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June 12, 2008

Better Books, Please

I sat down with a young guy recently to review his book. He'd gone to a good, graduate level creative school. I liked him. Turns out we had some commonalities in our life and background.

But nothing about his portfolio of work excited me. It looked like so many others I see. There were spec print ads that used quirky visual solutions – but not in a very sophisticated way. There were the out-of-home guerilla-ish ideas. Books these days are often so formulaic, it's unbelievable.

So, as nicely as I could, I asked him if he ever did digital work – anything on the Web. "Oh, yeah, I love that stuff. But I've been told to keep that stuff out of my book because it will just typecast me. I'll get stuck just being a Web guy." Typecast? The fastest way to be typecast is to show work that's not reflective of our current reality and where the world is headed. This guy should get a refund on his tuition because his professors gave him such profoundly bad advice.

A creative book is, after all, simply a means of showing a prospective employer how you think. How you solve problems. What kind of intelligence and insight you bring to a creative challenge. I suppose it does level the playing field to some degree when all books have essentially the same kinds of work. Then it's all about the quality of the ideas – the creative thought – rather than how it's delivered.

Except that's presuming that how and where you tell a story – and in what combinations – isn't nearly as important as what you say. I know there are agencies out there whose go-to media continues to be TV, print and radio. At DDB, our world is very different. And we need to see candidates who reflect a new way of tackling the world. How do they think about sight, sound and motion in a digital age? What about social media? What about surrounding your audience rather than using a single media in hopes of snagging them? Imagination in the delivery of ideas is a lot about what creativity is these days. It's what makes campaigns greater than the sum of the individual executions.

Well, if your book is tradition bound, it's going to be tough to excite us. Some of the people I've been most excited about hiring recently are those people who clearly understand communications in this digital age, but also have the knowledge, desire and skill to ideate in traditional media. They know how to bring it all together. To surround an idea.

Without those skills, a candidate isn't likely to find a job here.

Oh, and don't just assume I'm talking about creatives, either. The same is true if you plan to be a great planner, media strategist, or account person. It's a new day.

John_Livengood_Pfile.jpg
John Livengood, EVP/Executive Creative Director, DDB Seattle
Posted on June 12, 2008 7:16 PM |

Comments (4)

Brent Davis

I love your thoughts, but I still think there's more required of us in the next era of advertising than simply "surrounding" an idea. That feels claustrophobic to me. As does "capturing lightening in a bottle", or "thinking outside the box", or any other myriad cliches we're still relentlessly trying to freshen up in this business. Why must we repackage the old ideals of traditional media and then try to re-apply them to a new emerging media? Fuck that. I don't want to surround an idea. I want the idea to surround me. And then (no disrespect to Metallica), I want to ride that lightening all the way to the stupid box that everyone's so desperately trying to think outside of, and I want to set that fucking box on fire. We have to think of other ways to approach digital and experiential media, or it's all just going to wind up looking and feeling like TV infomercials, movie trailers, and radio commercials; essentially everything everyone really hates, deep down inside, even in the 21st century.

Posted by Brent Davis | July 12, 2008 3:11 AM

Alex Ayuli

Every brand has an inner core, what I like to call an 'essence'. Finding out and knowing what that is should be the only thing dictating how this essence is then communicated. Instinctively the best of us already know this. It's why an idea comes with media already attached to it. "Oh I thought of a great TV idea", or "this could only work on the web" etc. Too often inexperienced and poorly trained account managers, and insecure clients obfuscate these ideas, through second guessing and over-complicated and anal thinking. Fortunately this doesn't have to affect what goes into your book. Keep it simple, understand a brand's essence and then dramatize it in the media that speaks best for a particular execution.
Yes a great idea should be able to translate across any media, but does it always have to?

Alex Ayuli is an award-winning copywriter currently looking for a new opportunity. Contact him at tii@dreampop.com

Posted by Alex Ayuli | August 10, 2008 10:01 PM

linda

I liked what you said about the formula books follow today because I've been put to sleep or dropped a book after the first ten pages just for that reason. An imaginative thinker will take an idea beyond the expected and twist it so the emotions are touched which is when the viewer or reader reacts. Love and hate trigger action, propel humanity to rise and are the essence of life.

Posted by linda | August 27, 2008 9:07 PM

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