Presenting with Laryngitis

I presented our concept for a new campaign to the client today.

I have laryngitis and my partner's first and second languages are not English.

I think it actually helped me present. 

I had to be short, concise. I couldn't ramble because at any minute I was going to lose my voice.

I would have liked to have prepared a little more for my presentation though.

Lessons learned: Prepare more, slow down, read the entire ad, and don't repeat myself so often.

World's Best Senior Writer

(Sorry Greg, former teachers don't count.)

Disclosure: My senior writer doesn't know I have a blog, and I'm not going to tell him because my little letter of praise my make things a little awkward.

I have the world's best senior writer as my copy supervisor. I'm not sure if he's won many awards, but he always does good work, he always sets a good example, and he's always got time to work with me.

When I started, I was afraid that it would be weird having a guy who's ideas compete with mine as the guy who supervises and approves my copy. But nothing could be further from the truth.

He and I are both working on a billboard campaign for our client. He and his partner have their concept, and my team has ours. I was brought in on the project 1 week into it. He has sat with me for more than a few hours and just let me bounce headline ideas off of him, giving me suggestions on how to make them work for each specific message. 

I don't know if the client will pick his campaign or my campaign, but I know mine is in the running because of the help he provided.

Granted, its part of his job responsibilities, but this guy goes out of his way to help make sure that every one of us writers on the team produces the best copy for our concept possible.

He's never a dick when he doesn't like something. He just says it's not working, try some more. He's quick to praise when he does like something, which makes it a lot easier to show him my work.

The reason I'm writing this is to remind myself in a few years when I'm a Sr Writer of how to be a great Sr. Writer, because I'll tell you this right now, if people regard me in the same way his peers regard him, I'll consider myself a success.

How Not to Use Portfolio Night

Makin' Ads beat me to the punch on posting about Portfolio Night, but I want to share my experience with Portfolio Night. I entitle this, how not to do Portfolio Night.

I failed at Portfolio Night.

I had 5 people review my book. All immeasurably more talented and successful than me. I got some great feedback, good feedback, and some awful feedback. And I didn't focus on any of it.

Pay close attention, because I'm about to tell you the most important thing you can do during Portfolio Night.

TAKE NOTES.

I had an ECD who had worked at my dream agency, and was working at one my favorite shops in town review my book. This man was a multiple Grand Lions winner, Multiple One Show winner, multiple entrant into CA. He was a former One Show Judge, and he reviewed my book.

I remember all of his compliments vividly.

I couldn't begin to tell you how he told me to improve my book.

This man told me I was talented, had a great future ahead of me, and wanted to stay in touch with me. He replied to each and every email I sent him within a day of me sending it, with thoughtful and encouraging replies. Until I sent him my "finished" student book.

I don't know why I never heard back from him, but I'm pretty sure I can guess. There were two campaigns I had showed him at the review. He loved the concept behind both of them, but told me they needed work. 

I removed those campaigns from my book. 

I didn't fix them, I didn't show him that I could follow feedback.

I didn't get a job at his shop.

After that, I resolved myself to making changes based on feedback of my reviewers. The next time I showed my book to someone I made their suggested changes, and it made a difference.

I got a job.

The difference between writing creatively and writing creatively toward a concept.

I learned a great lesson this Friday.

I learned the freedom of writing toward a concept rather than just trying to write creative lines.

That's right. 

I said its easier to write lines based on a strong concept than to just randomly come up with a bunch of smart lines without a concept.

On Friday morning I was asked to come up with with at least 3 workable lines for a poster campaign. I was asked to do this in 3 hours. 

I didn't have a concept, I had a visual and a partial brief.

For three hours I tried to pump out lines.

There were lines that were funny, ones that were clever, ones that were smart, there were no lines that focused the power of the visual to an idea.

I went to the meeting with my lines. I was thanked for my effort, told my lines were well written, but they weren't sure that they were paying off the concept.

None of the campaigns were 100% ready to go to the client, we all agreed to regroup again next week with our reimagined campaigns.

I grabbed the AD and we went and sat down.

This was the first time we'd even met on the project. She had worked with another writer who was going to be gone for a few days, so I was brought in. 

I talked to her about what the visual was supposed to convey. She gave me a one word explanation. I laughed. The one word was clearly a condensed version of what she was trying to convey. I asked her what about the product conveyed this word, she gave a reply. I then gave a reply.

For the next hour we listed off all the things that the word conveyed about our product, then I asked, of all these things this conveys, what is the only thin our competition can't claim.

After another 30 minutes we figured it out. That was our concept.

I wrote the first line of the campaign within 15 minutes of us finishing this conversation.

I showed it to the Senior writer and he was blown away.

I showed it to the CD and he said our campaign just grew legs.

So to recap, I spent 3 hours with no restrictions/directions on what I was supposed to write and came up with nothing.

