The great comfort of bad Super Bowl ads.

“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.”
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Quick, name your top 10 Super Bowl ads from this year. I know, it’s a struggle. I am asking you to remember 10 out of a 100 or so ads whose sole purpose is to be memorable.

Each 30 second spot costs 5 million dollars to run. Each spot would have cost at least a million dollars to make. These numbers are considered a bargain because of the massive audience the Super Bowl attracts.

These numbers also do something else. They create enormous pressure to deliver a great ad. And the truth is, year in and year out only about 10 percent are any good. As hit rates go, that isn’t great.

Now, the easy explanation is the creative was no good. Well, I will take you a billion dollar bet that there are better ideas sitting on the wall inside each agency involved. Ideas that are perhaps risky. Ideas that don’t just use yet another celebrity. Ideas that are actually ideas instead of wrapping.

Perhaps the agency couldn’t sell them. Maybe the client couldn’t buy them. What it proves though, is that all the money in the world doesn’t make a good ad. What it proves is when the pressure comes no matter how big the committee, fear and bravery, will always decide the outcome.

In a world of endless data and research, which should help guarantee a higher hit rate than 10 percent, we find many making average decisions because of the most human of emotions. Fear.

A large part of our industry is now in the business of trying to get rid of fear. Processes that try to get us to an acceptable answer rather than a great one.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is a strange anomaly in our industry that our screens are full of average, boring ads and nobody is nailed for it. There are a hundred explanations for why it was the right decision to make something nobody will remember.

Yet, the moment you try and push the boat out and you don’t quite make it you are crucified.

The great fear in our industry is that something will be weird. That seems to be a far greater sin than something being average. I humbly suggest that this attitude is what gets us to a massive 10 percent hit rate at the Super Bowl.

Bravery and courage. Words used in our industry on a daily basis like verbal confetti. I think we have to make those words mean something again. We need to inspire. We need to persuade. That is how you overcome fear. And fear will always be what we have to conquer to do great work.

The second reason the Super Bowl ads were so average is Newton’s first law of creative success. A creative ideas success is inversely proportional to the amount of people who decide if it will be successful. And I can only imagine how many people were involved.

Once you have the dubious pleasure of presenting globally to 50 people around the world using tele-presence you realise you are no longer in the business of creativity but crowd control.

There is a silver lining in all this. The flip side for me is how it confirms my belief in a very simple formula for great work. The great Super Bowl ads were made up of three things. A great idea. A great relationship. A great execution.

Our industry probably lost its confidence over the last couple of years because so much was changing. And, there are people out there who have definitely drunk the wrong cool-aid and stopped looking at what is real.

The truth is we should take great comfort from the Super bowl ratio because it’s probably true for all advertising. 10 percent.

Why?

Because it’s bloody hard to make a great ad.

The comfort comes from knowing in 2017 the three ingredients have not changed. No matter how much money, people or process you have, they do not guarantee success.

What does however, is the perfect balance of creativity, trust and craft. Always has. Always will.

And that, will always be more of an art than a science.

Mind the gap. The advertising tango.

Unknown“Music is what happens between the notes.”
Claude Debussy

I was watching Birdman the other night. It is a beautiful film.

One of the central themes for me is the gap between the internal and external reality we all have. What you think you are and what you think you should be. Where you are and where you want to go. What you are willing to risk? Everybody telling you something is a shit idea but you still believing in it. The film plays with this idea of human spaces and gaps and shows how they are necessary to create anything of creative value.

Great work does not happen without some sort of risk. There has to be a leap. And there is only a leap, if there is a gap.

Our business is all about gaps. The gap between a good idea and a great idea. The gap between what is in your head and a clients. The gap between having an idea and being able to sell it. The gap between thinking and the making of an idea. I could go on. But lets just say crossing all these gaps takes a fair amount of courage and persuasion. It is a tango our business dances every day.

And this will not change, no matter how much data you have. There is a simple reason for this. Gaps are where data ends and judgement, trust and relationships begin.

It is strange how very little is said or written about the human aspect of our business. Read about how any great piece of work is made and there will always be a paragraph about how somebody persuaded somebody or somebody was brave enough to buy the work. In the end, this is what creates the space between the notes.

Scary stuff.

So, it is understandable there are many who don’t like gaps or risks because there is a huge amount of money involved if something does not work.

And because of this, an entire industry has been spawned to explain away the gaps. I am constantly meeting people who have never made a single piece of communication who have the answer or a formula for how things should be done. They always talk about the valu’e of creativity without knowing what it is like to try and have an idea.

They are slick presenters with cool trainers selling the idea that creativity is too important to be left to the creatives. They package and curate. They do not originate. They risk very little and they talk very often.

To use a quote from Birdman allegedly first said by Susan Sontag: “A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.”

The truth is they provide the illusion of safety. Their solutions have a lot of context with very little substance. It might sound good in a presentation but it won’t get the job done.

There is a simple reason for this. These professional soothsayers are in the business of creating certainty in a business that is becoming more confusing for many.

True creativity is the business of exploring uncertainty. Many might not like that but that is how it works.

And because of this, judgement, persuasion and belief will always be why great work gets across the line.

It has to be this way if you want to do something new.

And for that, you need people that believe in an idea and are willing to take a risk. Look at the great work over the last couple of years and you will see that. When you do, you will see that despite what many say, the centre of our business hasn’t changed that much. You need great ideas. You have to sell those great ideas. You have to execute them bloody well.

