Cobblers’ children never have shoes on. Plumbers’ pipes are always leaky. And advertising creatives should know how to fix a positioning problem. But we don’t.
Indulge me for a moment. I want you to picture the toughest brief you’ve ever worked on. A dreadful product. Or a disinterested audience. A prickly client with unrealistic expectations. Minuscule budget. Blink-of-an-eye deadline. What’s the worst you’ve worked on?
Got your answer?
With all due respect, you’re wrong. Sure, selling ice to polar bears is tricky. So is flogging coal to Newcastle. But the toughest brief of every creative’s career never appears on an agency template.
It’s selling yourself.
Applying for gigs. Writing your site. Designing your folio. Big-noting your achievements on socials. Pitching yourself to Creative Directors. Or, for us freelancers, rattling loose the next big project. And the bad news is, it gets no easier later in your career.
Why is it so hard? Because, as creatives we make crap clients. We’re too close to our product. We shout everything and end up shouting nothing. We rush to an answer. We have no clue what our personal brand stands for. To put it as an Adland cliché, “We never give ourselves the freedom of a tight brief.”
So, if you were writing yourself a brief, what would that look like?
Let’s start with a bit of background. Selling creativity in Australian Adland is a mature market. George Patterson kicked it off in 1917. It’s cluttered – there are thousands of copywriters and art directors already here. Then 100+ freshies graduate from AWARD every year. And the decision-makers are fickle – every creative director seems to be looking for something slightly different.
Where do you start? So, here’s a sentence you won’t hear from me very often: Think like a planner. No, I don’t mean “Mission statements” or “Social Purpose” or “Brand pyramids” – although they can also be worthwhile exercises.
Just look for clear space.
What are you good at, that’s in demand, and very few others offer?
It’s not ‘Creativity’. Sorry, but that’s table-stakes. If you can’t deliver a big idea for a client, then you’re never going to get employed. You need to have visual skills. You need to be able to craft copy. And you need to be able to sell and defend your work – internally and externally.
It’s not ‘Personality’. The industry has never been short of characters – good and bad. I worked with a Porsche driving, table-tennis loving, transvestite. I also worked with a misogynistic hot head. And a work-avoiding Sir Lunch-a-lot.
It’s not even ‘Award-winner’. The industry gives out almost as much metal as Hollywood. So many shows. So many categories. Every creative CV and folio website is weighed down with long lists of gold, silver and bronze. You see a field of hood-ornaments behind every reception desk of every agency you visit.
Here’s a couple of unpopular suggestions.
You could own ‘Reliability’. Arrive on time. Deliver on deadline. Do your timesheets. Never complain about budgets or clients. Be the ‘can-do, go-to’.
You could own ‘Sociable’. Nice people like nice people. So, be friendly. Join every post work event – from touch football to pottery. Organise drinks after work. Engage. Network.
My brand? I’ve fiercely defended ‘Integrity’. Do what you say. Deliver when you agreed – if not early. Never pad timesheets or invoices. Be transparent. Admit when you’ve made a mistake. Don’t deflect. Don’t gaslight. Be honest above all else.
As ever, get the fundamentals right and the rest is much, much easier.
Someone should tell the plumbers and cobblers.
Rob Morrison is a rarity in advertising – a grey-haired creative. Rob’s experience includes time as a Creative Director at Ogilvy, BWM (now Dentsu Creative), George Patts (now VML), Campaign Palace and Wunderman. He now runs his own consultancy – morrison.collective.
Here are two more opinion pieces from Rob Morrison:
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