dbedwood’s posterous

A flyer is lying on my kitchen table, which reads like this.

“Hosted by Jackie Brambles, the event celebrates inspirational women. Attendees will include ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ star Brendan Cole”. 

Now that has confused me.

Which is appropriate really – because this blog is about confusion.

Partly because I’ve got an abscess on my tooth and I’m on more painkillers than the entire Jackson Five. 

But also because uncertainty is at the heart of creativity.

You can dislike that fact. You can try and change it.

But it’s always true.

Talk to anybody who’s genuinely creative and they’ll tell you it’s about making decisions – knowing that there are no clear, easy answers.

In his book, Alex James of Blur writes about the excitement of being in a band, and talks about the mass of stuff you need to get involved in.  "Stage design, record sleeve design, videos, photo shoots ... There is always an expert to hand, but you need to know what you want or it all just looks like everyone else's."

And in a nutshell I think he’s captured the essence of creativity. 

Because the really, really important thing (and I make no apologies for repeating this) is to produce stuff that DOESN’T LOOK LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE’S.

Whereas people who don’t understand creativity (including the “experts” James refers to) always want to make stuff that DOES LOOK LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE’S.

And clearly, the odds are heavily stacked against you in advertising.

Conventional research will homogenize everything. 

It already has – half the ads on telly look like the other half. 

Getting to genuinely unique stuff, means (as James says) trusting someone’s instincts. 

But who’s got the best instincts ? Who’s most likely to get it right? Who’s gonna make the tough calls ?

As Oliver Burkeman says in the Guardian magazine - the world is divided into people who think they are right.

I.e. everybody thinks they’re right.

I’m reminded of how Tom and Walt used to work up at AMV, in the time when they were producing all the best work in London from one single office. 

Apparently, if there was a disagreement with the client about anything – casting, music, location, whatever – they’d say - “Ok, tell you what. You put your reel on, and we’ll put out reel on, and whoever’s got the better reel, gets to make the decision.”

It sounds glib.

(These days, God knows, it sounds like commercial suicide.)

But it actually does make sense.

If your mortgage depended on how well an ad was going to perform – 
who would you trust to make the really important decisions ? Someone who’s made a lot of great ads, or someone who hasn’t ?

There's only one flaw I can see in that argument.

Which is that some creative people have different agendas to their clients.

I.e., they want to win creativeawards. 

It’s an interesting question – if you took awards out of the picture, and the industry was judged just on how WELL the marketing worked – maybe you’d remove that dual agenda, and maybe you’d get trust back into the picture … and much better creative work as a result.

But - whoever makes the decisions -   real creative people know that there are no guarantees in creativity.

We all have instincts, but there are no guarantees.

I.e. it’s about embracing the confusion.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that the sign of a truly great mind was being able to hold two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time.

And anyone who’s worked with outstanding directors like Frank Budgen or the late, great Paul Arden knows exactly what that feels like.

What’s “right” one second is “completely wrong” the next.

And that’s … true.

Uncomfortable and annoying though it sometimes is.

As David Wethey said to me at breakfast the other day, true creativity is a process of gestation rather than synthesis.

(His main argument was the importance of execution – something which he feels is not given nearly enough attention. 

(And he’s absolutely right.)

But it’s also true of the whole creative process, from conception through to final polishing.

You can’t just go – well that works, let’s keep doing that.

It evolves. It changes. It’s alive.

As Oliver Burkeman (again) says - "Rigid, absolutist certainties are far more likely to collide, in an anxiety-producing fashion, with the messy and uncertain way things really are".

Life is always fluid, always evolving, always messy.

And if this all sounds massively confused – well, as I said, I’m on more painkillers than a bunch of prostitutes at a dentists’ convention. 

But also because I believe that when it comes to getting creative work right – oddly enough, the person you most want is the one who is happiest being in the uncertainty.

Is that right ?

Or is it wrong ?

I don’t f*cking know.

P.S. Talking of great, brave creativity. Colin Marrs, the digital chief at Campaign, sent me this amazing film from Marcus Brambilla which plays on a loop in the lifts at the Standard hotel in New York.
I love it to pieces – and I suspect that even when I’m not on Codeine Phosphate, I’ll still love it.

http://motionographer.com/theater/marco-brambilla-civilization/