Manifesting, lists, and hope.

I like lists. They’re for all sorts of things. Songs to download, quotes I think are funny or deep or idiotic or scrapbook worthy, groceries to pick up, errands to run, people to call, dates to remember, passwords, observations or human truths…and so on. They are mental pictures for yesterday, today, or tomorrow. Sometimes even a manifesto of the here and now.

I’m super organized and don’t really like to allow myself to fall into disarray. I can handle organized chaos and sometimes I can get caught “in the weeds” but if you’re organized going into something, it’s a whole lot easier to pull yourself back out. Especially in the creative realm. You can not possibly predict whats going to happen – nor should you. How boring would that be?

I found this somewhere somehow…might have been via twitter, but it was a while ago and I don’t know how I got to it. It’s pretty darn funny and a great dose of reality for someone like me. Someone starting off, on the hunt for, or just started that first advertising job – It’s OK to suck. You are given permission to do so in fact. Failing on occasion can actually help keep you grounded. Not that I particularly enjoy failing mind you. But it happens to the best of the best from time to time. Roll with it.

Somewhere in your personal history a decision was made to forgo a “real job”; one your parents would understand.  Artist, creative director, writer, musician, photographer, actor, fine artist or pick one – you got attention for a talent or liked doing it so much that there was just no room to commit significant time to a profession less flattering gratifying. You became one of them sensitive types whose ego is vulnerably bonded to their work.  True objective distance is pointless but it’s best to have a survival strategy.

Let’s start here:

1.    Snub expectations.  Excitement needs space; throw a few elbows if required.  Picasso’s friend and art critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, encouraged his cohorts to “innovate violently!   Much more risky for creative professionals, is to abide by rules.

2.    The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

3.    There’s NO plan “B”. Quit moonlighting.  Put in the hours; work without a net.  If you have a plan “B” it’s too easy to bail, and you’ll want to.  Part timers can’t keep up with the guy who’s bustin’ it like a sex crazed school boy.

4.    It’s a passion play for pay. You’re a whore, or not, it all depends on how much money is in the bank.  It’s a crucial balance that keeps sanity from escaping.  Your clarity of purpose resolves the left and right hemispheres.  Ultimately the decision for what kind of creative you are going to be is up to you, but don’t let the vision go blurry.

5.    Industry best practices are not creative. Best practices are maintenance and benchmarking is linear: this leads to that, variation is less professional.  The state of the art didn’t arrive by formula or recipe.

6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.

7.    The committee is usually wrong; however the crowd is commonly right but incredibly dull. If you’re part of the crowd you will be sourced and forgotten.

8.    Ideas are like lightning strikes hitting you unaware after you’ve been rubbing a cat balloon on a wool carpet for months.

9.     Everyone is creative but only a select few can deal with the risk of ego crushing rejection that inevitably comes from the direction you least expect.  If your work is worth more to you than the safety of groups or a secure fortune then you’re “a creative”.

10.    That road block was dropped there for a reason; it’s so you learn how to maneuver or to accept the pain of hitting it.  Either way, if you don’t survive the test, it wasn’t worth the trip.

11.    Find a way to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but don’t tell anyone you’re doing it.

12.    Putting creativity into words dilutes the idea unless you’re a writer.  It’s only creative if you actually create it.  “I could’ve done that” doesn’t count.

13.    If you have a style, be sure it’s following you and not vice versa.  If you’re chasing your style, you’ve taken a wrong turn. (see  #5 “best practices”)  Follow your muse, let others call it your style.  Don’t borrow from yourself too often.

14.    Don’t let anyone talk you out of your passion. If you have passion for an idea, don’t lose it by asking others if they think it’s good.  They probably won’t.

15.    Lose the habit of being successful.  Success can doom your career to mediocrity. Embrace the fact that you’re never going to make it and find comfort in other things.  Once success becomes your work, it’s over and if you’re a creative professional, success looks an awful lot like cash and cheering crowds.

So if you find yourself failing miserably, remember this (from my movie quotes list):

“Beginnings are scary. Endings are usually sad, but it is what’s in the middle that counts the most. So when you find yourself at the beginning just give hope a chance to float up, and it will.” –Hope Floats

Another go at this whole blog thing.

I’ve been remiss. I know it. The six people (besides my parents) who check my blog know it. I’m not going to create fictional past posts to make up for it. That’s just silly. So I am going to try to stay on top of it now.

A major reason being I wanted to share (more than tweeting) things I read or find that I’d like to share with you. All six of you.

This is an excerpt from the blog of Scott Goodson, founder of strawberryfrog. He’s interviewing Anthony Kalamut a Professor  and Program Chair of Creative Advertising and Seneca College School of Communication Arts in Toronto, Canada. I noticed a lot of correlation between the gamut of classes and stresses that they put their students through and Miami Ad School’s “tactics”.

What can they (juniors) bring to the table for an established agency?

