At one point in my career in advertising the name “the boys” in the creative department called my art director and me was “the space cadets”. It very cleverly relegated us to an unfavourable position in the hierarchy of things. We’d had a few wins. That wasn’t to be tolerated. Names are powerful things. Rob Morrison found that out the humbling way too. [:ed] Here is his story:

“You catfished me into working for you.”

It’s not often I’m lost for words, but I was this time. I was at a pub catching up with an old copywriting colleague when she let loose with this gobsmacker. My gob was smacked because I’d never been accused of that before. But mainly because it was true.

Let me explain.

A few years earlier, I was leading the creative department of a multi-national agency. I’d been struggling to hire a quality junior creative team. So, in desperation, I posted on a very public social forum. The carefully crafted copy read…

“A friend of mine runs an agency and is looking for full-time junior creatives. Good client list. Great mentors. Opportunity to build a book. AD needs design skills. CW needs long copy ability. If you know someone (or are someone) who fits, then hit my personal email and I’ll pass on your info…”

Why lie?

A few reasons. Anyone who’s tried hiring creatives knows it’s easy to attract the cocky, cranky and crazy. I’ve had stalkers. I’ve had ad-junkies. I’ve had the overconfident and the under-talented. And I knew if I posted under the agency name, they’d swarm out of the woodwork again. Plus, I didn’t want juniors who saw themselves coasting comfortably in a big agency. I wanted self-starters.

So yes, I lied. But only briefly. For anyone shortlisted, I came clean in my first message. And if my deception meant they withdrew their interest then that was OK. No harm. No foul. But I’m 100% certain the team I hired wouldn’t have talked to me if I’d asked straight up. Or, as a minimum, they’d have been drowned out by the flood of tyre-kickers.

Now, at the time, I had no idea I was catfishing. That it even had a name. To me it was just old-fashioned spin. I was bending the truth. Reframing. A little white lie. See, even now I’m using 10 words to try to explain it.

“Catfishing” is a much better name.

It made me think about other names Gen Next have coined. Ghosting. Meme. Influencer. Friend-zone. Emoji. All great names. Super-clear. No need for long, wordy explanations. Then consider business names that have become part of the lexicon – Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, GoPro, AfterPay. All now worth billions of dollars, in part because they’re great names.

So next time you’ve got a naming brief, maybe give it to the junior team. Chances are they’ll crack it faster than anyone else.

Oh, and for the record, my catfishing worked. The team I hired was amazing then and is still doing amazing work now. They’ll both be superstars long after I hang up the marker pens to go dangle a hook in the water.

Catfish or not.

Rob Morrison was creative director at Ogilvy Australia for seven years and before that milestone, creative director at BWM (now BWM Dentsu), George Patterson Y&R (now VMLY&R), The Campaign Palace and Wunderman. He is now freelance at morrison.creative.