Killing Good Work

During my 16 years in advertising, I've heard a lot of words—some good, some bad, the rest unfit to print. But of all the words I've heard, the two I've heard more than any others are, "Great work." I've heard them uttered by planners in status meetings, proclaimed by account directors in new-business pitches, slurred by creatives in sundry watering holes. I've heard media people use them to justify their television buys and the craft service lady use them to explain why there are both breakfast burritos and egg sandwiches on today's shoot menu. It's amusing to me that in a profession where everyone from the CEO to the Dutch intern is dying to wax philosophical about great work, no one is willing to mention one of the essential steps in the process of getting there—killing less than great work. This critical part of the journey is the industry's dirty little secret, the leaky toilet you don't learn about until after you buy the house. Junior art directors bristle when the creative director doesn't fawn over their first marker comp. Account directors roll their eyes after being told the creative team hasn't cracked the international rebranding effort in three days. The craft service lady shakes her head and pulls the breakfast burrito off the menu. Inherent in all this is the belief that there's some sort of shame in being sent back to the drawing board—that it's the grown-up equivalent of having to wear the dunce cap. And that's sad. Why? Because it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what's involved with producing something new and original and great. Chiat/Day used to have an expression: "Good enough isn't." They put it on coffee mugs and made it a rallying cry of sorts. But more than that, it was an internal barometer. "Is it great?" "No?" Then it's our job to say, "Keep pushing." Were the creative people disappointed to be told by Clow and Hayden that they had to keep working? Probably. But each of them understood what it meant to demand greatness, not goodness, of oneself. And so they wore this moniker with pride, like one of those "I survived the blizzard of '78" T-shirts the people I grew up with in Boston wore. You don't hear "Good enough isn't" much these days. You hear a lot more about constraints. "The client has no money." "They want to show the whole line of products." "This ad has to be to publications by tomorrow." The truth is that before most creatives have even explored what's possible, they've constructed an elaborate rationalization for why it's not going to be great. It's possible that this change in attitude toward the creative process is no more than a reflection of society in general. In a world of three-minute microwave dinners and eight-minute abs, why should anyone have to endure six rounds of advertising concepts to achieve creative brilliance? We want things to be easy. We want to fall in love over the Internet and have our bosses fall in love with the first thing we slap on the wall. I'm not saying it has to be hard. Or that a great idea doesn't occasionally pop into your head the first time you read the strategic brief. I'm saying that as an industry, we've so glorified the idea of creative brilliance striking in the shower or while we sleep that we've lost touch with the reality of the creative process. They call it giving birth to an idea because more often than not it's preceded by a hell of a lot of labor. My former partner, Kirk Souder, has a formula. He says 85 percent of everything created in the world, from architecture to literature, is crap, 10 percent is mediocre, and 5 percent is great. You can argue with him about the percentages, but the fact remains that getting to the great idea means sacrificing many, many others—something far too few creative people seem willing to do these days. That, I'm afraid, is why this is not considered the Golden Age of Advertising. It's not because of the economy or clients or budgets. It's not even because people don't want to do great work. It's because they've forgotten how to kill good work.

Brand Marketing

Killing Good Work

Court Crandall

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Court Crandall