Left-Brain Creative

Oh, gross .... here, taste this!

Say you go to a restaurant and taste a new food and you hate it. Maybe you even gag a little or spit it into a napkin. Then you turn to your dining companion and say, "Here ... taste this."

Nine times out of 10 your friend will look at you like you're nuts. If you hate it , she'll hate it ... or so goes the logic. But we all KNOW that everyone has different tastes, and one man's beetle dung is another's delicacy.

Photo by Jim Bender. Click to enlarge.

The same holds true for creative. We all have different tastes, but for some reason we expect that everyone's reaction to a certain piece will be similar to ours. Case in point. The photo to the left is a recent shot of my son. It's slightly desaturated, with a higher level of desaturation in the red channel than the others. I like it. It pushes the photo ever so slightly out of the range of realism and makes it feel a bit more dreamy. (And who doesn't think their kids are dreamy, right?)

Apparently not my wife. Now, before she reads this and threatens fast and certain retribution, I have to say that she absolutely adores our son with all of her heart. She just doesn't like the photo. The only word that came to her mind when she saw it was "weird." She prefers the version straight from the camera, which renders his strawberry blond hair and his rosey cheeks more accurately.

Issues such as color palettes or color intensity are often simple aesthetic disagreements, the likes of which play over and over again in creative departments throughout the land. Yes, there are reams of perspectives on color theory and all that jazz, but when it comes down to it, we're usually talking about taste. Dung vs. delicacy. Solve the issue quickly and move on to the main course. Does the work as a whole communicate the message? If not, you've got bigger issues to tackle than matters of taste.

"The committee loved your ad. You're fired"

So your new print ad just went through committee review without a single objection. Congratulations. You officially suck.

The only way an ad concept gets through committee review without a single objection is if the committee thinks the ad is a flawless fit for the product/service category. It blends in. It looks or sounds just like all other work in the category. Can't go wrong, right?

Photo by Jim Bender. Click to enlarge.

Marketing communications is a tricky business because small armies of eager people with red pens get involved in the review process. Many of them lack experience creating or reviewing ads, and they have no reference point from which to judge -- except other ads they have seen in the category. So, for them, it's natural and logical to assume that good advertising will LOOK like other advertising in the category, and bad advertising won't.

For you, it's another story. If you get an ad back from committee review approved without comment, you've taken a turn down a dark and dreary path. You haven't challenged convention. You haven't smacked the bees' nest. And you haven't created an ad that advertises. You've given the committee short-term pleasure and long-term problems. Some agency management will think this is acceptable. The better ones won't.

Estimates vary widely, but many studies suggest that consumers are exposed to about 3,000 commercial messages per day. If they pay attention to only 1 percent each day, they are processing 30 commercial messages per day, or about 900 per month. Chances are that the consumers in your category are very familiar with category styles and techniques. And nothing activates attention-deficit disorder more than familiarity.

Next time, do the client a favor and bust out of the category. Make at least one person on the committee uncomfortable. Create a little buzz. You'll have some explaining to do, but if you're on to something relevant and fresh, both you and your client will reap the rewards.

Without the numbers, you're juicy red meat

Like it or not, (and yes, some of you definitely do not), communication arts professionals are paid for a specific service. And it ain't art. It's numbers. Ideally, large quantities of them. Some of us may think our work "reflects the human condition," but the only thing that matters in this business is the condition of the balance sheet. Simply put, you are paid to sell.

Photo by Jim Bender. Click to enlarge.

Intellectually, I knew this from the beginning. But what I didn't know is that clients (who are usually not creative directors or copywriters or art directors or multimedia mavens) sometimes don't see the connection between our first drafts and the final result -- sales, leads, job applications, whatever. So we have to help them understand. That's where lefty (left brain) enters the field. What do you know about the market, and how is the creative product designed to appeal to the market? What is the media plan, and how do we know the media plan will reach the right market at the right price? What is the call to action, and what is the measurement mechanism to capture the data? Remember, it's the numbers.

If you're brave to the point of stupidity, you can present your work and let it "speak for itself." But don't be surprised if the client grows fangs and licks her chops as she readies to pounce.

Be a professional. Understand market characteristics, understand marketing strategy, and fashion your rendition of the human condition in response to the demands of capitalism. Your clients deserve it, and you deserve to work another day.

What puppies can teach us about the creative process

I have a new puppy. She likes to bolt from one end of the house to the other at wharp speed. She leaps over furniture, chews puppy toys and grinds her baby puppy teeth on chunks of concrete that she digs up from a cracking sidewalk behind our house. She's all spirit, no inhibition, and tons of fun. She also pees on the dining room carpet and gives almost no warning before squatting down to deliver a more solid contribution to the living room decor.

Photo by Jim Bender. Click to enlarge.

So the puppy is in the process of being trained, and she considers this an injustice. She spends a lot of time locked in a cage (her den, we call it), until she learns the rules of the game. In her business, the business of living a spoiled doggy life with a friendly human family, an endless supply of Milk-Bones comes only after she develops the discipline of the trade.

She doesn't know it yet, but the cage is temporary. Within a few weeks she'll be back to her free-spirited romps, knowing that if she follows a few basic guidelines, she will reap the rewards for years to come.