Hard & Fast Rules To Live By
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The document provides advice from a creative director on rules for the creative process in advertising. It presents many rules and then contradicts them, emphasizing that there are no hard and fast rules. Some of the rules include to lower standards at first to get ideas flowing, but also to never stop writing and pushing ideas further. Another rule is to follow the brief, but also to sometimes forget the brief and answer the fundamental problem instead. The overall message is that there are no true rules and to ignore rules that don't suit the specific creative challenge.
Hard & Fast Rules To Live By
- 1. AdLand > Creative Department > Creative Process Hard & Fast Rules To Live By One of the many funny things about advertising is that everyone seems to think their way of doing things is the best. So they come up with rules, many of which I’ve noted are contradictory. So with that thought in mind, I’ve laid out some of my own hard and fast rules for approaching the creative process…
- 2. Don’t be too critical of your work. If you do, you may never get anything done. Taken to the extreme, high standards can cause writer’s block. So just start writing. Never mind that it’s absolute drivel. The point is: you’re working on it. Once you get past the junk ideas you’ll find the real gems. Lower your standards.
- 3. Elevate your standards. Don’t ever be easily pleased with your work. In the hard light of day, it may well turn out to be ghastly. But after you’re up and running, you’ll start to have a good pile of ideas. Keep ‘em all. Push those forward and you may have something. I call it: “The idea before the idea”.
- 4. This had the potential to be a great ad. It’s just that the headline is killing it. And the layout.
- 5. Own your work. You’re passionate about your work, but you also have to sell it through to your CD, account servicing, the marketing guys and whoever else has a voice. So present it internally and explain it with a good story people can remember.
- 6. Don’t love your words or ideas – they don’t love you. Detach yourself from your work and look at it with fresh eyes. Don’t own your work. Ever wanted to be Creative Director? You are, of your own work. Great that you wonder what your CD would say about your lines, but so much the better if you can look at them first and know what he’d say, then amend them until he has nothing to say except “well-done” or “ok good, send it out”.
- 7. Unnamed digital art director fell asleep with the mouse still in his hand.
- 8. Never stop writing. Never stop writing. Never stop writing. There was one time I was teamed up with another writer (who incidentally was also named Alex – Alex Dobrokronov) as a copy/copy team in the StarHub unit of Batey. Naturally, we did what any copy-copy team would do: we started writing headlines. So I said “let’s each do 20 headlines and see what we have”. The other Alex replied: “Why does it have to be 20?” The difference between a junior and a senior writer is when they stop writing. (One stops much sooner than the other.) Extend, extend, extend. Once you get the ATL campaign and the TVCs, go on to brochures, digital, social, mobile media, OOH, guerrilla, ambient, events, stunts, SMS, and beyond.
- 9. Naturally, not everyone will be happy with your work. Which usually means you’re doing something right.
- 10. Quit. Yes, QUIT. Quit while you’re ahead. Once you’ve beat your horse till it’s dead, forget it. Get lost. Go play some pool. Chat up the new receptionist. Or just get out of the office for a long lunch with your art director. Free your mind, but keep you pen and pad with you. Suddenly, when you’re least expecting it, a new idea will come. Taking the pressure off of your shoulders is the most liberating feeling you can have, and this is where the real work begins.
- 11. Never trash anything. The purpose of your weak ideas is to help you evolve past them and unlock the lateral thoughts. They’re also a record of where you’ve been, which means you can always come back to them and maybe see something new on a rainy Monday morning. Never kill off anything.
- 12. Throw it all away without a second thought. Kill it all off. Start fresh. The Empty Box is a liberating place to live in.
- 13. And now, a short commercial break... ✩✩✩✩✩ THE EMPTY BOX is a blog about all the late nights, insanity (and occasional sparks of brilliance ) that make AdLand the most fun you can have with your clothes on. ✩✩✩✩✩ alexanderpatterson.tumblr.com
- 14. Always, always follow the brief. The bloody brief is there for a reason. The first reason is to give you a job to work on, so be thankful for that. The second reason it’s there is because the client or agency has a problem they need to address. Whether the brief is horrible or not doesn’t matter. You have to get to the bottom of the fundamental goals of the job. A lot of times the answer to that won’t be in the brief, but the suit knows the answer. So figure it out, because when you do you can then respond with work that never occurred to them. I’ve noticed that ironically, the answer is sometimes so obvious a solution that no one even saw it… or maybe they simply didn’t ask the right questions.
- 15. Forget the brief. Answer the brief; then forget it. I worked on a pitch once where there were three creative teams. We all started from the same place. The job called for local insights in relation to a local beer brand (okay, it was Tiger), and two of the teams were ‘local’. The third team was foreign, so they just said, ‘well, we don’t know anything about Singapore, so forget this brief’ and completely ignored the whole job requirements. But their work was good and the CDs didn’t hold it against them – although you can be sure we did.
- 16. Stick to your guns. If you’ve done your research, explored all the paths you could realistically examine, and done a bit more after that, then stick to your position. You know what you’ve created, and more importantly, why you’ve done it. You’re probably the only one who has been through this creative process, so defend your work. An ex-Ogilvy CD who’s frequently at Gem on Club Street told me: “Present your work like you’re standing naked out in the middle of the street.” You have to believe in it.
- 17. Compormise isn’t the end of the world. In about 2000, I worked with Anthony Redman at Batey Ads. He said: “Compromise is a big fat stinking pile of shit”, or something very close to that, and I wouldn’t ever disagree with him. But sometimes it’s just easier to let the small jobs go, and it’s okay to amend things slightly, if it doesn’t detract from the idea, to get the job through. There’s no need to fight account servicing on every minute detail. Get it done. Have a beer. Go home.
- 18. There are no rules. Self-explanatory.
- 19. You HAVE to follow one rule. The only rule is… see previous rule.
- 20. The LAST PAGE... it was long, but hopefully it had some depth. Now it’s your turn. 1. Share & comment on this. 2. Visit The Empty Box. alexanderpatterson.tumblr.com Alexander loves to follow all the rules, especially when they suit him.