Whenever you’re talking about creativity, you’re never just talking about what you’re talking about.
Creativity is like water, it flows everywhere.
Here’s an example.
When I talk to students about what they should do to get a job, people think I’m just talking to students.
But actually, the same principles apply to any situation that will benefit from creativity.
See, most students trying to get a job are terrified of doing the wrong thing.
So they sit around and think about it.
Someone suggests something different, and straight away they think of how that might piss off creative directors, so they’d better not do it.
Imagine that for a creative person.
Their major goal is to not piss anyone off.
Well how you do that is by not doing anything.
And that’s what they do.
Nothing.
So that’s what happens.
Nothing.
Simple equation: no risk, no reward.
Another example.
Winston Churchill decided to take up painting.
So he bought the paints, the easel, the brushes, the stool, everything.
And when he’d bought it all he sat in the garden, looked at the view, and tried to paint.
But he couldn’t quite decide where to put the first stroke.
Should he put the structure in first, or should he put the biggest object in?
Should he put the dynamic perspective lines in, or decide the parameters of the picture first?
3 hours later he still hadn’t put a single stroke on the canvas.
His wife brought him a cup of tea and saw him looking at it.
So she just picked up the brush and put a big black stroke down the middle of the white canvas.
Churchill said, “What have you done, you’ve ruined it?”
She said, “Well now you’ll just have to fix it, won’t you.”
And he started painting.
And eventually he became a really good painter.
But like most of us, he was looking for a risk-free way to start.
Peter Wood, the guy who founded and built Direct Line, and then founded and built eSure once told me his motto.
He said, “Do it, then fix it as you go.”
In other words, don’t just sit around waiting until everything is perfect, because it never will be.
Just jump straight in and get started.
And as you notice things that aren’t right you can change them.
But if you wait, you’ll think of too many reasons not to do anything.
The film director Alan Parker said, “On a film set you’ll always have to choose between two ways of shooting something.
The worst thing you can do is sit around thinking about it.
Because you’re wasting time and money, while the actors and crew sit around doing nothing.
And when you’ve done all the thinking you’re no nearer to solving it.
So the best thing is just pick one route and go for it.
Then you can change it as you see whether or not it’s working.”
So doing something is nearly always better than doing nothing.
The American General, George C. Patton said, “A good plan today, is better than a great plan tomorrow.”
Because, by waiting until everything’s perfect, we lose the opportunity.
And we lose the two most important things we’ve got: time and energy.
That’s why I always tell the account men and planners, “I’d rather have a wrong brief early, than the right brief late.”
That way, we can at least be working on it.
So we’re not wasting time.
The chances are the eventual brief won’t be a million miles away from what we first thought, anyway.
And meanwhile, the creative dept can be having ideas, and researching executions, that might also work for the different brief.
When students ask me what they should do, I tell them the answer is always the same.
“Everything” and “Now.”
And the answer for students is the same as the answer for all of us.
RSS Feed
Twitter
Email
Another inspiring post. Now excuse me, am off to do everything…now!
Hi Dave.
Will you be my dad? I’ll still see my biological dad at Christmas and birthdays but for the rest of the year I’m free.
As I dither over how to begin my short story, I read this and gain new impetus. Now all I need is a laptop. Do you do discounted electrical goods as well as inspirational posts Dave?
Of course, I remember talking to Tony Davidson and one of the things he said. There are so many people thinking of stuff, and having ideas. But the great people are who actually do stuff and make things come true. It’s all about doing.
another analogy with music:
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-9.html
This reminds me of something the writer Isabel Allende said: “The only way to write a great book is to write a terrible one.”
Hemingway: the first draft of anything is shit.
Hi Dave,
There’s a great little book about Japanese bureaucracy called “Straitjacket Society: An Insider’s Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan”. There’s a section in it where the author, Dr. Masao Miyamoto, talks about the restriction of ideas and the fear of taking risks and how they’d rather play it safe than do something that could be brilliant. It’s well worth a read (couldn’t find it on Amazon UK):
http://www.amazon.com/Straitjacket-Society-Insiders-Irreverent-Bureaucratic/dp/4770018487
Guy.
Inspiring post Dave. We were working on our book today and have been struggling with this certain idea. Not until we decided to “just do it” then we realised the initial ideas we thought were good, are in fact aren’t that good but we managed to fix it along the well and came up with a better idea.
