Time And Patience Are Powerful Allies

Each spring when the flowers bloom, the garden reminds me that you cannot rush beauty.

We forget this far too often, especially when it comes to businesses such as advertising. Conversations and thoughts and meetings and articles always seem to be about the newest shiny object, or the next offer, or the promotion to end all promotions.

The work suffers as a result. There's no time to let it grow and mature. There's no space to let it root and develop. Ideas are sown and harvested in matter of hours or days.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I've written video scripts in just a couple of hours, and developed second and third versions is half the time (or less).

I get it. Clients sign the checks on the front, Service providers sign them on the back. We have to keep clients happy so we can keep the lights on.

So clients have incredible power to dictate timelines.

Clients have needs. Clients have deadlines. Clients want it fast and good and cheap (so much for the days of only being able to pick two of three). And with crowdsourcing, design outsourcing, and a gig economy that rewards the lowest bidder more often than it rewards craftsmanship, the competition for clients' attentions and budgets is increasingly fierce.

We don't take the opportunity to sort the seeds of ideas by hanging them all over the office wall (ignoring for a moment the fact that office walls themselves are vanishing in favor of the creative-killing idea of open-floor-plan collaborative environments).

We don't let the seeds germinate by taking walks. Going to a movie. Having a beer in the afternoon. Anything but staring at the seeds.

We don't sow them, fertilize them and water them well by adjusting each syllable so the poetry and impact are both maximized; kerning the type so it welcomes the eye; adjusting leading and line spacing to remove unsightly widows and random breaks.

We don't prepare for a bountiful harvest by diversifying, preferring specialized monocultures (POP, email, content management, apps, social media) instead of holistic, integrated campaigns.

And that creates lifeless, listless, less-than-memorable creative work that is as commoditized as the majority of products they sell. The moments when I see a piece of creative work and think, "Damn. I wish I'd done that." are fewer and farther between than ever before.

Because we simply don't allow time for the harvest to ripen.

When we do have the opportunity to stop and plant the roses, as well as smell them, we must cherish and celebrate it. For with time and patience, great beauty will emerge.