Timesheets Killed Advertising Creativity

The moment you sell your services based on the amount of time it takes, is the moment you lose all ability to control your value.

By reducing ideas and deliverables to a finite number of hours, there was an immediate timetable place on how much longer there would be outstanding creativity and career longevity in the advertising industry.

The pace of that slide was increased by the consolidation of the advertising industry into a few holding companies.

Holding companies beholden to shareholders. Shareholders who like more hours worked at lower wages.

The easiest way to reduce agency overhead—because agencies only really have human capital—is to reduce salaries. That means less experience. And that means less creativity.

Yes, I know. All that youth has been specifically trained in tasks. They know how to run the machines and the widgets and the gizmos.

They don't have the first clue about how to use any of that technical expertise to actually solve a business problem.

They've not been shown what that looks like.

And there are no elder stateswomen/men to serve as mentors.

So the work becomes more technical and less creative.

And we all suffer.

Even Picasso knew that experience was the ultimate master of craft. He stated it simply as, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

Every Company Needs A Copy Chief

Writing, and more specifically copywriting, is more important than most people imagine. To put it bluntly, it is the foundation of every company's growth.

It's the foundation because it's how a company presents itself to customers, constituents and consumers in the world at large.

Yet most people treat it as a fungible item and assume that a basic grasp of speaking the language is enough to qualify someone to weigh in on copy. I've lost count of the number of times I've received feedback that starts with a variation of, "I was showing this to the receptionist/call center/woman who is currently married to me ..."

Oddly though, those same people never have a chance to comment on the creative brief, analyze the data or meet about the marketing strategy. Nope. But a pulse is all that's required to comment on the outcome of all of that input. 

With so many commenting on a company's voice, that voice becomes fragmented. 

Call centers don't have a unified script.

CEOs slip from talking points into narcissistic, company-killing diatribes.

Print ads don't work with TV spots don't work with online video don't work with corporate websites. And that leaves out the wonderful world of social media where there are constant public failures because of the wrong message/tone/moment.

To help ensure that a company's copy (aka The Brand Voice) remains clear and consistent, there should be one person at the top of the food chain who is concerned about every syllable, every comma (regardless of whether it's serial or not) and every call to action.

That's the only way to ensure that a company's most valuable and most undervalued asset can be appropriately handled.

Forget asking the call center/receptionist/spouse-du-jour about the latest email marketing efforts.

Ask the copy chief.

Then pay close attention to the answer. 

My Boss Is 10 Years Old

Yes. Literally. At least for a little while longer. She is almost 11.

No, she isn't my supervisor, or my supervisor's supervisor.

She can't sign my expense report.

She can't approve my vacation days.

She doesn't participate in a 360 review of my work.

She isn't the one signing my paycheck.

She's still the boss.

Why? The work I do is for her.

The work I do pays for food, shelter, clothes and the other necessities. It funds her extra-curricular activities and spur-of-the-moment froyo cravings. It buys her books, and blocks, and soccer balls.

The work I do gives me a chance to be a chauffeur, wanna-be coach, enthusiastic cook, organic gardener, chess partner, and many other things.

There is, however, an inescapable fact: The people to whom I'm accountable from 9 to 5 aren't the ones that really matter at the end of the day.

My job is to provide advertising ideas to my supervisors in exchange for money.

My real boss couldn't care less what I'm paid to do.

And I'm completely comfortable with that.

Onboarding Sounds Like Waterboarding.

A day of onboarding activities is a delirious waste of productive time.

Just like mandatory corporate fun.

I don't want to team build.

I don't want to listen to someone pontificate on how I can better align with the corporate culture.

I don't want to learn how I can live the company's values.

I have a team (that conveniently shares an address and dinner table with me).

I have a culture that has nothing to do with work (and it involves a lot of getting dirty in a garden).

I have a set of values that I live every minute of every day. Heck, I've even written about my rules, and how everything is a matter of integrity.

So what do I want?

I want to do my best work, collect my paycheck, and get back to the people and things that matter.

Keep the fruit punch. It's just that much more for everyone who cares about such things.

The Gig Economy Is Killing Expertise

Someone asked me about freelance apps and crowdsourcing creative today. It's a topic that always pisses me off.