It’s so easy to forget this one fundamental rule, as we have been reminded over and again to “just do it!”. Thanks Dave for reminding us again!
Guess that’s why so many creatives are so last-minute?
Can’t decide where to start so we wait til the 11th hour, when we have no choice.
That’s what I do these days.
Not that I don’t think. I do.
But I put nothing to paper til the last minute.
On another note, I seemed to have POed some CDs.
Thanks again.
I agree entirely about needing risk to get reward and the value of action.
But surely there are some times when it would be wasteful to use up resource on something that could be wrong (particularly where going down one route could make fixing difficult), whereby the action/fix is in terms of the route you choose?
You will disappoint in subtle, often unnoticed ways, if you deliver excellence to people who requested mediocrity
Best wishes
Rob,
Dave told me about this rule of thumb that I’ve been using ever since. It’s Colin Powell’s 40/70 principle: When you have 40% of the information or more, you have enough to make a decision and act. If you wait until you have 70% or more, you’re probably too late and the likelihood is that your opponent has already acted and gained an advantage.
Hello Dave,
This is the best piece of advice I’ve gotten from anyone so far. From a student’s point of view, many of us feel like the first draft should be very close so it doesn’t feel like someone is holding our hand too much. Or like you said, pissing off a CD will get us blacklisted. But in the end, I guess you can’t produce anything original unless you try.
thanks again
Hi Rob.
The founder of Nike had a mantra. “Make sure your bow-wave is bigger than your wake.”
(sorry Jamie)
My take on this is that in order to reduce your wake (mistakes) you have to drastically reduce your speed, and so you also reduce your bow wave (progress).
Put another way, two steps forward and one step back is good enough ratio for me.
At least I’m a step ahead of where I started
Tony Davidson at Wiedens uses a lot this Schumacher quote:
“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough”
Also, didn’t you post something about John Webster prefering to have something ‘usable’ than ‘brilliant’ at the end a working day? wise.
I couldn’t agree more, Dave. As google puts it “We’re always in Beta”.
I have a question, though, what about burning out? I think many of us, youngsters, are afraid of exposing ourselves because it’s hard to recover a CD’s trust.
No matter what most agencies websites say, I think advertising people is highly judgmental of attempts to explore new ideas and making mistakes.
great advice dave. richard branson advocates a somewhat similar philosophy. waiting for the “ideal” circumstances is fatal.
Jeremy.
If you spend all your time making sure you don’t upset anyone, you may have a lot of creative directors that don’t object to you.
No one hates you, but no one loves you.
And you’re unlikely to stand out from the crowd just by being unobjectional.
I’ve always found polarising people works.
If you polarise people you may find a lot of creative directors hate you, but one absolutely loves you.
And you only need one job.
Of course you have to be a lot braver to go that route.
Incidentally, it works exactly the same way with advertising.
Dave / Ant: Good answers.
I pretty much entirely agree, I just suspect there will be a small number of times when the cost of error is so high, that taking action to get to go from 40% to 50/60% as quick as possible might be better. Where half a step forward is better than falling over trying to make 2 steps.
I am always sceptical of any rule that is implied to ALWAYS be right. It might be 99% of the time, but that still not every time.
Rob.
I agree with you (as would Hume) about nothing being ALWAYS right.
But I’m a pragmatist, and I work on the rule of Diminishing Marginal Returns.
Imagine a graph with RETURN along the upright axis and EFFORT along the horizontal axis.
Now starting at 0 draw a parabolic curve upwards towards the right.
Pick a point about 3/4 up the curve.
Below that point. you get a bigger return for a smaller effort.
Above that point you get a smaller return for a larger effort.
For me, the return involved in the later part of that curve doesn’t justify the effort.
For me, it makes more sense to put all your effort into the first part of the curve.
(Roughly speaking, the 80-20 rule in advertising terms.)
[...] http://cstadvertising.com/blog/2009/02/18/do-it-then-fix-it/ [...]
I think that’s definitely the right logic. It stands up as being the right thing to do in almost everything I can think of.
Let’s just be wary of saying that waiting for assurance is never ever right.
Everybody has to decide that for themselves Rob: the assurance you get versus the time you lose.
