WORK

[Special guest post from WORK'S Cabell Harris]

This is the second in a series of guests posts from faculty at the VCU Brandcenter. Call us biased (we’re both alums), but we’re consistently blown away by the thinking coming out of that school. So we’ve invited faculty members to contribute content to Makin’ Ads. This is a guest post from Cabell Harris, former long-time teacher at the VCU Brandcenter. It is from his contribution to the book The Next Level "How to get ready for that first job in Advertising, Branding, CRM, Digital, Events, and More”

One of the major tasks for those looking to establish themselves in a creative career is understanding current professional standards – both the quality that is demanded and, simply put, how hard you have to work. Cabell Harris, has a company called WORK in Richmond, VA. He calls it “an agency for agencies.” Cabell has established his credentials with outstanding work and, rumor has it, outstanding work habits. Here are his words to the wise on this important topic.

 

Let’s roll up our shirtsleeves, grab another cup of coffee and get to work.

You are probably well aware that our little agency, WORK, is not counted among the mega-agencies in the modern advertising world.  That suits me just fine. I have had the opportunity to work for many of the larger agencies in either a full-time capacity or as a freelance resource. As a result, I have a wealth of valuable insight into what works and what doesn't at the places where you’re looking for work.

The good news. My valuable advice is free – or, more accurately, included in the price of this book. The bad news. Free advice is often worth what you pay for it.

Nonetheless, here are a few of my observations.

1.  Any agency that does good work or has done good work has a strong Creative Principle who has led by example. Think about it.

2.  If you want to see what work is going on in an Agency go to the studio. Whether it’s new business, research, planning, pitching or executing it’s moving through the studio. The best agencies have well-run studios.

3.  Large agencies often are encumbered by internal processes/approvals which make it very difficult to work quickly and efficiently.

4.  The business has changed from problem solving to opportunity seeking.

5.  The companies that spend the longest amount of time on process do the worst work.

6.  Every agency I believe has the same process, they just come up with different answers.

Who are you talking to?

o The audience

What do you want to tell them?

o The strategy

How do you tell them?

o The creative

   Where do you tell them?

o The media

Was it effective?

o The results

7.  You can find some very talented people in bad agencies. They just may not have the personalities or the opportunities that get them noticed. Or, perhaps, their goodness may be directed elsewhere. Perhaps they are good parents, or they make a truly exceptional vinaigrette dressing.

8.  All the great agencies have work that comes out of their doors that would shock you by how bad it is. Well, at least in the early years you may be shocked. Then, sad to say you are no longer surprised. Disappointed but not surprised.

9.  Egos are important for getting the job done. You must believe you can do the work. You must believe you can sell the work. Ultra egos make enemies ultra fast. But don’t leave your ego at the door. Bring it.

10.     The inexperienced individual will immediately argue and defend their one idea. Why? Because they are not confident they can come up with another. Experienced professionals will do what they can to protect good thinking but know they are capable of many solutions.

By far the most important difference I have found in companies or individuals is “Work Ethic.” I have often said that I would rather hire someone with a strong Work Ethic than talent. I have seen too many individuals with talent and potential be surpassed by one who is not easily satisfied and will just keep working.

I was going to stop there, but realized I needed to do a bit more work. So here are a few useful thoughts on the topic of work.

It's 5:01pm.

Your boss is out of town. You are still at your desk. Why?

OK. This is important. Your real boss isn’t the person with the company car. It's the person staring back at you in the mirror each morning. You understand a job isn't what you do, but how you do it. Your DNA has a strand dedicated to the work ethic. It's an ingrained code of accountability that can never be instilled through any employee video, seminar or retreat. You are wired with a commitment to what you know to be true. And your boss is looking over his shoulder.

Your job isn't as important as you think it is.

Your work, however, is an entirely different matter.

You are not defined by a job description. You are not defined by the title on your business card. And you are most certainly not defined by your location on the management chart. No. You are defined by the effort and pride that you put into your work. A job is why the floor gets scrubbed. Work is why it is clean enough to eat off of. Do not confuse your job with your work. It is much too important.