So this is more of a half-baked rant than anything else.

Finding freelance work as a creative professional is a hard hustle. In addition to doing outstanding work each and every time, you have to cultivate relationships and manage expectations. That way you can develop repeat customers.

Freelance apps and websites are making it harder.

More than that, they're undercutting the value of expertise.

Everything is reduced to a blind bid; and mostly at prices that would make even the any-minimum-wage-is-too-high crowd blush.

Hell. Fivver is predicated on the idea that you can get professional creativity for five bucks. And the offers on UpWork are ridiculous "$20 for a series of articles" or Of course there are crowdsourcing options like 99 Designs where only the "winner" gets paid.

Give away creative ideas for free? No. And you know what you can go do to yourself for asking.

As Don Draper said, "That's the job. I give you money. You give me ideas."

If you want my ideas, I get your money. Period. And it had better be more than the spare change in your pocket.

Outside the creative arena things are even more awful on the pay-scale front. Uber. Lyft. Task Rabbit. Takl. They're all digital plantation owners getting rich off the hard work of others.

Of course, that leads me down the rabbit hole to LinkedIn, Yelp, FourSquare and countless sites that generate revenue on content they get for free.

I'll be writing a lot more about this topic.

And as I do so, I'll be reminding everyone I can that no one buys the cow if they're getting the milk for free.

Corporate Recruiters Don't Actually

Recruiting means something. 

It means going out and enlisting help, or engaging someone to join your organization.

It's active. It's even proactive.

Unless you consider corporate recruiting. In that form of recruiting, it's incumbent on the recruit to be the active one. The corporate recruiters base all their activity on being reactive.

When you read the words “college recruiting” the images in your head are magical.

Trips to campus.

Meals with coaches.

A college showing young athletes that their skills are not just wanted but also highly coveted.

Every aspect of the process is carefully orchestrated to convey one simple fact—we want you more than everyone else does. For the next four years, we'll be your surrogate family.

When you read the words “corporate recruiting” the images are exactly and intensely opposite.

They’re mundane.

They’re exhaustive online forms that are a copy/paste from your résumé—that you must also attach.

They’re a mandatory list of references before you’ve even interviewed.

They’re a requirement to tell a possible employer what your salary history has been—so they can low-ball you or find a cheaper alternative.

As with college recruiting, every aspect of the corporate recruiting process is carefully orchestrated to convey a simple fact—we expect you to beg for a job. And to be grateful if you ever hear from us because we have hundreds of applicants and we can't possibly connect with all of them.

College recruiting is all about spotting, scouting and wooing talent.

Corporate recruiting is all about telling people you know to tell people they know that you have an open position, and they should send a résumé. Or posting on countless job sites. Or spamming social media networks. Or any of a hundred other less active ways of finding and securing talent. 

When you do submit a résumé and fill out the exhaustive online application, 99 times out of 100 you won’t receive a response.

Not even a form letter.

Let’s dispense with the pretense that HR Recruiters actually recruit.

They fill gaps in the corporate structure.

They’re caulk.

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Innovation is overhyped

Among the many words that are overwrought in business and shoved into public discourse far too often, innovation is an egregious example. If you look closely at your business, there are three things that you will observe:

1) You're not as innovative as you think you are.

2) Your company is not as innovative as you think it is.

3) You are producing a commodity. You should stop trying to convince yourself otherwise, and embrace whatever it is that you do better than your competitors. And then prune away all the nonsense that prevents you from improving it daily.

Yes, in the meanest sense of the definition, innovation may be part of your processes because you can claim a newness to what you're doing. Yet that is likely a dubious claim. Whatever is new in your business, is only a factor of difference from what your competitors are doing. Such a factor is likely to be a few percentage points on a scale, and certainly not a significant one.

It's not significant because you've studied your competitors, benchmarked against the leader in your category, carefully considered the industry best practices, and convinced yourself that you're creating processes for successful innovation. When you do all of these things, you assure yourself of creating a commodity. Just as you do when you spend precious resources on studying your clients/customers/buyers via focus groups.

If you are truly innovative, however, congratulations on creating something truly unique. Now, prepare yourself for your competitors to catch you.