For me, it’s too easy to lapse into procrastination.
Mike Gold once gave me a simple equation that’s always worked for me.
“Is what you get worth what it costs?”
Sir Martin would be proud of that one!
““Is what you get worth what it costs?”
…and the fact that many people forgot to consider that question was probably the real cause of this crisis.
Buying one house at the price of two was completely unsound.
Having to generate the money this scenery required was the safe road to hell.
“Straitjacket Society: An Insider’s Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan”.
Thanks Guy for the book reference. My agency is Japanese owned. In these uncertain times risk is increasingly frowned upon in the agency. The fire for proactivity seems to have gone out. I want to try and reignite it. The ‘do it, fix it’ idea sounds great in principle but in practice, I fear I will have to fall on my sword.
I think only actual examples of agencies taking this approach to deliver great work will make them listen. Dave - do you have any examples?
Dave and Rob -
I’m not much of a brainbox at graphs, charts or anything with numbers in, so excuse me if this is a daft question…
Do you think the rule of the diminishing marginal returns is at odds with some advice a brilliant ex-CD of mine gave me? He said that to achieve success (in anything), at the very moment you’re about to give up on something - that’s the exact point where you need to double your efforts. It always seemed to me like great advice, but now I’m wondering if there’s an element of wasted effort in there…?
James - Droga5’s Tap Project was an idea Dave Droga proactively took to Unicef. Unicef loved it and together they made it a reality. It’s saved millions of lives so far and has contributed to Droga5’s fame.
Ant,
It is definitely at odds with your ex CD’s advice.
A lot of people would agree with him.
But it never worked for me.
I think everyone has to find what works for them.
As Damon Runyon said (sorry Jamie) “Difference of opinion is what makes horse races.”
Where is your agency James: UK or SE Asia?
I don’t want to give you examples you won’t have seen
Hi Dave. In the UK. Majority of the work we do (75%) is for the UK market, the rest Pan-Euro. Thanks in advance for your help.
Don’t worry about who owns the water, worry about who owns the cups
Thanks Ant
Good luck James
Ah, fair enough, Dave. Thought you might be interested to hear how my ex-CD described his method: he likened it to the classic beat-the-casino system. Basically, playing roulette, every time you lose, you simply double you stake and go again. That way, you absolutely can’t lose - unless you run out of stake money (or effort).
Ant.
The other side of the casino system, of course, is not knowing when to walk away, as you say in the last line.
James.
An example of “do it, then fix it” is the Carling TV campaign.
I assume research told them that young male drinkers like to feel part of a group.
So, in year one, they did starlings swooping around together with the strapline “Belong”.
Not great maybe, but at least it got the campaign up and running.
Then, in year two, they did the ‘astronauts/doorman’ and ‘explorer/birthday’ TV campaign, with the strapline “You know who your friends are”.
A really good campaign this time.
Certainly year two was better than year one.
But they wouldn’t have got to year two without year one.
So that’s an example of, ‘do it, then fix it’.
Likewise the Honda Power of Dreams campaign, they did the ‘OK’ ad first, which wasn’t great. But it lead to work like Cog and Grr.
[...] 20, 2009 · No Comments Do it, then fix it is a blog post from ad guru Dave Trott. In it he comments on something I agree with wholeheartedly. [...]
T Shirt. I might not be mister right but I’ll gladly **** you until he comes along
Yeah, true Dave. I suppose everyone has to come to their own decision about when walking away is the right thing to do - and when it’s giving up too soon. That’s the difficult bit - because the longer you stay at the table, the higher the stakes get.
Thanks Dave and Rob. I really appreciate your thoughts. It has stirred me into action. What I have found interesting are examples of fixes, that have been undone. I loved the Orange film funding board work last year, to then fall out of love with the brand when I saw wicked witch.
James - re. the wiked witch: I think Orange did it, then fixed, now it’s broken again.
That’s a fairly quickening post - i really enjoyed it.
One thing’s being afraid of starting, but I guess the flip side is being afraid of finishing.
That’s what Da Vinci suffered from - he feared not being able to achieve perfection.
And that’s why he realised agonisingly few of his stunning ideas.
Only 20 complete paintings if his survived, and he was still working on the Mona Lisa when he died.
So says this interesting read - worth checking: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rjbfxt41952gdmf