.

• Pick Me: Breaking Into Advertising And Staying There - Nancy Vonk & Janet Kestin
• Cutting Edge Advertising - Jim Aitchison
• Hey Whipple, Squeeze This - Luke Sullivan
• Making Ideas Happen - Scott Belsky
• Can I Change Your Mind? - Lindsay Camp
• It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be - Paul Arden
• Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite - Paul Arden

Also, a good blog to follow is Junior: Celebrating Life at the Bottom.

Now, there are such things as small agencies, but not low-impact agencies, just low-impact work. The impact of the work does not, in any way, correlate to the size of the agency; a very highly awarded ad campaign for Orcon Broadband last year came from a 6-person agency called Special, in New Zealand.

Take any unideal scenario as a challenge and you’ll go far.

I tend to ramble when I do this, so if I could summarise this to fit you perfectly, I would simply say,

Don’t panic.

You’ll gonna be just fine.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I’ll try my best to help you out.

Cheers.