If they have nothing to offer, you can be dam sure I’m not letting them out the door of this program. Not on my watch. But what they really bring the table is: Honesty and Youth and Optimism

Three non-renewable resources in this business, and sure some wells are deeper than others but there is nothing like that “Jed-Clampett-black-gold-geyser” that new minds bring. We hammer these kids and prepare them for the worst this business has to offer.

We teach strategy, media, and creative at the same time. Creative or business every student is expected to stand behind every project they complete.

If they don’t come prepared I’m proud to say that my faculty channel the best and worst creative directors they have ever known and take our students to task.

The big take away from all this is Honesty. They are honest with the quality of work they bring to the table, they know and believe that what they create will work, and they are willing to stand by it.

Youth can in fact be taught. It’s about being plugged into as many cultural sources as possible, and letting those sources shape you. I’m proud to say that we have a class here on “Trends” and “Trend Hunting” — What do they mean, if they will last, who is a part of them. We’re one of the only schools in Canada with a class like it and I’m sure a lot of awkward teen moments could be avoided if we farmed the curriculum out to high schools. (BTW – I am working with a high school in Brampton to establish a high school advertising program for the 12th grade — first class graduated last spring and I have 6 of those students as freshmen this year).

All told we pushed these kids through 90 plus hour workweeks with projects challenging the right and left sides of the brain simultaneously. We ask for full campaigns – not matching luggage, and the only way to get an A is not to bring a big idea, but a rich one. Plenty of creative can already match a misleading turn of phrase with a surprising image, but a rich idea is not just big but culturally relevant and meaningful to a larger group of people. As we push them, their optimism drains – they get exhausted and beaten down. I’m proud to say that by the time they are done, they hate school.

Scott, I do all this with one promise to them — “If they can get though this and land that first gig, there is nothing they can’t achieve”.
I have talked to hundreds of post grads over the years and by the time they walk into an office like yours the well of optimism is so deep you might never see the bottom.
(Anjali has pushed through this process and to her everyday post Seneca is a gift.. when she came back to visit me in Toronto last week, she says her university classes hardly challenged her in the same way)

How can they get jobs in advertising?

I stand firm in this belief, and I think I have covered the five major pillars here:
1. Passion
2. Opportunity
3. Honesty
4. Youth
5. Optimism

The link to the rest of this article is in the trackback section. If you’re newly graduated or considering going to a creative school for advertising, give it a read. Check out the school along with others and see where you would fit best. What is handy about portfolio and creative tracks in school, is that you have complete control over your destiny. Tailor each class to fit you! You’re paying for it – squeeze every last creative drop out of it. Anticipate. Delegate. Procreate (just kidding). But make sure you have fun. Cause if you don’t it will show and no one will hire you.

Global Top Dog Award

I have some wonderful news! I heard late last night that the campaign I did a little bit ago has won a pretty cool award. You’re looking at the new Global Top Dog for Miami Ad School! The best part is that we not only won the popular vote but the professional vote as well. We swept it!

There is a short but nice article/entry about the competition posted on the school site. http://blog.miamiadschool.com/#posts/we-have-a-winner-a-new-global-top-dog-is-crowned

“The San Francisco work is really smart. The innovation in media thinking and creative strategy gives it a win. This work embodies what Miami Ad School is all about–smart, thoughtful, creative but also smart strategy.” -Mark Andeer, VP of Brand Strategy at OfficeMax

“I voted for the Master Lock campaign because it uses social networking in a smart way that fits the brand. It’s also a useful tool and not just a cool advertising piece.” -Justin Kramm, Senior Copywriter at Tribal DDB Amsterdam

So thank you to everyone who voted and supported this to the end. I really appreciate it.

Top-10’s are for pansies.

So I found this posting in a roundabout way. I very much enjoyed reading it – especially since I am also graduating from ad school in a few short months. Whoa. Graduating. Whoa.

Maybe these tips will help you as well. Props to Jake Dubs for writing something with an original twist.
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11’s the key number.

1. It’s what you think that counts. This is probably the most cliché thing on this list, but it’s also the most important. Being a subjective business, it takes an incredible amount of ability to judge your own work to compile only the best. Shopping my book around I got 20 different responses from 20 different people. In the end, it wasn’t as if I could listen to any one of those opinions. I was forced to trust myself.

2. Stay humble. The people who think they’re the shit usually aren’t. And the ones who don’t think they’re the shit usually are. Unless they’re not.

3. Compete only with yourself. Some other guy in your class did a sick campaign? Awesome. Some other guy in your class did a shitty campaign? Awesome. Who cares? What did you do? Are you proud of what you’re presenting, regardless of whether it’s the best or worst in the class? For more times than I care to remember I felt the evil pangs of jealousy and the even more evil pangs of gloating rise up inside me depending on what others showed. If I could do it all over again, I’d have made more of an effort to keep my head down, my blinders on.

4. Love the process. This is a Fenske original. When you’re enjoying doing your work, it not only doesn’t feel like work, it makes whatever you do better. It’s been said before, but your enjoyment shines through. People can see it. It’s weird.

5. See everything as an opportunity, not an assignment. In 2 years, I worked on more than 100 brands/products/projects. 90% of them didn’t end up in my book. But I approached every single one with the intention that it would, no matter how bad the product, partner, or circumstances. Looking back now, I think that made a big difference.

6. Learn more from your peers than your professors. The professors are brilliant. The professors are rich. The professors are successful. The professors are old. This is not a bad thing, it is merely an undisputed truth. With few exceptions (Charles Hall), it’s hard for them to be tapped into the modern culture of the 20-somethings whom you are often advertising/communicating to. Your 20-something peers are. And so are you.

7. Care. When you care about your work, when you want to do well, when you take pride in what you do, the work is forced to be the best it can be. It has no choice. It’s when you’re tired and your brain taps out at mediocre that you stop caring. And it shows in the work.

8. Don’t create ads. Create culture. This is straight from Charles Hall, and it’s evident in most of the real-world work most of us deem as “great.” Great work doesn’t piggyback off the latest catchphrase or that year’s cool kid lingo. It makes its own.

9. To be inspired to make ads, don’t look at ads. I’ve learned that when you’re stumped and need to seek inspiration, you shouldn’t look at the awards books. You should listen to pitchfork. Look at ffffound. Look at computerluv. Look at The Dieline. Shit, read The Onion.

10. Listen to yourself. This was really hard for me for the first year and a half of school. Still is, actually. I am a shy and uncertain person by nature (why else would I have a blog), and it’s hard for me to let loose and believe in what I’m saying. I often feel like I am the only person on earth who feels this way, but more often than not, the exact opposite is true. If you’re a living, breathing, thinking human being, then what you have to say, from the deepest depths of you, will always be valid to other living, breathing, thinking human beings. From two professors’ suggestions on separate occasions, I’ve read Self Reliance by Emerson. It wasn’t recommended twice for no reason.

11. Work hard. I hate to say it, but it has to be said. The harder you work, the better your work. That old Fenskeism, “Hard work is a waste of time if your idea sucks” is valid, but to counteract it, hard work is never a waste of time if you get a good idea out of it.

I’ve learned about a thousand times what’s on this list, but this is, in my view, the top pinnacle of that enlightenment. Apologies if you found any of these trite or cliché. That’s only because they’re true.

MAS Awards Show

So I am pretty proud of my Copywriter and myself. Every quarter at my school, we have a competition of sorts for the work that everyone does over the course of the term. In six quarters and six competitions, I’ve never won a single one. This is not the end of the world. But I’ve stopped holding my breath in anxious anticipation.

The quarter is over and just about everyone has mentally checked out after stressing like crazy to get everything done the last two weeks. I burnt a CD and brought in some jpgs to turn in my work on the final Monday mostly because I had done the work and was proud of it. Then the MAS awards roll around on Thursday and my partner and I are fairly shocked to see ours had won Best in Show.

This is mostly for my parents, but here is our entry. If only the Future Lions judges had deemed it more worthy.

Her Morning Elegance

I have always been a supporter or fan of stop motion when used right. This is one case that just blows most others out of the water. It’s so cool. It’s also one of those times where you wish you had thought of it first. I’m glad no one has taken this and ruined it’s simplicity. I hope you like it too.

Awkward Family Photos

I am sitting at work today and couldn’t help but be distracted by my fellow interns giggling on the other side of the table. I asked why, and boy am I glad I did. I dare you not to laugh at these. Whoever compiled them, well done. Keep it up. My absolute favorite is the last on page two. It’s below, and as strange as you feel looking at this one, try to discover what really makes it terribly awkward. Plus, who would ever wear those suits, much less force their children to do the same. That picture will definitely come back to haunt those poor kids someday.

Let It Shine on Vimeo

Sometimes advertising can do something really beautiful.

more about "Honda Insight – Let It Shine on Vimeo", posted with vodpod

About YouTube…fail

So yesterday I showed the rather pointless man dancing. Thanks to YouTube and my roommate I stumbled upon something even more fantastic. Fail blog. I promise I don’t search for strippers online or in real life, but this is too good to pass up.

For some reason I really got a kick out of this too. Could not stop laughing.

And lastly:

About YouTube…dancing

We all like it. We all reference it. It’s a great time wasting slash procrastinating device. I know there is a lot of stupid stuff up there, but one thing I don’t totally understand is how it sometimes turns into a blog. People use their web cams to hoot and holler about “Leaving Britney Alone” and other mindless dribble.

That being said, my roommate stumbled upon this little gem the other day. I don’t know how this guy came up with the notion that it was a good idea, but the more I watch, the less likely I am to turn away.

I may have just contradicted myself a few times, but I fell like thats allowed. It is my blog after all isn’t it?