Are you as honest as Ben Folds?

I was just listening to an interview with Ben Folds on Sound of Young America.

One of the things that struck me was how he would use a tape recorder as a kid. He would record himself playing his music so he could go back and listen to it with fresh ears. If he thought he really had something, he'd take the tape to JC Penny's, put it in a stereo, push play, walk around the store a bit and kind of sneak up on his own music as if he'd never heard it before. If he didn't like it, he'd change it, or scrap it altogether.

I guess the alternate universe story would be Ben writing some songs he was satisfied with, stopping when they were "good enough," performing for a few people who thought they were okay, never signing a record deal and complaining about the fact that his work was just never really understood or that he never had a big break.

If we really want to do great, fantastic, killer work, it's not really about having a big break or finding an audience who gets us. We've got to be as honest with our ideas as Ben is with his. And we've got to be willing work to make the okay ideas much, much better.

A Few Observations on Framing and Language

One of the important things you'll have to do many times in your advertising career is craft language to frame a topic a certain way. This simply means that you control how someone looks at an idea. What perspective are they viewing it from and how are they judging it?

You obviously can't always control how someone perceives your idea, but with the right language and the right tone, you certainly can influence it. Here are some examples:

1) Setting up your work for a client. I like to let the client know, as I set up the work we're showing, how I judged the work and what I think it has going for it. This doesn't always mean they'll agree, but it lets them understand where I'm coming from before they form their own opinion. Or I'll ask them to put their 12-year-old boy hat on (or whatever the target is) for a moment as they listen to the script.

2) Is there a completely different strategic approach? When my agency did a campaign for Brita Water Filters, which had always been about super-clean water without impurities, someone had the smart idea to re-frame the issue to be about conservation. Because a good deal of the plastic water bottles that people use end up in landfills or circling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Here's another example, the likes of which you've probably seen in hotel bathrooms.



The cynic in me sees those signs and thinks, "Yeah, right. The hotel's just trying to save money on laundry." Which may be true, but it is helping the environment too, and in the end I reuse my towels.

3. Word choice for the little things. Consider these possible call-to-actions in a banner ad:
Click here to visit blah.com.
Discover more at blah.com.
Start the journey at blah.com.
They're all asking me to do basically the same thing, but each sets my expectations for blah.com. Is there a better way to say what you want?

Here's another example that always strikes me when I see it. Rather than the typical SELL BY DATE, some drinks have the much more promising ENJOY BY date.



Framing is not about tricking anyone. It's about asking someone to consider something from a different viewpoint. And if you have any questions as to whether it's important, I invite you to listen to this episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Radiolab. In it, they discuss the potential effect of Obama's election on the academic performance of African-American students, as well as how the simple act of framing a test (i.e. the language used to say what the test measures) can have a huge impact on test scores.

The best blog post ever

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Creative directors vs. creative engines

Don't confuse being the creative director of an agency with being the creative engine of an agency. Sometimes, they're one and the same. But not always.

I've worked at agencies where the creative director, however well-respected, was not the creative engine. Those who came up with the best work, the killer lines and fresh layouts were not always the ECD, the CCO, or even the CD. They were the people who loved their jobs and worked like crazy to make sure their ideas were as good as they could be. They never settled.

It may take you a few years to be a creative director. But you can be an agency's creative engine whenever you decide to be.

A thoughtful article from Jeff Goodby

"We are becoming irrelevant award-chasers."

Here's a great article by Jeff Goodby on the current award show mentality.

Living vs. Working

Years ago, I read an interview with Richard Branson. He said that one of the keys to his success is that he stopped seeing a difference between working and not working. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said it was just living. He worked. He spent time with his family. He played. He worked some more. It was all just living.

Granted, that may be easier to say when you're a multi-billionaire and family time is spent on a tropical island you own. But still, I think he's given us a key.

The best creatives I've known come to work the next day and say, "Hey, I had this idea last night. What if we..."

Shamelessly Plug Your Agency Whenever You Cannes

Congrats to my coworkers for bringing home a couple statues from Cannes this year with their Reverse Graffiti work for Greenworks-in my opinion, the coolest thing my agency's done.

How I got unstuck

About a week ago I was in a serious rut. I was down on work. Down on our clients. Down on co-workers. Needless to say, it was a pretty unproductive few days.

Then I started listening to this podcast called The History of Jazz by Georgia State University professor, Dr. Gordon Vernick. (Look it up. Wish I could link you to it directly.)

I also started reading my co-worker's copy of Paul Arden's book It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be.

And on a bright sunny day, I accidentally took the bus too far and had to walk through a couple of neighborhoods I'd never explored on foot.

And suddenly, things were awesome. I liked work. And I've been very productive since.

If you're stuck, frustrated or down on work, it's not enough just to take a break. A walk around the building or a trip to the burrito joint across the street can sometimes help. But you really need to change your routine.

The Importance of Taking Showers

95% of my good ideas come to me while I'm in the shower or walking home from the train.

In total, that amount of time represents about 25 minutes a day, or only about 2.5% of my waking time.

The fact that such a little amount of time seems to be so productive has made me consider spending more time in the shower. If I could increase my shower time to, say, 30 minutes a day, and take a more circuitous route home from the train, stretch that 10-minute walk into an hour, my career might really take off.

The truth is, we have creative breakthroughs (ideas) when we're in the shower because we're not actively thinking about the problem. Our mind has all this junk in there rolling around, and it's processing, but we're not sitting at the desk, staring at the blank piece of paper, trying to force the idea, burning ourselves out.

And the reason it happens when we're not thinking about it is because to solve a creative problem, you usually need to approach it from a different angle. Approach. That's important. Because you can't approach something if you're slogging around in the muck of it. You need to climb out, go do something else, and then come back to it. Approach it.

That's what those strokes of genius are. They're just us coming back to the problem with a fresh mind, from a different angle. This is why you find ping-pong and pool tables and video game consoles at agencies. They give the mind a recess.

Now some will say that's hogwash, that I'm just giving an excuse for laziness. And be sure, many a lazy creative has spent entire afternoons at the ping pong table telling himself that it's how ideas are formed. He's fooling himself as much as the creative who sits at his desk 12 hours a day staring at his notebook trying to will an idea to happen. Both parts of the process are required.

Work smarter, not just harder. The brain needs a recess. Or sometimes it just needs a shower.

Body copy road trip

Writing body copy is like going from LA to Boston making stops in Denver and Pittsburgh.

You need to know where you're starting, and where you're going to end up, and what points you need to hit along the way. You can take some detours and circuitous routes in between, and some will be more interesting than others.

But while getting in the car and just driving can be fun, you might get really, really lost and end up nowhere interesting. Then you've just wasted time. If you're writing body copy, map it out. It will look like a bad, bulleted PowerPoint presentation, but it will help you stay on course.

(Speaking of copy and road trips, here's a link to an old Mark Fenske post I think is brilliant.)