Say 'f*ck it', but don't drop your pants: Luckysparks

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According to Yang, saying “F*ck it” means entering a zen-like space in which you listen to yourself, rise up from the “fog” that surrounds daily life, and ultimately “find the core of what is important”.

Chen explained that the ethos of following intuition rather than strict plans had so far served LuckySparks well as a company, from its foundation in New York to its foray into Asia, via Taiwan. Setting up shop in Asia was anything but straightforward given their lack of contacts, Chen said, but noted that being willing to improvise while remaining true to their interests and building a network of likeminded people saw them through difficult times. They presented a film Luckysparks directed for Google, ‘Homeward Bound’, which involved a chaotic journey through rural India, to illustrate that doing things on the fly can sometimes work out better than following a script.

In summary, Luckysparks’ advice for a rewarding creative process was:

• Have a plan, but be willing to change it and follow your instincts. “Intuition will really push you to the brink of what you are comfortable with,” Chen said.
• Work with likeminded clients — or educate them. “We had to filter some,” Chen said. “You need to make sure you have a common goal.” This was not easy in Taiwan, where many potential clients erred to the conservative side, but exposing them to new ways of working from elsewhere that had been shown to work helped.
• Don't drop your pants. “This is important for young companies starting out, “ Chen said. “A lot will cave under pressures and demands. But it’s OK to say no. We would reject jobs. If we started doing stuff without meaning we wouldn’t know why we were doing it. There are other ways to make money.”

Campaign’s observation: We feared the onset of another woolly sermon on the value of storytelling, but the session actually contained some sound advice that everyone in the creative industry should try to follow—but is sometimes easier said than done.