Creatives are occasionally – no, often – given a brief that is accompanied by the giver (sometimes a suit, sometimes a creative director) uttering the phrase, “We want something award-winning.”
It’s a sentence that’s intended to inspire and motivate. It makes me want to curl up in a ball under my desk.
Perhaps it works for some people. Actually, I know it does. I’ve seen it happen. I was at an agency where a brief was put out to all creative teams to come up with an ad for the launch of a promotional pack of processed meat. The dreaded phrase, “We want something award-winning” was uttered. No chance, we all thought. But then one team (link: http://www.blogilvy.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Mother-in-Law.jpg text: cracked it).
The creative process isn’t a science. By its nature it’s hit and miss. We should be trying new things, coming up with work no one has tried before. And it’s not always going to work. Clients aren’t always going to buy it. Budgets won’t always allow it. The variables are too many. We can’t always “make it award-winning”. If we could, every creative in the world would be at Cannes every year. And there isn’t enough alcohol in all of Europe for that to happen.
In an essay about writers and their quest for the perfect novel, Zadie Smith had this to say: “If it’s true that first-rate novels are rare, it’s also true that what we call the literary canon is really the history of the second-rate, the legacy of honourable failures.”
There’s that line by Samuel Beckett from “Worstward Ho”: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Freed of context, “fail better” has been reduced by overuse to the sort of simple line you might see on a motivational picture shared on Facebook. I don’t think it’s about “failing better” meaning that we necessarily improve every time we try. A little later in the same piece, “fail better” is repeated and it’s meaning made a little clearer: “Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good.”
We just have to be dogged. We just have to keep going. Because there’s always another brief. There’s a new one on my desk today and there’ll be another there tomorrow.
In coming up with great creative, as in life, all we can do is try. Again and again. We have no choice but to. And sometimes, it’ll all come together.
In our quest for the perfect campaign, we might not always get there but we keep trying. Some of us achieve it. And what is the perfect piece of creative? What are its criteria? (youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI text: Apple’s 1984 ad)?
Most of us would agree that it’s pretty much perfect. But there are only a handful of such ads. Volvo Trucks’ Epic Split?
(youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10)
T-Mobile Dance?
(youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM)
It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, the results are spectacular.
Keith Reinhard, Chairman Emeritus of DDB Worldwide, wrote: “It is the nature of creative talent to venture beyond the known. Also because there are no assurances that these idea-searching patrols will succeed, the seekers must be granted the latitude to fail in order to sustain their willingness to try again.”