Here Be Monsters|blog

Twitter mania continues

Personally I've been able to resist the temptation, but I'm loving this new beta none the less, so I can only image the excitement those of you who twitter must feel at the arrival of twittervision.

The camera never lies, but advertising might

I'm loving this site. even though I know it's nothing new, Mother Jones have been doing this for years.

And I'm not really sure where I stand on this either, isn't it the job of advertisers to present the best possible case for their clients? And isn't that what good food photography does? Is it anymore misleading than a girl wearing make-up to present her best self Or retouching a model? Or lighting someone in a flattering way? Or even placing a product in a certain situation and/or location?  That said the difference between the adversions and the reality is impressively wide.

Victim of school bulllies: creativity

Over at the fantastic TED site, there's a great video from Sir Ken Robinson  who points out the many ways our schools are failing to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people.

"We are educating people out of their creativity,"

It's pretty long at 20mins, but well worth it.

Jobs

We're growing. Which is nice. Really nice. Especially as we haven't even launched properly - more on that soon.  In the meantime we need people. Are you that person, do you know that person?

Job #1
Online Project Manager

Job #2
Web designer

Job #3
2D designer

Job #4
editor/film director

I've deliberately not expanded, as an inspiring middle-weight is better than the good light-weigh and visa versa

You have to be creative though. Genuinely very creative. Throw away all your pre-conceived ideas of what an ad agency is and come and have a word, spread the word.

A little more on ideas

Just wanted to add this from The Before and After blog to the debate on ideas.

Quoting Voltaire, Good is the enemy of great.

Oh so true.

rejection

Had an interesting conversation with a client this morning, all about being a creative. And he was surprised to hear me say that being a creative is mostly about rejection. Well, if you care about what you do it is.

You reject your ideas. If you're still working in a team, your partner rejects your ideas. Your boss rejects your ideas. Planners, account people, research groups and clients reject your ideas.

So, if you're going to work as a creative, and you should it's brilliant fun at times, then you should grow a thick skin, quickly and embrace rejection.

Reminds me of something someone said to me about sportsmen and women. The best lose more than the rest.

ideas

It all started here, with Russell and then I saw this over at Scamps, where an article that I felt was about 'in praise of doing', was seen as an insult to thinkers. HEAVY SIGH. Okay Scamp wasn't really taking all this too much to heart, but PUR-LEASE

Here we go, creatives (and I am one so I feel free to say this) once again banging on about how they have the toughest job in the industry. "It's alright for you guys who produce and traffic and do, what we do is by far the hardest job, that's why so many of us turn to drink, drugs and then burn out. Yada, yada, yada."

But frankly, that's bollocks. It's just the sound of old agency thinking giving its death rattle.

I firmly believe ideas are easy to come by. Spend anytime in a playground and you'll see kids come up with hundreds of the little buggers without too much hassle, cohersion, pain or cocaine. I believe being creative is the natural state of humans, but today's society doesn't really appreciate it, so it's knocked out of us at an early age and we become accountants.

A few brave souls light this, probably  because they're useless at numbers or something and find themselves in the creative industries. Where they quietly go about their business being creative. Accept the sodding ad agency creatives who will at every opportunity tell you how tough it is.

And it is. But not the coming up with ideas part. The truly tough part is knowing what to sacrifice and what not to when protecting the idea, coming up with more ideas to help 'sell in' the idea, having the tanacity to constantly tweak and shape and develop the idea (crafting). being sure enough to know your idea is strong enough to be done on a smaller budget, being mature enough to be able to see beyond awards, being generous enough to know that the idea isn't yours at all, but is owned by many.

My final word on all this would be a repeat of this, from Where's the Sausage blog, which goes under the headline, execution is king. Which brings us back to doing.