Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Cannes, Colenso, Collaboration, Colleagues, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture
So before Paula and I were going to do our talk for WARC at Cannes, I had a major presentation with the founder of a global sports brand.
Being a busy billionaire – especially one based in a different timezone to the one I was in – I knew they wouldn’t really be able to move things around just to accommodate me, which is why 2 hours and 30 minutes before I was due to hit the stage, I along with Si … the CCO of Colenso … walked into the Speakers Room at Cannes, where WARC had kindly organized a room for us to do our call.
Except when we walked in, we found the room was actually a cordoned off part of the lounge – where people would have been able to hear every word – so it was most definitely not going to work for something both so important and sensitive.
I should point out this was not WARC’s fault in the slightest as not only did they not know the nature of the meeting – mainly because it was confidential – but because they’d also gone out of their way to try and help with limited notice. That said, the result of this was Si and I with 20 minutes to come up with a solution.
After desperately running around to see if any of the ‘meeting booths’ dotted around the venues were free [they weren’t] we decided the best course of action was to do the advertising equivalent of MacGyver.
Grabbing a few chairs, we found a quiet corridor at the back of the venue and, as you can see from the pic below, set ourselves up.
Praying no one would walk past or through, we were there bang on time and presented our little hearts out – looking for all the World like we were in a meeting room and absolutely not in a corridor with windows looking out onto the throngs of global ad people walking past while trying to ignore the fact we were sweating like pigs as it was boiling hot and there was absolutely no air-conditioning to be had.
And yet I kind of love this is what happened.
Not just because we were proud of the work we had done and were going to present.
Not just because we wanted to honor the teams of talented people who had turned an idea into a reality.
But because advertising is filled with these sorts of stories.
Stories of grit, instinct, spontaneity, audacity and ridiculousness.
It’s kind of the things that makes it special …
Sure, TV, media and events like Cannes likes to present the industry as a highly polished machine … but show me a piece of great work that hasn’t come from a journey that tests every emotion in every person involved?
But what I love even more is how Si and I laughed about the situation.
Before. During. After.
Don’t get me wrong, we take what we do very seriously – but rather than freak out, we understood that when push-came-to-shove, we’d find a way and we’d do it well.
Of course, a big reason for that was how much we believed in what we were going to show and discuss – not to mention the fact this was not our first rodeo with the trials and tribulations of reality – but being able to hatch a plan and crack a smile as we dealt with our unexpected shitshow, ensured the audience not only were able to focus on the work rather than any sign of panic, but would see a team who trusted, liked and worked for each other rather than were just coldly clinical and at the end of the day, that’s not just how you honour the work that so many people put so much into, it’s how you increase the odds of making great examples of it.
At a time where the industry loves to promote an endless array of ‘proprietary’ tools and processes, it’s worth remembering the thing that we should be concentrating on nurturing, protecting and honouring is the stuff that comes out of it.
The work.
Too many people seem to have forgotten that.
Probably because the people promoting the systems, have never made the work.