 Where do you keep your work ethic?

It can be on the end of a mop handle or the end of a scalpel. Work doesn't care. Work only cares about what's important; doing the job the right way. Work doesn't go for fancy slogans. An honest day's work for an honest day's wages is all it needs to hear. Work is hard-nosed. It will not be seated in the latest get-rich-quick seminar. Work doesn't want to be your friend. Work doesn't want to be glad-handed or slapped on the back. Work wants something much more important: your respect.

A job will behave like a job until told differently.

What is your job? To sell insurance or paint houses or market pharmaceuticals? You know better. Do not allow your job description to dictate what you do. Your real job is to challenge the expected. To give the conventional way of thinking a swift kick in the shin. Make your job more than anyone has ever imagined it could be. Too many jobs are content to sit in the easy chair and fall asleep in front of the television. Make today the day you give your job a wake-up call.

Is white-collar money more valuable than blue-collar money?

Money isn't a true measurement of anything that's important. A $100 bill is a $100 bill. It represents nothing more than its face value. Whether it was earned by someone sitting in a corner office on the 62nd floor in Manhattan or someone repairing railroad track in Wyoming. The true value of money comes from how it was earned. Was it acquired by cutting corners? Or by coming in early and staying late? Money doesn't care. But you do. And that makes all the difference.

Do you still work as hard when no one is watching?

How hard you work isn't a function of anyone looking over your shoulder. It is a matter of pride. Knowing that when your job is done, it will be done right. That is the beauty of this responsibility called work. It isn't so much a job as it is a philosophy. A code shared by everyone who has ever dug a ditch, worked on an assembly line, or written a sales report. There is no secret handshake that bonds us. Just a feeling of the right way vs. the half-assed way. You know what camp you're in.

Many young men and women dream of a career as a WORK employee. 

WORK is a place where people want to work – and it’s a well-earned reputation.  WORK’s door is always open to those who can meet the test that each one of us had to pass.  Those who make the grade can never say: “This is a dull, uninteresting life.”  WORK is always on the lookout in colleges, universities and “advertising schools” for young men and women who believe they have what it takes.  It is only fair to warn the prospect that a career at WORK is not for those who want an easy, sheltered life, just as the Marine Corps is not a place for anyone who is not ready to fight when called upon to do so. 

There is always danger in the pursuit of good advertising.  The hours can be long and draining.  The code of conduct is stern and demands more than some are willing to give.  The rewards often vary between slim and none. But at WORK, good work is its own reward. It’s kind of a 24/7 kind of thing.

Being a WORK man or woman has its rewards.  We are proud of the, as the French say, esprit de corps that exists at WORK.  Ours is a closely-knit, “team” organization.   Every member has clearly defined duties as well as a personal responsibility to his or her comrades.  If you believe you are one of those special few who can make the grade, take some time to send me an e-mal Cabell@worklabs.com Thank you.

OK, everybody. Back to work.

A quote from Samuel Johnson

"What is written without effort
is read without pleasure."

Doing vs. Reading About Doing

In her book Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg has this to say about doing vs. preparing to do:

"People often begin writing from a poverty mentality. They are empty and they run to teachers and classes to learn about writing. We learn writing by doing it. That simple. We don’t learn by going outside ourselves to authorities we think know about it. I had a lovely fat friend once who decided he wanted to start exercising. He went to a bookstore to find a book so he could read about it! You don’t read about exercise to lose weight. You exercise to lose those pounds."

Pick up your copy of Hey, Whipple. Make sure you go through the annuals. And sincere thanks for reading this blog. But if you want to come up with great ideas, go to work coming up with them.

Read this at 11:15 pm, right before you leave the office.

Advertising is notorious for keeping crazy hours. People work until 10. On Saturdays and Sundays. In some places, that’s just the culture. And it kind of makes sense, because logically, the more time you spend thinking about a project, the more ideas you’ll have, and the more refined and amazing they’ll be.

That’s how it works on paper, anyway.

But here’s an argument that’s also worth considering: In advertising we pride ourselves on the ability to draw from our own experiences to create really insightful, moving advertising. But by spending more of our time in the office under halogen lamps, the fewer real experiences we’re going to have, and the more our work may suffer.

Again, that’s theory. But it’s an argument we don’t really allow ourselves to hear in this industry.

I’m not saying don’t work late. Work the hours that work for you, if you can. And know that when you’re pitching an account, late hours are a given.

But beware of places where the culture is “work until nine, or you’re slacking.” Don’t avoid them. But beware of them. And no matter where you end up, when you start burning the midnight oil, ask yourselves if it’s really to make your ads better, or because you want the people in the cubes next to you to think you’re a hard worker.

Great creative is a badge of honor. But staying late shouldn't be.

"Constantly Being Out There"

Last week, I got to work with a musician who was at RISD about the same time Shepard Fairey was there. He said he remembered Fairey printing his Andre the Giant stickers and bringing boxes of them to the small concerts he loved attending. He’d give them to the band or to their road manager for free, provided they take them on their tour with them. That’s why, after a few years, with no paid advertising, these little stickers made by some design school kid in Providence began to appear all over the country.

I was in portfolio school the first time I heard about Fairey. It fact, I don’t even think I heard about him. What I heard was, “There’s this guy who makes these Andre the Giant stickers and gives them away for free. They’re pretty cool. Look, there’s one on the back of that stop sign over there.”

Years later, he’s the guy who designed the first presidential portrait to be purchased by the United States National Portrait Gallery before the President had been sworn into office.

What this former schoolmate of Fairey's told me was this: “I honestly don’t know if ‘Andre the Giant has a Posse’ is a great concept or not. It could be brilliant. It could be absurd. Maybe both, I don’t know. What I do know is that never quitting, and constantly being out there can make all the difference.”

Complaining

99% of the time, complaining is a waste of your time and energy.

There are rare instances when you might have to complain (say, if a client's abusive to juniors, but super pal-y with seniors). But in almost every instance I can think of, doing trumps complaining.

Don't like the feedback from your CD? Act on it anyway and see where it takes you.

Don't like the feedback from your client? Ditto.

Don't like the way your office operates? Figure out what you can do to change it.

Don't like the way your agency's run? Find another one.

Doing > Complaining

On Sloppiness

When a writer puts an ad on the wall in class, and it has THERE instead of THEIR, or when someone emails me a script that’s obviously missing a word, or a designer sends campaign or presentation layouts with inconsistent fonts, or a director sends a treatment with the product misspelled, it feels sloppy. Sloppy is different from an honest mistake. It’s different from an idea that isn’t quite working yet. Sloppy says that you didn’t take the time to do a quick read-through before you shared your work. Sloppy says that you had more important things to do. Sloppy says you don’t really care. It’s a pain in the ass to work with somebody who doesn’t care. Even on the crappy assignments, the ones that don’t stand a chance of ever going in your book, you should care about your craft and how it reflects on you.

So make mistakes. Just don’t be sloppy.

"You will be fierce. You will be warriors."

One of the greatest storytellers on the planet talks about what it takes to do creative work. Thanks to Kevin for his original post.

The New Yorker, iPhones, and Experimentation

Here's a video of a cover for The New Yorker created on an iPhone.

Consider how much detail the artist puts into what is eventually obscured. He makes a nice little crosswalk, a cue, and a couple taxis. Then covers them up with a hot dog stand and silhouettes in the foreground. That doesn't mean he was wasting his time.

I've seen a lot of portfolio students resist experimentation with tag lines, headlines, certain visuals and even media because they didn't think they'd be necessary. They have an idea of what the ad should be, so they stop working as soon as all their requirements are met.

The truth is you won't know if your ad needs a tag line until you've spent some serious time coming up with a sheet of the best lines you can write. And as much as you love that visual you came up with, you'll never know if it's the best until you try to come up with at least three that are even better.

Put in the time and effort to paint that crosswalk and those taxis. Who cares if they're covered up? It doesn't mean you wasted your time. It only makes the finished piece better.

My Ad Anthem

Just thought I'd share this song. For the last four years or so, it's kind of become my advertising anthem.

• Keep Mediocrity At Bay by Van Morrison

More Van Morrison music on iLike

Your Competition

Our friend Nate is also teaching at Miami Ad School this quarter, and he, Greg and I exchanged a few emails of advice and what to expect last week. In one of them, Greg said something that I think is really important and that students often forget (It applies to people in an agency too. It’s easy to compare yourself to your coworkers and nobody else.):

I usually found that midway or 2/3rds of the way through the term, students had kind of figured out how to coast. Come in with some kind of interesting ideas, listen to the instructor, revise them a little bit, start to lay them out and they look a little like ads. Almost every term I'd have to have a break-them-down-to-rebuild-them meeting where I'd do two things:

1) I'd have them look at a CA or One Show annual in class. Spend about 5 minutes with it. And then have them examine their absolute best (usually comped-up) work and honestly say whether or not it belonged.

2) Point out that their competition for a job isn't in that classroom (it's very easy to start to rank yourself among your peers). The competition is coming from Richmond, and Atlanta, and Miami and wherever any of those ad schools are, plus all the talented juniors who are still looking for work. No one can afford to coast.

First you have to: Read this post

If you're not reading Steven Pressfield's Writing Wednesdays blog, you're missing out. Even if you're an art director or a designer. What he says will apply to you, too.

Read today's post. He nails it.

Fawlty Reasoning

Recently I was watching an interview with Monty Python’s John Cleese, and he was talking about the success of Fawlty Towers. (If you’re not familiar with the show, you’re missing out.) Even though there were only 12 episodes, Cleese claims that Fawlty Towers has actually become more popular than Monty Python everywhere but the US where It mostly runs on PBS.

He says the one of the reasons Fawlty Towers was so successful was “because we worked so hard on it.”He and his co-writer/then wife, Connie Booth were writing scripts that were 135 pages long. When their producer told them the average 30-minute script was only 60 pages, they continued to write more than double the amount.

If anything needed to be cut, they could leave the best bits in. But it turned out they crammed in everything, giving the show a faster pace, which hadn’t really been seen on BBC comedies before.

Cleese says he and Booth would spend about six weeks on each script. The first three weeks were in developing the plot, and the last three on the dialogue. According to Cleese, writers today spend an average of 10 days on script, and sometimes as little as four, “which is why most of them aren’t very good.”

Cleese wasn’t pulling late nighters to look good, or because he thought his producers expected it. He’d already made a name for himself with Monty Python and could have easily coasted on that. But he was genuinely enjoying what he was doing. The result was not just good work, but fantastic work.

You may not have six weeks to work out a script, come up with an idea or develop a campaign. But you can get passionate about your work. And suddenly, it won’t seem like work any more. When that happens, my guess is you’ll be having a lot more fun, and winning a lot more awards.

There's always more ink in your pen.

I once had a couple portfolio students who did a really cool campaign. The visuals were great. The tagline tied everything up perfectly. They could have kept it there. But they wanted to push it. So they tried writing headlines for each ad. And the lines they wrote were good and funny and well-crafted.

They printed out the campaign with and without the headlines. And we all sat down to take a look. And we ultimately decided the ad was better without the headlines. But just barely. It seemed such a shame to cut such scintillating copy from their campaign.

But what an awesome position to be in. It wasn’t a huge surprise when these ads were featured on Adcritic’s homepage before the team had even left portfolio school.

What did they lose? Some great lines? Sure. But even golden copy isn’t gold. You’ve got more ink in your pen. More ideas in your brain. You’re not wasting nonrenewable resources.

Thinking is not wasted effort.

Natalie Goldberg, who wrote the how-to-write books Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, encourages her students to write constantly. And she says every once in a while a student will ask, “But what do you do with what you write?” She answers, “I don’t know. What do you do with after you drink a glass of water?”

She means that you don’t have to do anything with it. It becomes a part of you. Maybe there’s a line or two you can use. Maybe a whole paragraph. Maybe nothing. But it’s not wasted effort. You write because you’re a writer. You art direct because you’re an art director. You come up with ideas because you’re creative.

