In the Eye of the Beheld
by Lee Drew
Illustrations by Jay Rogers
Advertising has
never been
comfortable calling
itself art
because no client
wants to be a patron.
At the very least,
an ad,
unlike fine art,
has to pay its own way.
Still, the discipline demands from its creators an artful intuition of what is right, much the way Vincent van Gogh knew the heavens would have a higher recall if his painting "Starry Night" depicted the constellations in swirling, streaming banners of light
and color.
Never have the creative intuitions of commercial artists been more out of style and less trusted than they are today. In this age of exactingly targeted markets and mediums . . . of
pre-testing and post-testing, focus groups, demographics,
psychographic and lifestyle clusters . . . every molecule of the creative process is subjected to a kind of DNA extracting analysis and measurement. Two recent books have further attempted to eviscerate the idea of creatives operating on gut instincts.
In "The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR," Atlanta Marketing Consultant Al Ries argues that the very word "creative" connotes a concept that is antithetical to advertising that works. "Look in the dictionary, and the dictionary definition of creative is Ônew and different'," he says. "Advertising shouldn't be new and different. To be effective it should reinforce the ideas that are already in a person's mind."
In his book, "The End of Advertising As We Know It," former Coca-Cola Chief Marketing Officer Sergio Zyman argues that the only measure of creativity in advertising is how much it sells: "Success is the result of a scientific, disciplined process and every single expenditure absolutely must
generate a return."
Given this cash register aesthetic, it is a wonder commercial artists have the will to get out of bed in the morning. But they do, and with a great deal of enthusiasm.
The attitude of these commercial artists is somewhat parallel to poet Robert Frost's observation that writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis with the net down. The net . . . the client, the focus groups, the ca-ching aesthetic . . .
makes the work harder perhaps. But it also makes the creator more
disciplined. And smarter. In the end, Atlanta creatives say, the adversity of clients makes their work better.
Oz interviewed a few Atlanta creatives about the creative process and when and how they know in their gut an idea is right.
Yolanda Baker
Freelance Graphic Artist
In her five years as a graphic designer, Yolanda Baker, 27, has
developed a method of self-inspiration that starts by writing down whatever comes to her mind within the rough expectations of
her client.
In the beginning, she says, it is vital to be "uninhibited in your thinking. If they tell you they need something uplifting, maybe you should think of all things bright, figuratively and literally. In that case, the thoughts you jot down could be bright colors, big smiles, open spaces and non-cluttered environments. Youth running in the grass, and so on.
"Like a child you should be able to make free associations without being politically correct. Every word or thought has legs that can lead you to another."
From there, Baker marries the subconscious with the conscious. "In the conscious phase I fill myself full of those free associations. I go to the bookstore and compare those ideas with potential visual
representations. Another part of this phase is
developing color palettes that relate to them. These are just a few things that represent the conscious phase of acquiring ideas. Once my cup is overflowing with visual and other forms of inspiration, I stop pouring."
At this point she lets go and tries to think of "anything unrelated to the client." She may go for a walk, play with kids in her neighborhood, or go to sleep. "When I'm no longer thinking about the project, the subconscious ideas kick in," she says. "Multiple, seemingly unrelated elements come together like a jigsaw puzzle. If I'm asleep when this revelation occurs I get up and take notes. I let the pencil create the
pictures for me."
Baker then creates a mockup of the illustration before showing or discussing the idea with
anybody. "It's almost like wrapping a baby up with a blanket at birth so that it won't be exposed to germs," she says. In her experience, incompletely formed ideas invariably are
misinterpreted. "People respond better to things they can see or touch," she says.
By the time she is ready to show the design to peers for their opinion she has developed at the same time a kind of prosecutorial confidence in the work. "Every element should be justified and make sense. You can't dispute that 1 plus 1 equals 2. It should be that simple when you are communicating your idea."
At the same time, she says, she stays detached from the idea. "There is no umbilical cord that connects me to it," she says. "It's just an idea of many that your clients may or may not use. You may find that your equation of 1 plus 1 contained the wrong figures and you need make some adjustments that will render another solution."
If an idea is shot down, she says, it is not back to scratch. "I already have alternative solutions in the making from past research. It's a matter of backtracking down the road to take another avenue.
Using the client's response and balancing it against some of the
previous ideas I've already come up with should still get me to the same destination.
"I don't think getting shot down or editing my solution takes away from the passion. I may come up with something even better."
Bryan Dodd
Freelance Copywriter
Bryan Dodd says the changing advertising environment . . . more mediums, more ads, and more exacting clients . . . means advertising these days has a lesser chance of being seen and a greater chance of being forgotten: "We are competing against ourselves," he says.
Knowing how to create a commercial message that penetrates through the wall of sound and images that barrage people every day is inborn in creatives and probably why they went into advertising in the first place. Dodd believes, "They have a sense of what works and what doesn't."
He says when his ideas are shot down that encourages him to take greater risks. But one of his mantras as an instructor at Creative Circus Ad School is "Pick & Choose Your Fights Wisely." Fighting them all will burn you out. He practices "attachment to his ideas with
caution," because, he says, no matter what happens, "there's always another client or project tomorrow."
Joel Davis
Art Director, WestWayne
If Joel Davis has a muse it is sleep deprivation. "The only tried and true way I know to conjure up ideas is hard work and
perseverance," says the art director. "If there's a magical answer or process, then I'd appreciate someone filling me in on it, because then I'd be able to catch up on a lot of sleep that's been sacrificed to
long nights."
He, like Baker, begins on strategy and lets his mind run free "as far as I can go" and still say what needs to be said. "It's through this way that I find I'm most successful in coming up with the most
unexpected answers."
