Damon's Brain

Trust me I am a creative..

Over my career I have often heard people talking about formulas. A foolproof way to arrive at a perfect creative result. To replicate something over and over. A system for ideas. That’s like saying, let’s use communism to create lego.

Sometimes, I still have nightmares about 700 page style guides. Whole forests have died in an attempt to give creativity a short back and sides.

The main reason this happens is the need to mitigate against risk. And making great work always has an element of risk because if it is really great it has not been done before. There is also this collision of worlds. Creativity and commerce. Direct business imperatives wrapped in the subtle art of storytelling. So, a lot of time is spent researching and creating parameters and guidelines. I understand the need for these things especially with large accounts. You do need consistency. However, you also need a spark.

Simply put, the act of creation is about what will be. What is going to happen. No matter how much people wish they can predict the future, they can’t.

That is why the most vital ingredient in the creative process is trust. It is something that has to come from both sides. That is also why it is so rare.

No matter how much research is done, there is still that meeting. The meeting where after everything is said and done you have to push the button. Somebody has to look across the table and say let’s do this. You can be in a 6 month process but there will still be that meeting. I have been in them. And the only way you get through those meetings is trust.

Trust, is a word that is often used in our business but not always practiced. I have seen what trust can do. The boundaries are pushed and the work gets better. And the work gets better because trust has allowed you to go further. That freedom will create better thinking and ideas. It is that simple.

So, in the end, there can be as many systems and structures as you like. This will not lead to great work, at best, it will stop bad work. What leads to great work is looking each other in the eye and having a conversation. The word relationship is a cliche in our business. However, if you look at the greatest campaigns in history you will find a partnership at the centre of them.

Think about your own career. How many of your greatest pieces of work happened because of a process versus somebody trusting you and backing you?

Ultimately, one person trusting another person is at the heart of all great work. I see agencies abuse that trust and clients not thinking it is important. Both are making a very big mistake.

Think of it this way. When the work is done, you want people to feel something. A genuine human emotion. Yet, emotion is often something we try to eradicate in the process of making ads. It is not empirical, it cannot be trusted. Passion and precision. Always the conundrum.

There are those that believe if we have enough facts we will get to feeling. I have never believed that. I believe two people need to look each other in the eye and say let’s be brave.

I believe if you want feeling at the end you need to start with one. A feeling of trust.

Growing up I was always fascinated by stand up comedy.

I would watch early Saturday Night Live tapes of Belushi at his best and his worst. Bill Hicks destroying audiences and them laughing and thanking him for it. Richard Pryor being a free basing genius. I think it was the mixture of sheer terror of actually getting up there and the power you could have when the room was in the palm of your hand that amazed me.

I used to go to a lot of open mike nights. One of the places I used to go was Cool Runnings in Johannesburg. It was a dank little basement in Melville. It was underneath a Jamaican eatery that sold everything on the menu and quite a few things off it.

You would see guys like Jon Vlismas, David Kau or Bevan Cullinan hosting the night. They were amazing because they could bring the crowd back after somebody sucked. Just think how hard it is to do that. Just for a second, picture yourself going on after somebody has bombed.

And boy did some of the guys bomb. I remember one 50 year old freaky German guy in a full lederhosen outfit getting lynched after telling inappropriate jokes about kids.

Night after night, you would get guys who were dry heaving backstage because they were so nervous. They would force themselves to get on that stage and be terrible. The audience would throw ice at them. They would stumble off the stage, broken. And they would be back the following week like a junkie hunting for a needle. And when they were done, Vlismas would walk on stage and fix the mess of their addiction.

I really tried to learn from all these guys. What made some so good? What made some so bad?

I had to present every day of my life in boardrooms to people who tried very hard not to show any emotion. You would often be presenting in a very tense atmosphere because of timings or just general pressure. And, if you think it’s not that hard to do this, try presenting some creative after a client has argued about the strategy. Or worse still the brief. And my favourite, when a client argues with his or her own people.

And now, here’s the creative to inspire you.

To be able to cope with situations like this you need to develop skills.

So, what makes a good comic? Obviously, the material. Without that, you are dead. However, I have seen the same joke delivered on consecutive nights and seen it bomb the second night. I have also seen people incredibly prepared for presentations fail badly.

So, although material and preparation are vital, these guys had something else. Firstly, fear was not a factor.

They either had mastered the feeling of fear or they were very good at faking it. Showing fear was the first step to a routine going South. If you are afraid people will not laugh or listen. Fake it, create a different persona or learn to enjoy the fear but don’t show it.

