When I was at art school in New York, I knew a guy who was there on The GI Bill of Rights.
This meant he served his time in the armed forces, so Uncle Sam paid for him to go to college.
This guy had been a lieutenant in Vietnam.
He told me they had a really high mortality rate amongst Lieutenants.
One of the main reasons for this was ‘fragging’.
Fragging wasn’t enemy action.
It was your own troops.
What would happen is this.
A really gung-ho lieutenant would arrive from the States.
He’d be desperate to prove himself and he’d pick all the most dangerous missions for himself and his men.
Obviously the men didn’t like this.
The troops were all enlisted men and only had to survive their two-year stint.
They weren’t going to do this by taking unnecessary risks.
So they gave him a warning.
When he pulled the blankets off his bed that night, there would be a fragmentation grenade lying there.
As this was only a warning, the pin would still be in it.
So it wouldn’t explode.
Of course, if he ignored the warning, the next time it wouldn’t have the pin in.
So the only thing stopping it exploding was the weight of the blanket.
And when he flipped the blanket back he, and the evidence, would disappear.
Of course, that only happened to lieutenants who didn’t listen to the warning.
But it did happen.
I think that’s the most important thing about warnings.
Don’t make any that you aren’t prepared to carry out.
Otherwise, the very first time you make a threat and don’t follow through, everyone knows your threats are always empty.
Far better to think first.
If you threaten something, are you really prepared to carry it out?
I watched one of my son’s friends and his father once.
We were picking the two boys up from a bowling alley.
The boys asked us for some money to play the video games.
Both of us said the same thing.
“Okay, here’s £2 but that’s it.”
Both the boys came back when they’d spent it.
The other son said, “Dad, can I have some more.”
The father said, “Okay, another £2, but that’s it.”
He went away and came back, “Dad, can I have another £2.”
The father said, “You’ve already had £4.”
The son said “Please.”
The father said, “Okay but this is definitely the last.”
The son went away and came back for more.
The father gave him another £2 and said, “This is the last time, I really mean it.”
When my son and I left it was still going on.
What the father had trained the son to do was ignore what he said.
When he said no, it didn’t mean no.
It meant pester me and I’ll give in.
So that was their communication.
That’s why account men think all creatives are drama-queens.
Constantly making threats they don’t mean.
So it just comes across as whining.
Threatening not to work on the account.
Threatening not to make the changes to the script.
Threatening not to go on the shoot.
Threatening to let the account man edit the commercial himself.
Threatening to resign the business.
They aren’t going to do any of those things.
Everyone knows it.
So all they do by saying it, is train the account men to ignore them.
Isn’t it better to only make threats you’re prepared to carry out?
Like calling the client yourself, say.
Think first, would you do it?
If you would then it’s okay to threaten it.
Or leave and get another job?
Do you mean it?
If so it’s okay to threaten it.
That way everyone, including you, knows you mean what you say.
Like fragging.
One warning, then you carry out the threat.
Which is why the threat has power.
Imagine if the officer opened the covers on his bed and there was a fragmentation grenade with the pin it.
Then the next night the same thing.
Then the next night the same thing.
After a week or so, it wouldn’t even be a threat.
Just an irritation.
Someone has to know when you say something you mean it.
Otherwise don’t say it.
Think of it as truth in advertising.
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I must try to remember the SOP. Pin in first. Pin out after
I once had a junior suit from South Afria
He gave me a list of things to write in the copy
Which I did
I even ticked against the boxes myself
But when G saw the copy, he rejected it
Why?
Because the points in the copy did not appear in the same sequence as what was written in the brief
“This copy is useless,” he screamed
Never mind that it was a last-minute job and I had helped him out
All he did was go on and on
“I can’t present this, it’s useless,” he went on and on
“You sure?” I asked
When he said yes, I took a lighter and burned the copy in front of him
Left a horrid carbon footprint, I know
But if someone insists that something I’ve done is useless, the least I can do is help get rid of the trash
Didn’t make me very popular
the trouble is, if you have to actually quit or commit murder, in order for people to believe your threat! then you’ll be at another agency next time you make that threat? with no real knowledge that you’re serious! so you’ll have to quit again to prove it. basically, never threaten to quit. the others are fine though.
When my first child was born, he cried all night and neither my wife nor I got up for him.
I felt awful at the time, but my wife said “leave him, let him cry”, so I did.
Although I must admit, leaving my baby crying broke my heart until…
Four weeks later, the crying subsided and he slept through almost every night.
This way, when he cried subsequently, we knew it was genuine. Not attention-seeking.
A friend who had her first child same time as my wife was going away.
She needed someone to babysit for a week, and we obliged.
It was a nightmare because her one year old cried every night. He was exhausting.
Reason? Because every time he cried they attended to his every need.
Result? He didn’t sleep through one whole night for three and a half years!!!!!!
The friend’s wife ended up with serious depression. Dad became like the one above.
As time went on nobody wanted to babysit for them anymore.
They lost their friends because they gave in.
One warning is enough for anyone.
Then as you say, it has to be followed up by action, or the warning is pointless.
I’ve handed it out on occasions, and I’ve been on the receiving end on occasions.
I respect those who did it to me, and those I had to do it to, still respect me.
It’s not something I enjoy doing, but I’m not afraid to do it.
When people try to mess me around, I tell them straight:-
“You’re not going to like this but I have to tell you the truth because I don’t lie to you.”
I have found people really respect that, and respond by returning the truth back,
which sometimes can be most enlightening.
@hmmmmm
Rather agree with what you said.
Either no one knows what you’ve done,
Or your ‘rep’ precedes you.
And even though creative peers might admire your deeds, management generally takes a dim view.
It’s Ok if someone on the Board has done some crazy deed
But it’s not so Ok if a non-Board member, non-employee does something notable.
For years, Finkie was remembered - and censored - for the tree-out-the-window stand at WCRS.
Bit drastic.
But sometimes, when trying to make a point with someone stupid, the fastest cure is something drastic.
When Neil French was ECD at O&M Singapore, the account director on The Singapore Army account presented him with a piece of artwork that had to go out for film making straight away. (This happened in the eighties - long before digital artwork and electronic transmission.)
The ad was a typical Neil French long copy special which featured a paratrooper at the bottom right hand corner of the page and the the parachute at the top left hand corner. At the account director’s insistence the finished artist had carefully drawn lines right through the bodycopy clearly attaching the parachute to the paratrooper.
Neil French freaked. What the hell was the point of drawing lines straight through his carefully honed text? The account director insisted that the ad should clearly depict that the parachute was indeed connected to the paratrooper, otherwise the ‘target audience wouldn’t understand’. French demanded that the artwork be redone, keeping his copy absolutely pristine as it was perfectly obvious from the context of the ad that the parachute belonged to the paratrooper. The account director refused saying that there was no time - the ad was already late for the filmmaker.
French picked up the artwork, carefully pasted up on a nice thick piece of CS10 art board, and snapped it in half across his knee. (CS10 board makes a wonderfully satisfying “kerrrak” sound when it is broken.) “Better get cracking on redoing it then,” he said.
I’m not advocating doing crazy things.
I’m saying that we should align our speech and our actions.
So don’t say we’re going to do something we’re not going to do.
We make the threat because it satisfies our short-term emotional response.
But when we become rational we can’t carry it through.
It’s a bit like car alarms going off and no one taking any notice.
Because we’ve all got used to false alarms.
Dave Trott forced to step in after crazed blog followers misunderstand post about not being afraid to carry out threats and start posting accounts of arson and child abuse. lol.
@Vessel
Small correction.
Since the ‘arson’ and ‘child abuse’ were pre-Dave’s blog, it doesn’t qualify as follower.
And in ‘fire bug’s’ case, it wasn’t the creative guy who did the threat.
It was the suit who said the work was no good and threatened not to sell it.
I neither like reading about war, nor do i like football. But I still do like reading your blog Dave. There is always a lesson to be found. Your posts are based on experience and observation. I can find universal truths in them. It inspires me. Long story short — I am trying to compliment you.
This post made me comment, because for me, it teaches an important lesson: Don’t risk losing your credibility. You would have a hard time earning it back. If you get a chance at all.
Thanks Maggie,
That’s a very nice compliment.
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-87.html
Thank you Dave
ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO READ THIS IF YOU DIDN’T READ ON ANOTHER POST:
I recently had the privilege of working with an organisation which assists people of varying disability. In preparing my recommendations, I researched best-practices for online ‘accessibility’.
I discovered that a unique font has been created by Fontsmith specifically for the visually impaired and people with other reading disabilities (primardyslexia etc.).