I spent 1 hour and 30 minutes figuring out what our direction was, and 15 minutes writing the line (it won't always be that quick after figuring out the concept, today was a fluke) but my point is, that I wasted three hours writing without a concept and got nothing of value.

But as soon as I spent time figuring out what our concept was, writing for it became much simpler and more productive.

You'll hear that you can't do great work without a concept in School.

You'll see people do work that is conceptless that actually is good and think I can do that.

You probably can.

The point is, I spent an hour and a half less working on a concept and lines that actually work than I did working on conceptless lines that will never see the light of day.

No one ever prepares you for what it's like to wait on the results of a pitch

This week we pitched a campaign concept to evolve a brand we recently introduced to the market.

It was intense. Late nights, early mornings, working through lunch, pitching, repitching, throwing ideas out only to bring them back in.

Yesterday, we pitched our first round of computer comps to the account team.

I was nervous, but proud. Our work was solid, it was on brief, and it had a distinct voice.

The other members of the team pitched their ideas too. All of it solid.

Then it came, something I was entirely unprepared to hear.

The creative director recommended my team's campaign as the best concept for the client. This includes his campaign, the ECDs campaign and the senior teams campaign.

I just about jumped out of my chair and kissed him. I could barely contain my pride. 

Until...

Until he recommended that we take 24 hours to improve on all the work. 

We worked hard all day today to perfect our campaign, as did the rest of the team. 

We will represent to the account team on Monday to pick our final two campaign recommendations to the client.

And despite the momentum behind our idea, I'm going to be on pins and needles until the decision is made. And then I'm going to be on pins and needles until the client makes their decision. 

If our campaign gets picked, I'll be on cloud nine.

If it doesn't, well that's just something I'll have to learn to deal with on my own.

The point is, no matter how good your program is, nothing will ever prepare you for the first time you pitch a true campaign to a client and how to handle victory or defeat.

PJL

Doing Your Job

Today I did something that scared the living daylights out of me.

I disagreed with a client to the Account VP.

The client is obsessed with a piece of copy I wrote. 

Every time we start on a new tactic in the campaign, they ask for us to use the original piece of copy.

Account side has fought a valiant fight for me and my Art Director.

But the client is persistent. They want the original copy.

This isn't the best solution but it works and it can at least be justified because not everyone is going to see every tactic.

But today the client wanted to use the original copy paragraph twice, in the same direct mail piece. 

One right after another. The same paragraph twice in a row.

One right after another. The same paragraph twice in a row.

Get my point?

Understandably the Account Team was tired of arguing with the client.

They apologized profusely to me that the client wasn't even looking at new copy for any of the tactics.

I didn't like it, but I understood. 

But when I read their changes, I said no.

The client had given us a short version of what they hoped I would elaborate on. All of the touch points were the exact same touch points from the previous paragraphs.

I pointed this out. 

I said, "If the client wants new copy or to cut this copy entirely you won't hear a peep out of me. I'll do my job. But my job is to make sure the client doesn't look ridiculous to their customers and if they repeat the same paragraph, immediately prior and after the offer line, they will look foolish, and I won't be doing my job to make sure their communications are well-written and effective."

The Account VP looked at me. Then looked at the copy that I had highlighted, then looked at the copy I was referring to, then looked back at me.

"I hadn't even noticed that. Thank you."

I nodded. "What would you like me to do about it."

"Make the other changes, and tweak the original copy to at least incorporate the tone of their changes into your copy."

I did as she asked and sent it off to her and the rest of the account team.

If I hadn't spoke up, the client would have been angry when they realized that they had the same copy in every paragraph of the direct mail and taken it out on my account team. By speaking up, I was able to make my boss look good, give them leverage on the client when they insist on all the copy being verbatim from the original piece, and I made myself look good for being attentive to feedback, I could have arguably mindlessly followed and embarrassed the client, my agency and myself.

Keeping your cool

I got angry at the new job on Thursday night. 

I probably had every right to be pissed off. 

2 month long project I've been working on was coming to what had seemed to be an end.

But the legal department at the client couldn't stop changing the legal guidelines for compliance.

I'm not a lawyer, I don't even pretend to play one. But I've read enough advertising and know enough about advertising law that I know these guys are just out of control.

I started making some snarky remarks. To my team, not the client. I'm not nearly that insane or good.

People got a good laugh at them. I felt better.

Then the client gave me an assignment to write a few headlines for a small retail sign they were putting up. I spent an hour cranking out lines, we settled on one, only to hear that the client had really wanted us to just use the provided information and not write any lines or copy.

That's when I complained about a client for the first time at the new job.

"Wasting my fucking time," I growled. I stopped making snarky comments and started using invectives.

I was pissed off.

But I did my work, I kept my bitching to a minimal and I moved on.

Fortunately, no one seemed to think I was out of line. Again, I didn't say these things to the client, I just said them to the person who happened to be talking to me at the time.

When I calmed down, I realized: They're paying me to waste my time. And that in the future I should just keep my mouth shut.

And in today's economy, I'm more than ok with that.