It’s time for creatives to take a long, hard look at how we got here

Why did you become a creative professional? A copywriter, designer, art director, creative director, video/film director? An ad person, in other words?

At the deepest psychological level, why would you voluntarily join such an unstable, unpredictable, unappreciated, and often scoffed-at profession?

I know why I did. And I’m not proud of it.

I hasten to add that I am proud of the actual work I’ve done over the years. Of helping to grow my clients’ businesses. Of getting paid to solve tough business problems with insightful solutions. And yes, of adding some thoughtful, well-crafted, and occasionally even funny lines to the business environment we all live in.

But between the pandemic, the insane unemployment numbers, and the continuing transfer of advertising dollars from thousands of venues to Google and Facebook, I believe it’s worth looking at how we got here, so we can see a little more clearly where we’re going.

Like all my compatriots of a certain age—like you, in all probability—I spent a lot of my formative years in front of the TV, and that TV was always trying to sell me something.

Sometimes that thing would even include a picture of the very characters I saw on TV, which seemed vaguely magical, as though the characters had somehow popped out of the TV and broken the Fourth Wall.

For example, a cartoon leprechaun would sell you cereal, and when your parents bought the cereal, there that leprechaun would be, right on the box. To a two- or three-year-old with a still-developing brain, this passed for a religious experience.

And where was those parents, by the way, when all this was happening? Either taking care of even younger kids and doing housework, or working, or attending night school, or simply finding themselves—as the TV also encouraged them to do. So they plopped the kids in front of the magical babysitter, where they then would be sold even more things that had pictures of TV characters on them.

Cut to several years later, the small child grew into a larger child and then a college student, who on some level, albeit dimly, realized the profound power and influence that advertising had held over his life.

In fact, many were the times, between parental divorces and separations and constantly changing schools and moving houses, when advertising characters had seemed more like friends than people did.

But what if that power could be reclaimed?

What if, after 20 years of advertising wielding immense power over a person, that person could turn the tables? What if they could wield that same power over not just other people, but the advertising profession itself?

And so, we learned to use Macs and design software. And brand voice and tone guidelines, and creative briefs. And video editing software. And whatever else was necessary so we could do this ourselves, instead of having it done to us.

And now, here we all are. We’ve mastered this craft which previously mastered us, so congratulations to all of us.

The problem is, it’s now a craft without a venue—just Google and Facebook. We’re like carpenters who can design and build wonderful imaginative chairs, suddenly transported to ancient Japan where everyone is expected to kneel on the floor at mealtimes.

So what do we do now?

In the short term, I imagine some of us will become Instacart shoppers, nurses, grocery store stock clerks, Amazon warehouse workers, and other essential employees. I myself made such a temporary transition just after 9/11, when agency jobs were tough to come by. I catered, tended bar, waited tables. I didn’t mind it, to tell you the truth.

But in the long term, something deeper has to happen. We need to focus on using our incredible creative potential to build something new.

Not to sell cereal, or beer, or the latest SaaS/cloud solution, but to sell ideas that change the very way we live, the way we see each other, the way we see fundamental things like money and time and human relationships and our place in the universe.

Call it anti-propaganda, or advertising in reverse.

Who’s going to pay us to do that? For a while, maybe no one. In that case, we’re going have to do it for free, building the world we want to see.

Meanwhile, to survive and support our families, we’ll do our old creative professional jobs as well as we can—for as long as they exist.

But that won’t be forever.

My super power is fighting cheerleaderism. Here’s why I do it, and how you can too (Part 1)

My most common question to clients and potential clients is what I always thought was a simple one: “What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing?”

It’s strange and somewhat concerning to me that I almost never get a straight answer to this question.

I mean, they shouldn’t be trying to impress me. I’m working for them, or auditioning to do so. If anything, they should be glad to be blunt, frank and forthright with me.

After all, I’m not their boss! If they tell me what’s going wrong, I’m not going to use that info to fire them. I’m going to use it to help them.

Yet time after time, when I ask a client or stakeholder about the most pressing problem, issue or challenge they face, here’s the answer:

“We’re doing phenomenally well… We’ve just merged with/acquired X company and have plans to acquire Y company… We just received X million dollars in funding… We’ve released a new version of our flagship product and it has this killer feature and that killer feature, all based on our exciting new platform of blah-biddy-blah-biddy-blah… Etc., etc., etc.”

