The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Especially a new project where you are given the freedom to take things to new places.

Scary, because there’s always the risk. you might fuck it up.

Awesome, because you can – in theory – go wherever the hell you like.

I love these moments.

I love exploring all the possibilities and then seeing where everyone’s energy is at.

I love the drama, the challenge, the breakthroughs and the crafting.

But most of all, I love the creation.

Seeing something come to life that wasn’t there before.

But to get to a place that excites rather than appeases, is emotionally draining and stimulating.

The process – if that is what you want to call it – is one that tests you more than tests the idea you’re developing.

And frankly we don’t talk about that enough.

Instead, we celebrate precision, perfection, optimization and logic.

And while there may well be elements of all that in all we do, they sure-as-shit don’t happen at the beginning of the process … and if you think they do, then you’re either kidding yourself or you haven’t tried hard enough.

But what’s scary is a lot of the way the industry is structuring themselves is to kid themselves or not try hard enough.

Too many people running our industry are people not from our industry – so they don’t understand how it works.

They see the rabbit holes we need to go down as a waste of time.

A costly exercise in the delivery of our ‘product’.

And while I appreciate you can take too long on things, you can also take too little time …

But that’s where we’re heading … where effectiveness is defined and determined by ‘delivery timelines’ or ‘fitting in’ to pre-determined definitions rather than trying to do something new … something different … something better.

Which is why it’s so funny so many brand and management consultancies talk about ‘brand transformation’ … because you can’t transform if you stick to predefined and predetermined rules, processes and logic. But then – as Lee Hill once told me – they’re not really transforming anyone or anything. What many are really doing is helping old and slow companies catch up with what everyone else in their category has been doing for an age. It means the consultancy can profit from articulating the learnings from the more progressive companies – rather than develop new possibilities and processes of their own – and wrap it up in expensive language that benefits both parties.

Or said another way … ‘catching up’ is sold as innovation and ‘duplication’ is sold as expertise.