Ego, that Two-Edged Sword, in Creative Advertising Thinking

Ego has its good side. If it weren’t for ego, we wouldn’t push ourselves to do great work, whether it’s a powerful ad, a skyscraper, or something more intangible, like inspirational teaching. Ego has other merits too. But it has a dark side too, particularly when it comes to creative thinking in advertising, particularly when it comes to group dynamics.

In a competitive advertising environment, people, good people, want to get ahead; they want their work to stand out, to shine. One way to do that is to not celebrate the creative ideas of others, particularly in the fledgling stages of ideas when it’s easy to squash them. Competitive people do this instinctually, almost subconsciously. These are often kind people, whose biological drive for survival is steering their actions just a little at a time. “That’s a great idea. It’s just too…” Serious. Whimsical. Intense. Subdued. Difficult-to-grasp. Simplistic. Just fill-in-the-blank. One casual little word to send that idea in a slight veer off to the graveyard of unrealized ads.

Ego can also push us in our attempt to create an aura of perfection. It’s a shaky economy, folks, and jobs are precarious. You must look flawless, right? You don’t make mistakes, right? And so, when our ego sees an issue coming up that might make us look like we made a mistake, we start deflecting and rationalizing, anything to create a stage where we did in fact make no mistake.

To the first point, the idea of squashing new ideas, much has been written on the dangers of that. Ideas often need room to breathe, to grow a little, before we know what they’re capable of.

As to the second point, much also has been written on the importance of being able to make mistakes and not feel immediately censured. One environment grows big ideas. One grows stale ones lacking innovation.

As a freelance writer and an outsider, it’s often easier to perceive how the dynamics of ego are preventing great ideas in a creative advertising group than those that are in the thick of it, as it were. It would be worthwhile, I would say, to take a step back as a team and look at your group dynamics and see if you’re operating in a way that brings out the best ideas you possibly can. And when you do it, be honest.

The Value of the Contract Creative: Writers and Other Consultants

There is another inherent value to bringing in strong conceptual contract writers and other creatives than the obvious "we need someone to do this job" factor. This is something I noticed on a recent job. I suppose you could sum it up easily with the phrase "fresh thinking," but that sounds a bit trite without context. It goes like this: Creative agency teams work for a client over time, getting entrenched with the brand identity, living and breathing the brand. No one better understands the brand character than this team. And they learn ways to work that make creating work for their client more profitable (this is an important development for the business). Grooves of process (and thinking) are created. They become efficient. Profitable.

Enter the contract writer. This individual comes from the outside without any preconceptions, but by necessity must quickly learn about the brand and begin producing quality work. The very nature of this process, looking intently at a brand and how to progress it forward, demands a sort of analytic breakdown and rebuilding -- thinking that often has not been done since the team started on the brand. Even if the contractor is not intentionally attempting to point out new ways of looking at brand thinking or process, this process will occur.

Then it becomes an issue of diplomacy. The creative consultant is by definition an outsider. The agency team should be encouraged to invite that outsider, as a project progresses, to share his or her insights on brand thinking and team process. There will be things that that outsider doesn't understand; he or she will have false insights. Conversely, there will be things that the entrenched agency team will think they know -- they've been knowing it for a year already, by god. An open mind is needed here.

So basically, the right creative consultants are good for business. They help agencies rediscover their brands. It's likely, in this case, the contractor will server more as catalyst than innovator. The contract writer will point at an undiscovered path, which the agency team will blaze.

Want to Engage? Be a Dabbler.

Whether you're writing an ad or a novel, a poem or a script, there's one thing you've got to do -- engage your audience. Okay, that much is obvious. How to do it? There are thousands of ways, but I want to mention one key method that often gets overlooked.

Be interesting.

Generally, this means you have to introduce something the audience doesn't know about. That means you yourself have to be interesting. You have to be well-read, educated, have diverse interests. Being a writer is one of the few professions where it pays to dabble. Be a dabbler. Take up oil painting. Travel to out-of-the-way, unlikely spots. Take an interest in steampunk. Or twelfth-century Italy. Or scour the Internet for obscure pop references like Crispin Glover's bizarre appearance on Letterman. (See, I bet if you didn't know about that, you're officially interested. Try to deny it.) Or read up on rare psychological disorders, like Fregoli delusion, where a person believes that different people he or she meets is actually the same person in disguise or with the ability to change his or her appearance.

The world is filled with interesting bits, you just have to come out of the cave every once in awhile.