We tend to attach logos to the ends of our accomplishments in branding. I’d like to look at the last 29 years, however, as experiences (plural) rather than experience (singular). There is a big difference.
Consistency in performance means the difference between surviving and succeeding in sports and it will do the same for you in this business as well. I don’t believe in rules but I have followed two mantras:
• Make it stupidly simple.
• Tell a good story.
Those two things have delivered me from evil year after year, boss after boss, client after client, agency after agency, city after city, job after job.
This is not an old school ode to all of the change I’ve seen or how the Mac replaced everything from spray mount to typesetters to T-squares to color separators. This is not an R&B tune about how I used to go home with little letters stuck to my butt.
This is not a eulogy to the ancient days when there was no email, no iChat, no IM, no cell phone, no PDA, no digital or HD. Nor is this the old scraggly riff about cutting strips of 35mm film with razorblades on a flatbed editing machine before Avids and Final Cut Pro or looking at transparencies on a lightbox with a loop.
No one cares about that. Water under the toilet bowl. This business is like playing football. It’s fun, but it’s a brutal game. People get hurt. Some die. It can wreck your life if you don’t pay attention. Some observations:
You can’t play forever. Your shoulders will give you trouble. Your knees will go. Your back will hurt like bad egg salad left out overnight. Great players sometimes end up working at malls in the hinterlands. People talk about Brett Favre like he’s 107 because of the business he’s in. This business is like his.
You will lose more than you win and if losing bothers you, get into another line of work.
There are ups and downs and one is no different than the other. Steve Spurrier once said (I paraphrase), “Never treat a win any differently than a loss because you have another game in 6 days.” Don’t despair – prepare.
There are few things more interesting than the honest mechanics of building an idea that works. Respect ideas, especially the ones that make you nervous. Absorb everything around you. Be wary of too much organization because ideas are like Jack Russells, they tend to follow their own noses.
Learn from your friends and enemies. Sometimes in this business, they are the same people. Avoid abusive people and micromanagers, they will shorten your career and blame you for their stupidity.
It’s quite possible that a British accent is worth an extra ten grand a year in the U.S. (Australian or South African works too).
Hang out with young people. Hang out with old people. Maybe avoid the people in the middle. Hang out with plumbers. The last person you need at midnight when your toilet is water-falling is a copywriter or a media buyer.
Awards make you smile. Results make you employable.
Don’t be arrogant. If you think this is the most important job in the world and you are special because you did a cool campaign or a killer website or a brilliant Super Bowl TV spot or got in CA or Cannes, go to Haiti for a while (ask Dee Briggs). Perspective is a wonderful thing.
Oh, one more. If you don’t have a dog, this business will be tough. If you have a dog, this one makes sense. If you don’t have a pooch, get one, you’ll see.