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Of all the blog posts I’ve written over the years – and let’s face it. there’s been loads – there’s been a few I have constantly referred to.
One is Harrison Ford’s the value of value.
The other is Michael Keaton’s if you’re an employee, you’re still a business owner.
If you hadn’t worked it out by now, both are about ensuring you are not just paid for your creativity, but paid fairly.
You’d think that was obvious, but so many people seem to have forgotten that … including the creative industry, who have decided their value is better placed on the process of what they do rather than what they actually create and change.
Insanity.
But underpinning this is the creative person’s insecurity.
Somewhere in our psyche is the belief that if we charge money for what we create, we’re not being truly creative.
That we’ve sold out.
That we are imposters … capitalists in creative clothing.
Now there is an element of truth in all of this – because the moment you are working for someone else’s dollar, that someone has some influence over what you create. But that’s not unique to the creative industry. Nor does it mean you are selling out on your creative integrity by accepting payment for what you do.
Please note I said ‘payment for what you do’.
That does not mean we should be ignoring the needs, ambitions and goals that our clients want us to help them achieve, but it is acknowledging we should also be paid well for the creativity, craft, experience – and unique way of looking at the World – that goes into creating the work that allows us to achieve their needs in ways others can’t.
The reality is as much as many – especially in the creative industry – like to suggest money is the enemy of creativity, it’s not.
It can allow us to do amazing things.
Break new ground.
Explore new possibilities.
But more than that, while it may be differing amounts, we all need money.
And – to a certain extent – we all want money.
There is nothing wrong with that, just like there’s nothing wrong with being paid for what we do.
The real question should be how did we earn it and what did we do with it when we got it.
That’s how you can judge a persons integrity, not the fact you got paid for what you did and the talent you invested in it.
Sure, struggling may sound romantic in a Hollywood movie, but few of us want a lifetime of that and who can blame them!?
I still remember when Lars Ulrich of Metallica copped all manner of shit because he was the face for recording artists fighting against the role of Napster on the recording industry.
The insults he copped.
The distain he was thrown.
And all he was doing was trying to protect the value of his – and millions of other bands – creativity.
Why was that wrong?
Was it because, at that stage, he was already wealthy?
Is there some sort of rule to say that there is only so much you’re allowed to make before creative people need to shut up and be grateful for what they’ve got?
And what is that amount? No doubt, somewhere between ‘enough to live but not more than the rest of us’.
However somewhere along the line, society has decided to reposition creatively minded people as idealists … naive or even weak. Ignoring reality so they can wank-off on some self indulgent project that only interests them.
Which is total bollocks.
Apart from the fact I’ve never met a creative who isn’t insanely focused on the challenge they’ve been given – even if they have a very different opinion on how to get there to the client or the rest of the agency – the fact is we’ve now surrounded them with 10,000 different types of ‘strategist’, with 10,000 different opinions and agendas … which forces the conversations to be more about the importance of a discipline than the actual potential of the work.
And don’t get me even started on the fact a lot of these new forms of strategy are either [1] not really new or [2] not doing actual strategy, but executional management!
However all that aside, the reality is in all this, creative people have to take a responsibility for the situation they find themselves in.
Or, potentially even more specifically, the people who are training and developing them.
Because they are complicit in maintaining the belief your creative value and integrity is somehow linked to not being ‘diluted’ by payment. Which, when you think of it, is utterly ridiculous given value is created by what others will pay for it.
Schools … universities … agencies … everyone has an obligation to change this.
Not just for the future of their students or employees, but also for their own value.
Appreciating the economic value of what you create and what that creates is not dirty … it is the opposite of that.
It’s purity.
It means you have power in the conversation.
A right to fight for what you believe rather than what is convenient.
Creativity comes in many forms but right now, the form of ‘engineering’ is winning.
Where it’s less about what could be created and more about how you create something that has already been defined. Worse, something that has already been done.
So if you’re in the creative industry or thinking about it or know someone already in it.
Or, alternately, if you’re a teacher involved in the arts – or any subject for that matter – or careers advisor or a parent of someone who is in, or wanting to be in, the creative industry … then please read this article by Alec Dudson [the founder of Intern] because in it, he explains why ‘the economic value of creativity’ skill still remains largely absent from creative education … the impacts of that omission and, most usefully, how you can change it.
Creativity can change outcomes, possibilities and culture.
It has played a pivotal role in every great brand, product, idea and invention.
But not as insane as the people capable of creating it, also being complicit in it.
Know your worth. Charge your worth. Build your worth.
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Recently I was reading an article on Brexit when I came across a comment that stopped me in my tracks.
The reason for it is that in a few words – literally a few – it not only highlighted the issue with many of the shortsighted fools who voted for leaving the European Union – and likely voted for the election of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – but also could be used to explain the decline of so many companies, institutions and individuals.
This is it …
What a perfectly constructed sentence.
A devastating set of words that places you perfectly in a corner you can’t get out of.
It’s almost a Hollywood movie line it’s so crafted in its underlying viciousness.
But of course, the people it challenges won’t accept it.
They will continue to refuse to acknowledge their complicity in the situation millions now face.
Because as I’ve written before, people has difficulty understanding something when their credibility and reputation depends on them not understanding something.
It’s why they will continue to cast blame on everyone else.
Why they will continue to claim the opposition are more dangerous than the government they voted in … the government that has brought an entire nation to its knees.
But let’s be honest, the reason for their attitude is even uglier than not wanting to own up to what they contributed to. Because for all their claims of wanting a ‘better Britain’ … the real reason behind their choice was to create a barrier between them and people they think are beneath them.
A way to feel socially, morally, professionally superior to those around them, while conveniently choosing to ignore they were either given great advantage from birth over the vast majority of people or seek to mitigate their situation by blaming everyone else for what they have not achieved, despite starting from greater advantage.
I get it. It’s kind-of human nature. It’s also the unspoken truth of democracy – where the reality is we tend to vote for what works for you rather than what’s right for the nation.
Of course the unspoken truth is still better than the alternative … however given the way politics and business are increasingly allowing spin, vitriol and lies, it seems we’re seeing ‘post truth’ as an accepted and embraced business strategy.
And that’s why the independent voice has never been so important.
Not just in the public domain, but within organisations, governments and individual groups.
Not to attack, destroy or dethrone – as is the current trend – but to protect.
To ensure the people making decisions – or the people asking to decide on the options – are aware of the range of possibilities and outcomes that could occur rather than just blindly following a blinkered promise of what will happen.
Not delivered with hyperbole or exaggeration, but with quiet, informed context and facts … delivered by an individual or organisation without political affiliation and respected for their independence.
It doesn’t mean it will stop things like Brexit happening, but it will ensure people who knowingly bend the truths to suit their own agenda or were deliberately ignorant to the choices they made are held to account. Because without that, we carry on down this sorry path where governments, organisations or individuals can choose to ignore previous choices they made, ignore the passing of time that changes the context of everything and ignore the realities others may have caught up and left us behind.
I am under no illusion that the truth hurts, but delusion damages us forever.