Two, they could read a room. They had the ability to be consistent but still respond to what was happening in the room. They could adapt. This was the biggest mistake rookies made. If they got heckled or the audience didn’t laugh, they couldn’t recover. It is the same with presentations. If you have learnt the presentation off by heart and something changes, you have to be able to adapt. You find out if you have any skills when things go wrong.

Being able to deal with what’s in your head and what’s happening in reality is probably the hardest skill to master.

Lastly, the great comics give the impression they don’t care if you laugh. Some even give the impression they are not really interested if there is an audience. This gives the material power and in a way gives the comic power too. To do this and still respond to what’s happening in the room takes years of practice. You watch Robin Williams in full manic flow. You think he is in his own crazy world. Yet, he is still listening and adjusting his timing to the audience. Genius.

So, I am no comic, I don’t have that strange obsession or perhaps the inexhaustible courage you need to do it.

What I do know is they have taught me hundreds of lessons through the cigarette smoke and drunk heckling. They taught me a whole lot about speaking to a room of people you have to win over. And I am pretty sure what they taught me has saved my ass hundreds of times.

And for that I will be forever grateful. Thanks, you killed out there tonight.

Russell Brand is using his many skills as an a stand up comedian against Jeremy Paxman in an interview we probably have all seen by now. As I watch it, I have this overwhelming feeling of de ja vu. I have seen many speak like this before. And they are normally one half of a successful team.

Creativity is strange because with it comes a built in insecurity. To see a variety of perspectives and various points of view you have to be quite flexible and be willing to be wrong. Certainty and creativity don’t have great sex.

In the beginning, you don’t know if you are right or are just making a big mess. It takes courage and bravery to stay with the process. It takes somebody with dedication and sheer willpower to find that piece. Someone, who will find something unique because he will go where nobody else has gone. When everybody in the room says it’s dumb he stills goes to have a look. He cares deeply about details that everybody else thinks are trivial. Details. He also cares deeply about making it. He thinks about how to do it. That isn’t Russell Brand. That would be his fat friend Greg.

Greg is a different type of creative to Russell. He doesn’t care about words he cares about doing. And make no mistake Greg needs Russell. You see once you have an idea that has been created using the wisdom of uncertainty you have to very quickly move to certainty. You have to sell the idea. This is where Russell comes in.

Russell is confident and clever. He is incredibly articulate and the ladies as well as quite a few men like him. He grasps concepts and can tell a story like nobody. He has charm and perhaps a bit of danger. He is a salesman.

He walks into a boardroom with Greg shuffling behind. He speaks, they listen. He sells first time. He probably will get promoted but he won’t take the promotion unless Greg is promoted too. Well, that’s what a smart Russell would do. A smart Russell would understand the symbiotic nature of their relationship. A dumb Russell will eventually die because he believes his own press.

That is the story of about a billion creative teams. Teams like this are successful because they are able to harness uncertainty and certainty at the same time. I can think of about 5 people I have met in 20 years that can do both equally well. In my book that is genius level. Russell Brand may be a genius, but we will have to wait and see.

As I said these people are rare. This is why great teams are very often opposites and they make no sense until you see the work.

What we saw in the Russell Brand interview was a great pitch. A world class salesman. Excitement, bold ideas and entertainment. All very important.

But, there was a moment that gave Russell Brand’s limitations away. It showed why he needed a Greg. Paxman asked him how he would make these powerful ideas happen. He couldn’t answer. He said his job was just to put ideas out there. Paint the big picture. Stir things up a bit. People more qualified than him would have to make them. In other words, somebody else would have to make this shit happen.

If I have learnt anything in my career it is that it’s fucking easy to say something, it is much harder to do it. I have seen seen a single sentence uttered in seconds take a year to happen. To go from an idea or thought to being real.

If any of those ideas actually had to happen I guarantee Russell would turn to his friend Greg the doer. And Greg would begin the journey of making them happen.

In the end, there are those that can describe and sell an idea. There are those that have ideas. And there are those that can make an idea. Occasionally, you will meet someone who can do all of the above. They are rare.

Russell Brand was being interviewed alone. It was all about him. A salesman for a generation. He has some very interesting ideas and thoughts. But no detail. No, this is how we can do it.

What he has done well is articulate how people feel and his points about flaccid governments are valid. However, for his ideas not to be discounted he needs to make them happen. And for that, he better find his fat friend Greg. Pronto.

Trying to find Jesus through advertising.

Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever..