jonathannausner

jonathan nausner

in no particular order: ideas, creativity, inspiration, storytelling, strategy, planning, the blurry borders of analogue and digital, berlin, advertising and whatever will be next. about | books | links | archive
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The Au Strikes Back

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I started thinking about the earlier post some days ago and nodded very loudly to Rob Campbell’s observation that „Strategy Stops Stupid“, which I hereby recommend.

To conclude my argument, here is what happens when you let creatives alone in a room secluded from normal people for too long:

Now, if you look past all the CGI and terrible directing, what do we communicate if we show that nature preserve we want people to rescue as a terrible danger straight out of a horror movie?

I, for one, need to buy a chainsaw, matches and a canister of gas.
Someone needs to stop the stupid.

But I still think it’s a Good Idea

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Working in teams with the creatives here at Miami Ad School in Hamburg, I have a strong feeling of deja vu – of me as a young copywriter. The one defining lesson I took from my experience in the creative field was how much you can fall in love with what you believe is a great idea. But, truth be told, it is not a good idea – no matter how eloquently you post-rationalize it. The memory of me as a bad copywriter is my constant reminder how important the third person in the middle is to ask, „Does this really work?“.

A quote from a discussion this week: „I know it goes against all the values of the brand, but I want to present it anyway.“ So what do you think will happen? That miraculously the client throws over board all his prior considerations and picks your idea? That would not a the brave client, that would be a stupid client.

Now there is proof you can make a client brave and bold, but you need substance and strategy that make sense for the client, not for yourself, not for the idea. I am still amazed how many of the seemingly crazy ideas (Old Spice guy) have obvious and clear strategy behind them (we need to address married middle-aged women because they make the bodywash decisions for their husbands, often choosing lady-scented varieties). Planning gruntwork and great creative helped P&G take a controlled risk, not a leap of faith.

Creatives have it tough. Idea after idea after idea rejected, buried, killed. Every meeting a rendezvous with the guillotine for your most brilliant work to date. I get why they hate it. I’d hate it, too. But all the great clients are usually the toughest clients with meetings that can be summarized (according to folks I met) as „Great! Your best work, ever! – Make it better.“ To steal and paraphrase a quote from Winston Churchill: „Great creative is the result of going from one rejected idea to another with no loss of enthusiasm“. Creative is more about letting go many ideas than coming up with one perfect idea.

That said, being aware of the creative’s fragile mind I avoided to kill off the idea of the prior quote: I will let the person present their great idea personally, if they show up on time. Which they never did at any of our meetings. I rest assured we will not be wasting our client’s time in the meeting.

links for 2010-07-17

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links for 2010-07-13

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links for 2010-07-08

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Recent Reading: Das Jetzikon

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After having to read highlights of the romance genre, such as Kathleen Woodiwiss‘ The Flame and the Flower, Cecilia Ahern’s The Gift or Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables for purely academic reasons, on my extended train ride to Hamburg I got to read a piece I enjoy.

Das Jetzikon: 50 Kultobjekte der nuller Jahre by German journalists Tobias Moorstedt and Jakob Schrenk discusses the social artefacts of our modern (specifically German speaking) society in the first ten years of the 21st century. Artefacts that suddenly were relevant to society: USB Sticks, iPods, Coffee-to-Go cups, Crocs etc. They shed light on the historical facts, and reflect on their impact on society. It’s quite an entertaining read (in German) and sometimes insughtful, too.

The most interesting thought I found in the introduction: The US-anthropologist Timothy Jones, who examined contemporary waste dumps like archeologists would examine ancient sites, concludes „that there will be less information available about today’s society than about the Romans“. Most of the remnants of our society leave no clue as to what their purpose might have been.
I never thought about this that way. We produce more stuff in the least biodegradable materials than ever, but in 2000 years how will people make sense of what they find.
Most information of our information overload is stored digitally and thus bound to vanish. Harddisks, CDs, USB Sticks can only store for a couple of years, then their content disappears. There will be no chiseled information of how we felt, what mattered, what we did, what we believed or what we blogged. So… whatever.