As a creative professional, I can safely say that this information is of less than no use to me. In fact calling it “information” at all is being kind. It’s promotional boilerplate, also known as PR, also known as bullshit.

And while I understand why you might relate it to your customers and users, or even to your underlings, I’m at a loss to understand why you would give it to a copywriter or art director and expect them to do anything with it.

Our job is to find out what’s going wrong with your business, so we can use our creativity to clearly define and solve that problem. If you tell us what’s going right with it, that leaves us no better off than before, and possibly worse off depending on how true it is.

And at the end of the day, Mr. or Ms. Stakeholder, who gets hosed? You do.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I’ll tell you where the instinct to make this huge mistake comes from, and some concrete ways to fight it.

Dave Dumanis is a creative director, copywriter, and 25-year veteran of Bay Area advertising and marketing.

Why the way media shows creative pros is bass-ackwards

When you think of creative professionals, what do you think of? Probably someone pacing around and then having an idea, in a glorious “Aha!” moment.

That’s flashy and showy and makes for great TV (or a great TikTok). But it’s not how the best work gets made.

In fact, this myth hurts more than it helps. Too many newbies think that’s how it’s done. You sit at your desk and “think of a good idea,” good meaning clever and witty (if you’re a writer) or aesthetically pleasing to your own hipster sensibility (if you’re a designer).

Not a chance.

How we spend most of our time, and if you do it for a living you already know this, would be really boring to show on TV. It’s homework, otherwise known as research.

Of course, no one wants to tune into a half hour of someone doing homework. That would be the most boring TV show ever. But that’s what we do.

It’s the valuable questions that arise during the course of this research that often form the germ of an idea. But you have to be open to them, so when you think of them, you welcome them rather than dismissing them.

For example:

Why is a product selling well to Group A, but not to Group B?
Why do customers spend a bunch of money to subscribe the first time, but don’t renew?
Why is the key unique value prop being ignored, but the product is #1 because people like the font on the label?

Discover the answers to questions like these, and your next campaign will almost write itself. When you ask them in meetings, you’ll usually get a blank stare followed by “Can I get back to you?” from your stakeholder. That’s how you know you’re on the right track.

Being a creative professional, particularly a writer, is a lot like being a detective. You pore over the evidence for weeks, and then the answer becomes obvious “overnight.”

But poring over evidence, and asking questions, isn’t sexy. It’s the opposite.

That’s why we get paid to do what we do.

A quick and dirty tip to beat writer’s block

Writer’s block is nobody’s friend, but sometimes you just can’t avoid it. The deadline is too tight, or the assignment is out of your wheelhouse, or you’ve just had too much stress and too little sleep.

When that happens, there’s something that virtually always works for me. I hope it works for you, too. It’ll work better if you make sure you’re not hungry first. Stable blood sugar is important!

Here’s what you do.

First, study the background materials you’ve been given. The creative brief, white papers, slide presos, meeting notes, whatever documents your stakeholder gave you. Sometimes the creative brief sucks—it’s full of platitudes and cheerleadery statements that leave you worse off strategically than you were when you started. If that’s the case, give it a once-over then focus on the other stuff.

Then, and this is important, do not try to be clever.

Don’t try to be witty, or funny, or interesting, or special, or impress your old boss, your college professor or your girlfriend.

Just be clear. That’s it.

If you’ve really done your homework, studied up on who your audience is, why they should care, and your product’s “magic bullet” (value prop), this part should be easy. Write as concisely as possible. Make every word matter. Tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. Here’s the problem, here’s why your product solves it, here’s what you get out of it.

Note that if the problem is a familiar one, like hunger or thirst, you can skip to the middle, but never skip to the end. And sometimes starting at the beginning pays off, like it did with Snickers’ “You’re not you when you’re hungry” campaign!

Keep carving away at your copy to make it more concise, more to the point, more of a story–editing out anything that doesn’t truly contribute.

Make it shorter, and more specific, and clearer.

Eventually, you’ll find that this process literally results in wit, and occasionally even humor. It happens almost as a byproduct.

And that’s the magical contradiction.

Start with a quest for wit, and you’ll end up with nothing.

