Is our work, as marketing communications specialists, getting more difficult?
I'd say it is, irrespective of our individual talent. Tighter deadlines, more scrutiny by bean counters, and creeping conservatism have eroded opportunities to produce outstanding solutions.
When I was preparing Cutting Edge Commercials, I asked David Blackley why so many young advertising people burnout so fast. Blackley, the retired chairman of Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and one of Australia's greatest copywriters, observed: "They're so into advertising that they only mix with advertising people, they only go to advertising pubs, they only go to advertising parties on the weekends. They're so caught up in the peer group thing they lose reality for the things outside. I've always gone to the football, I drink in the public bar, I spend weekends in the bush, I get about as far away from advertising as I possibly can, as often as I can. I love good advertising with a passion, but I think you can only do it well if you have a wider perspective. You've got to experience what real people experience. You've got to love the real people. It's a bit like the old barrel; if you've got the tap on, pouring the ideas out at the bottom, you've got to keep putting a wide variety of stuff in at the top."
For agency folk facing constant rejection, here's a perspective from the late Roy Grace. Grace had little patience for rejection or compromise, and it wasn't a question of being temperamental. He believed creative people had to preserve their dignity and self-belief in order to survive.
"If I get into a situation where they don't buy what I do, I don't want that relationship. I didn't want it then and I don't want it now. Then, I would be as devious and manipulative as I could to get out of it. Now that I have my own agency, I can simply walk away from the client. You have to maintain a certain amount of integrity and belief in yourself; you've got to be loyal to yourself. You can't just keep getting up to the plate every day, and doing what you think is great, and never having it come to fruition. I don't think anybody has that kind of perseverance."
In our business, it's all too easy to be branded fighty and flighty.
One solution is to choose your employer carefully. Having an A-grade boss, and working with A-grade colleagues, is the fastest way to make yourself A-grade. Outstanding Aussie creative Scott Whybin of Melbourne's Whybin TBWA & Partners says you should see the business for what it is. "Advertising is not a cure for cancer. It's not that serious. It's not going to change the world. You can have passion and ambition, and all those things, but at the end of the day you've got to have a deliberate detachment from it. The people who get it all wrong are the ones who get so worked up about it. If you're obsessed with awards, if you start thinking, oh, this one will be a short walk, you'll always be B-grade." Oddly enough, our own success, and the money it brings, can make us apathetic, and that can bring a different set of personal difficulties. Michael Patti, who has written countless great Pepsi spots and bagged hundreds of awards at BBDO New York, warns us: "You've got to work harder than anybody else.
You've got to be competitive with yourself. The result of success is more success - if you can stay hungry." And that is a big "If".