What surrounds the centre, however, has changed a lot. This is why many are unsure or baffled.

This is why there is a lot of fear in our business right now and many are making a living trying to pretend like they have some new answer.

Creativity works a certain way. It always has and always will. It cannot be smoothed over and made more palatable with pie charts and snappy aphorisms. It has to have gaps.

Just like music.

Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever.

Defence is not an option.

dbs81270's avatarDamon's Brain

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A great quote from Napoleon Bonaparte. Admittedly, it all ended pretty badly for him on a godforsaken island in the South Atlantic but I am sure on a clear day the views were almost spectacular.

The reason I use this quote is I was recently reading Dave Trott’s remarkable and excellent book Predatory Thinking.

In one of the chapters he talks about how marketing departments always want to grow and to do that they need to take somebody else’s lunch. To survive they have to win.

Advertising agencies are no different.

And to win, you have to attack. You have to beat the opposition. You have to have a better plan of battle otherwise you die.

Many don’t like to talk about this because it is brutal. But this is the truth of our business. And those that succeed, fundamentally understand that unless you attack at some point you will…

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Bounce. What does a score mean if there is no game?

For the creatives. What is a punch line without the joke?

dbs81270's avatarDamon's Brain

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I was watching Tina Fey the other night and she was talking about the two main rules of improvisation on stage.

The first is that if there are two of you on stage, you have to agree. In other words, if I say I am holding an imaginary apple, you don’t say no you’re not. You have to agree.

The second rule is yes and. This means that you build on what has been said or created to move the scene forward. For example, I say I am holding an apple. And you say yes and I will inject it with poison to kill the king. Yes and.

Two simple rules to create something out of nothing. This is how great comics create.

Strangely, it is also how children create. I have been watching mine over the holidays. One of them will say, hey we are Batman and Robin. The…

View original post 485 more words

Sir Viv Richards. A masterclass in swagger.

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
Rumi

I will never forget their faces. A small cricket ground on the outskirts of Melbourne bathed in a special kind of evening sunlight you only get when you travel this far South. Huddled together in the middle of this beautiful verdant scene were a team of social cricketers. Their best days were behind them but they still loved the game.

I was walking towards them. They were desperately trying to not look shocked. But they were. Their faces had that strange blend of delight and fear you get when you know something momentous is going to happen. I of course was not the momentous event.

Next to me, walking onto the field were Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Sir Viv Richards. Big Bird, Whispering Death and the Master Blaster. We were making a piece of content for a large car client.

Well, thats one way of looking at it. Here’s another. Fuck, I was walking onto a cricket field with three of the greatest cricketers that have ever lived. And in Sir Viv Richards, you have the Muhammad Ali of cricket. He was and is a personal hero of mine.

And you could see to a man, the players on the field felt the same way. They were stunned. Slack jawed, their bodies were frozen. These social cricketers hadn’t been told about this once in a lifetime surprise. Just imagine how you would feel if you looked up from your normal day and saw three legends coming towards you. It is a feeling of awe and fear mixed with a strange child like quality. It is something you cannot manufacture.

This is what is great about my job. I get put into unique situations that happen to very few other people on the planet.

The situation and privilege was to watch a masterclass in swagger from the original master blaster Sir Viv Richards. I was about to get an education in unadulterated confidence. He walked onto the pitch and instantly owned it. He walks up to a couple of players and gives them some gum. He tells them to chew it. Get some attitude maan. Swagger. That’s it.

The players are in dreamland. They bowl as fast as they can. They know this is their one to chance to bowl out a legend. Sir Viv is 62 years old. He doesn’t have pads, a helmet or a box.

He stands there and smashes cricketers half his age all over the ground. He has the hallmark of all great sportsmen. He looks like he is doing everything effortlessly. Slow motion, until the ball hits the bat.

And then he bowls some spin. One of the batsman smashes it back down the pitch. Sir Viv catches it effortlessly and does a Calypso jig in the middle of the pitch. He is laughing and so is everybody else. He had won before a ball was bowled.

It has to be one of the cooler afternoons of my life.

Swagger. A mixture of confidence, aggression and self-belief. When Sir Viv walked onto the pitch he basically said without saying a word, this is my field. It is mine, not yours. I am taking it and there is nothing you can do about it. I am a giant. Today, is my day.

As I walked onto the field with him I could feel what it must have felt like to play against him. He won the game as he walked onto the field. And he did it with a smile. But make no mistake behind the smile, steel. Both Joel Garner and Michael Holding still call him captain.

I guess the lesson for me as a creative that day was seeing somebody back themselves, totally. Win, lose or draw. Every fibre of his being said, I am here and I am going to win. He believed he was going to win. And strangely, that made everybody around him want him to win.

It is an afternoon that sticks in my mind. Sir Viv never beat himself. His opponent had to do it. A big lesson for all of us.

As creatives, there are times we don’t believe in our ideas or ourselves. I guess it is a consequence of being in the business of uncertainty. We beat ourselves before we even walk onto the pitch or in our case into the pitch.

That glorious afternoon for a few moments I got to see the opposite. I got to see a man who had huge self-belief and self-worth. And these qualities let him own the present and create his future. I got to see the power of Swagger with a capital S. And it was a wonderful thing to see.

It was a masterclass. And all I can say is thank you sir.