As important as being able to discern a good idea from a great idea is knowing when to walk away from a project. "Go to the gym, for a jog, play video games, read, or watch a movie, anything to get my mind off whatever it's fried on," he says. "It's amazing how free my mind is after taking 3 or 4 hours off of the project I'm stuck on. Often after that break I feel as fresh as I did the first time I sat down to concept the job."
Davis says it is important to "stay level headed and listen to all
criticism" when defending an idea, although, he adds, "I'm not
saying to bow down to a naysayer's every whim, or constantly fall on a sword for your work. But listening could strengthen your ad."
When an idea gets rejected, Davis goes back to scratch. "There's nothing worse than having to edit an idea and add everyone's input as an appeasement to try to sell the work. Cramming everyone's ideas into an ad leads to bad work. "You can only cram so many shirts into a closet before they all get wrinkled."
Luke Sullivan,
Group Creative Director, GSD&M, Austin, TX
Luke Sullivan, the author of "Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. A Guide To Creating Great Ads," is full of opinions about advertising, and one of those is he rarely thinks an advertisement he has created is great. "That is for other people, and consumers," he says.
If that is hard to believe, and it is, Sullivan goes on to explain that he does know when an ad he has created or helped create "seems to solve all the problems I've been presented with. Does it say the right thing, in the right way, to the right person?" Once he is satisfied it has, he shows it to people whose abilities he respects and asks their opinion. If he presents the work and the client rejects it he takes it
in stride.
"I used to whine and mope for weeks," he says. Now, he takes a longer, more "mature" view of things, quoting writer James Michner: "Character is what you do on the fourth and fifth tries." "I agree," says Sullivan. "Yes, it is harder. But the more mature creative people
buckle in and do it."
He starts writing by immersion in the subject and all the players who will have a say in the process. "Get to know the client's business as well as you can," he says. That includes plant tours and reading
anything about the client and the client's business you can get your hands on. That means hanging out with the client as muchas possible.
"The more they know you the more they are going to trust you," he says. He quotes Norman Berry, a creative director from Ogilvy & Mather on the importance of blind devotion to strategy: "Satisfy the
strategy and the idea cannot be faulted." The execution of the idea is another matter.
For that, Sullivan takes a broad idea, Volvos are safe cars, and seeks to express it cleanly. He eliminates puns and word plays and the formula of showing one thing and saying another. He seeks not to be different just to be different. He does not think people read body copy, so he does not bury an idea in the text.
He is ruthless about keeping everything simple. A radio ad, try one guy saying 40 words, for instance. Be as simple in art direction. Lose the funky type unless it contributes favorably to the brand image.
He quotes French painter Paul Cezanne: "With an apple, I will
astonish Paris."
He gets his ideas on paper fast and furious. He bleeds it all out. He does not govern his impulses. Then he separates the work into three groups: the best, the almost there, and the trash heap. He sharpens, then bulletproofs the ad by making its claims uncontestable. If an idea is uncontestable, it is believable, he says. In this sorting process, he trusts his gut.
Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that seemed fatally flawed. They are often the ones that make you laugh. "See if the objectionable element can be taken out without hurting the concept," he says.
Sullivan used to wing his presentations. Now he rehearses. And he goes in believing there is a 50 percent chance his idea is dead wrong. "I mean really believe in your heart that you very well could be wrong," he says. "I think that such a belief adds a strong
underpinning of persuasiveness to any argument you forward." In a pitch, protect the main idea, and let the client sweat the small stuff.
Sullivan says he does not believe in testing in the traditional sense. "Good research happens before the ads are done. And the best research does not happen in focus group rooms, but out in the world, where you can eavesdrop on people talking about the brands and about the company."
Joe Paprocki,
Creative Director, Huey/Paprocki
By the measure the ad industry applies to itself, awards, Joe Paprocki's work has been sheer genius lately. In the last Atlanta Addy competition his agency won 70. But Paprocki is not deluded. He is in a business, he says, where a batting average of .150 gets you on the All-Star Team. "Face it," he says. "Eighty-five percent of what you see on the air is crap. That's why it's so easy for people to lob grenades
at advertising."
His process of getting an ad into the 15 percent, non-crap category, is methodical and ruthless. The idea has to be on strategy, of course, and generally it comes from the gut. "Most creative people have great instincts, great intuition, whether they are in advertising, or a painter, or a filmmaker or writer," he says. "They know what buttons to push with their audience and how to connect with it."
The French writer Honore de Balzac used to chain himself to his bed to force himself to write. Paprocki does not go
that far (there are no beds in his agency's basement office under the Highland Inn downtown) but, in the first stage,
he and his creative team isolate and chain themselves to
the assignment.
They go into a boardroom . . . after thoroughly researching the client and strategy and literally put ideas on the wall. "We take blank pieces of white paper and put ideas in black marker on them and hang them up, and we separate the ideas into types of campaigns: headline driven, visual driven, humor." Paprocki does not like doing the process on
computer:
"I call it advertising unplugged," he says.
What ends up hanging on the wall, and sometime it takes two weeks, is 20 or 30 campaign ideas. From that group he will cull it down to 3 or 5 campaigns. He looks for what he has never seen before and what he feels in his gut, as
much as he believes in his mind, "really connects with
the consumer."
Budget clearly comes into play in this slash and burn process: "If we know we're going to have to go to the South Pacific and the client has $150,000, it's probably not going to work," he says.
Paprocki says he usually has a favorite campaign when he presents the 3 to 5 campaigns to the client, but he is not wedded to that. He takes rejection in stride. "Good creatives are resilient and they have to be," he says.
"This business is 99 percent failure. The vast majority of what you do will never see the light of day."