So don’t be afraid of generating ideas you won’t use. Experiment with layouts. Write long body copy for a visual solution. And then you’ll be able to decide what, if anything, to do with them.

Specking It

This is a post by screenwriter Steven Pressfield. He's talking about writing scripts for Hollywood, but it applies just as much to copywriters and art directors.

If you're in a portfolio program, you're doing this automatically.

Why Creativity Isn't Enough

Here are four characteristics of the kind of advertising we all aspire to create:

But most of us focus the majority of our efforts on only one area:

We're in the creative department. We're called creatives. One of the leading industry magazines is called Creativity.

The problem is, almost all of the student portfolios I see are creative. But that doesn't get them a job. In most cases it doesn't even get them an interview.

A lot of the advertising I see on TV and billboards and online is creative. But that doesn't mean they're going to win Lions at Cannes. It doesn't even mean the writer and art director who came up with the idea will want to showcase it in their portfolios.

The way creative begins to stand out is to make it brilliant.

There are a lot of ways creative can become brilliant. A great brief with a great insight. Mind-blowing art direction. A real human truth. Basically, I think it's creative work that the team actually cares about. It's creative that tries harder.

Brilliant creative elevates your book out of the crowd a little bit. It puts you in the top quarter of portfolio school graduates. But top quarter isn't really enough, right?

The next leap is to make it different.
It can't just be different for different's sake. You've got to back it up with the brilliance. So what's the difference between brilliant creative and being different? It's got to have that "I've never seen that before" feel. Look at the Skittles work. Completely different than anything in the candy category. Look at the Space Chair work from Toshiba. Or the We Choose the Moon site from Martin. Or Whopper Freakout. Not just brilliant creative, but very different from anything that came before.

I have seen only a few student books that have been able to do something truly different. And those were students that agencies were quick to hire.

But the big leap is to make your work innovative.

This is real Titanium Lion territory. And to be honest, it's hard for me to imagine pulling something like this off in portfolio school. It's hard enough once you're in a job. But knowing what to reach for is a great place to start training your brain.

The adage is "Good enough isn't good enough."

But whether you're trying to get a job, a raise, a Lion or a reputation, I think the new thought is "Creative isn't good enough."

(Credit for the four-quadrant idea goes to Gideon Amichay, the ECD of Y&R Tel Aviv.)

Avoid This Phrase

"It's good. For what it is."

For example, if you've done an okay pharmaceutical ad, you're saying it's good, considering the majority of pharmaceutical ads are awful.

But that's just being a giant in a company of dwarves.

And the scariest thing about this phrase is that, used too frequently, it can easily be applied to your career.

"I haven't won many awards. I haven't really built any brands or even my own company. And I haven't really created anything of value. But my career's good. For what it is."

(Shudder.)

The virtue of working fast

Ryan Ebner is a very good copywriter and director (that's his Boba Fett spot at the bottom of the post). I’ve worked with him peripherally, but I can’t say I really know him. But I’d been around him enough to mention it when I met his old boss Mike Shine. Mike had a lot of good things to say about Ryan. But there was one thing he said that really stayed with me:

“He works fast.”

It had never occurred to me that working fast would be something to shoot for.

But think about it.

How often do you stare at your screen waiting for inspiration to arrive?

How long to you stare at your blank notepad, waiting for something to happen?

How many times have you idly surfed the web because the deadline was a couple weeks away?

My guess is Ryan doesn’t do any of those things. My guess is Ryan works fast because he works.

So get to work. Fast.

John Stewart on It Getting Easier

This is from "What Makes People Laugh," an interview by Carl Arnheiter with Jon Stewart. It appears in the book Rejected: Tales of the Failed, Dumped and Canceled, by Jon Friedman.

What's your take on building a joke, how does it start for you?

Jon Stewart: It's 99% perspiration and 1% love and all that...I think it's just one of those things you learn from doing it, and you know, the funny thing is even though I know how to do it in that yeoman sort of way, there is no "oh now I got it and so it now pours out." But it still takes as much effort and all that, I can do it a little quicker than I used to be able to, but the great stuff still comes in the same percentage that it ever came.