It is called FS Me. Visit http://www.fontsmith.com
This is how they describe the font on their website:
FS Me is designed to aid legibility for those with learning disability. FS Me was researched and developed in conjunction with - and endorsed by - Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disability. Mencap receive a donation for each font licence purchased.
That’s a great initiative. However, currently the font is only usable in print and can only be used online as an image-based element. In other words, it can’t be used as online text.
Isn’t that a great shame? So I am wondering this:
Is the font FS Me that much more helpful to those who need it most? If so, should the digital communications industry be lobbying to have it encrypted/encoded for internet text use?
I would love to know what has been done (if anything) and what can be done to make it happen.
It doesn’t make sense that the many government and charity based websites that need to be most accessible can’t use the text that is reputed to be the most legible.
Maybe it has already been debated and a conclusion arrived at. If that’s the case, my friends in the disabled access community are not aware of it.
I know that as long ago as 2003, Wired ran a story (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/10/60834) about a Dutch designer, Natascha Frensch who was close to releasing a similar font, called Regular Reader.
This is an extract from the article:
Without these enhancements, the traditional fonts used on the Web and in newspapers, books and magazines can contribute to letter-reversal errors and other problems commonly associated with visual dyslexia.
According to the U.K.-based Dyslexia Research Trust, as many as 10 percent of English readers have some form of dyslexia, a learning disorder thought to be caused by a combination of genetic, immune and nutritional factors.
Although most children have trouble with letter reversal when first learning to read, dyslexics often continue to have problems as they grow older.
“All beginning readers make letter reversals,” primarily before age 6, said John Stein, founder of the Dyslexia Research Trust. “However, 50 percent of child dyslexics at age 8 complain of visual problems including letter reversals.”
Stein believes specialized typefaces can help combat the symptoms of dyslexia, especially if the fonts are used in large print and do not have serifs, the tiny lines that project from the bodies of letters in many common type styles.
Currently, many dyslexia-friendly websites use the sans-serif Arial typeface. But like other potentially problematic typefaces, Arial uses similar forms for the letters b and d, p and q, and u and n.
Some organizations, like the University of Edinburgh Disability Office, have tried using the Comic Sans typeface instead. But the thick and asymmetrical characters that make up Comic Sans often are considered to be too whimsical for professional use.
However, if you go to Natascha Frensch’s own website for the font, she uses Microsofts Verdana, because her ‘more legible’ font cn only be used as a visual element. http://www.readregular.com/english/intro.html
There’s a lot of activity going on but no satisfactory results. dyslexic.com reports on efforts by Microsoft which fall short of best practice in terms of editable text online. Read about from this link.
http://www.dyslexic.com/articlecontent.asp?CAT=Dyslexia%20Information&slug=67&title=Typefaces%20for%20Dyslexia
They say:
Britain has two million severely dyslexic individuals, including some 375,000 schoolchildren. 10% of people using ‘Romance’ languages are coping with a reading difficulty. Dyslexia is a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect the learning process, displaying a wide range of difficulties. Dyslexia can occur despite normal intellectual ability and teaching, and it is independent of socio-economic or language background. The British Dyslexia Association
There has been growing innovation to combat dyslexia, especially for children, in the form of computer software. However, relatively little design research has been done in the area of typography and type design that might support dyslexics. Read Regular is a typeface designed specifically to help people with dyslexia read and write more effectively.
Read Regular aims at preventing a neglect of dyslexia, creating a more confident feeling regarding the problems that occur with dyslexia.
As I see it, the big online issue is as follows: most public sector and charity websites have a requirement for self content management. The WAI ratings are self-assessed as long as you follow the guideline. So achieving best practices is not only a variable, it falls short of the opportunity, given that there are fonts available that are more user-friendly than those available to the communications industry. I feel sure that it wouldn’t cost Microsoft that much to make one of these font available.
All you agency colleagues out there in WPP-land, have a word with your global client.
Dave, I find almost all of your posts highly readable. I learn something all the time. This post is bigger than you think. Well, I don;t know what you think. But I think what you pointed out is what has in some ways destroyed our business. Lawyers are still in control of their kingdom. I have several lawyers in my family. They don’t love their jobs. But they are very careful not to undermine their positions. If they did they wouldn’t be able to charge an arm and a leg and more. Creative people are part time idiots in comparison. Sadly enough. Keep educating us all.