Start with a quest for insight and clarity, and the wit will come.

Don’t believe me. Try it.

The only reason I wrote this is to attract new copywriting clients, but I’m betting you’ll read it anyway.

Did I lose you? No? Well, you’re far from the only one.

Does that surprise you?

After all, that headline is a big hunk of truth. I’m giving up the game before it even starts, revealing exactly what my secret hidden agenda is. Most people would say that’s kind of stupid.

But you see, that’s exactly what makes it work: surprise. No one expects truth in advertising, so when you use it, it’s like a secret weapon, catching everyone off-guard.

There’s just one catch: It has to be interesting. It can’t be just any old boring truth. And that means you can’t be lazy. You have to dig and dig until you find the truth that’s surprising, or disarming, or unusual and novel enough to get noticed.

This is what separates the pros from the amateurs. Amateurs might have a one-off idea that they think is clever, maybe involving a celebrity or a pun, but the tough detective work it takes to find that one special truth requires patience, persistence, and interviewing people with whom you share little in common.

But, you know, that’s what writers get paid for.

And if the one needle you’ve found in that haystack is sharp enough, that’s all you need. A whole campaign can come out of it, a campaign that will be far better than ripping off trendy fonts, photography styles or PhotoShop filters from the latest award winner, because it’s true and speaks to an actual human need.

If you don’t have that surprising truth, surprising either because no one wants to say it or no one truthfully can say it, then you’ve got a cute little dog-and-pony show designed to entertain yourself and your clients, but nothing more.

Let’s take the recent Groundhog Day Super Bowl ad that’s getting so much buzz. It’s truthful in so many ways. First of all, it literally ran on Groundhog Day because the Super Bowl happened to fall on exactly that day this year. Kudos to whoever tripped over that truth, which might have seem meaningless until they made the connection between the holiday and the famous movie.

Secondly, it speaks truthfully to the reason people buy Jeeps, their versatility. You can say a lot of stuff about Jeeps, their MPG is truly bottom-of-the-barrel, but one thing they do well is let you go wherever you want, and take whatever you want.

And thirdly, it’s got Bill Murray who as an onscreen presence is always deeply truthful, oftentimes to the point of making you cringe, since he was trained in the Second City tradition which values honest acting over cheap laughs.

If it weren’t for those three things, if it were just “let’s put an aging comedy star in a Jeep ad and put it on the Super Bowl,” you’d have nothing. And that’s what so many amateurs don’t get.

Do your homework.

Be a pro.

Be truthful.

Dave Dumanis is a San Francisco Bay Area creative director, copywriter and content strategist with decades of experience bringing complex B-to-B concepts to life. He specializes in daring, idea-rich cross-channel campaigns that get noticed and get results.

Creative agencies and departments, take this hint from Finland

Sanna Marin, the 34-year-old prime minister of Finland, made news this week when she recommended that her government seriously look into the benefits of a four-day workweek. (To be clear, this would be four days for the same pay as five days right now.)

Marin, a member of Finland’s parliament for four years and most recently the Minister of Transport and Communications, is hardly a novice when it comes to getting more and better things done in less time. Despite her youth, she’s deadly serious.

It pays to remember that just over a hundred years ago, really no time at all in a broad sense, people were regularly working 70, 80, 100-hour workweeks, and some of them were children. This was considered normal at the time, as was working on Saturday. If your boss was religious, you might get a break on Sunday.

What does all this have to do with creating for a living? Well, if you’re forced to stare at the same four walls and the same open plan office and yes, sometimes even the same faces for five nine-hour days straight, you might run into writers’ or artists’ block.

This is how we get campaigns that all look the same, even though they were created at different places by different people.

Instead of basing their work on problem-solving, and the inspiration that comes from getting to know your audience and your product, desperately bored creatives are forced to turn to the latest trends, scrolling through Ads of the World, Adweek, Ad Age, or that Super Bowl thing your client said they liked from five years ago.

Inspiration needs time.

Inspiration needs a chance to breathe, rest and refresh.

Inspiration needs a four-day workweek.

PM Sanna Marin proposes a four-day workweek for Finland. Smart creative groups should follow suit.

Dave Dumanis is a 25-year San Francisco Bay Area copywriter, creative director and advertising veteran.