Pour
Posted on
2007-Dec-3
at
01:25
I wish I could blame the rain for keeping me up at this time of night. I wish I could easily close my eyes and wake up all nice and refreshed come my 7am alarm call. I wish I could hit the 'tab' key twice to start this entry after entering my clever one-word title.
Lots of things going on in my head at this point in time. Not 1:27 am specifically, but you get my drift. Many of which should and will remain unpublished in such a public forum. Lots have nothing to do with advertising and more with finding my own direction and identity and a whole lot of things I didn't think I'd be dealing with so much of at the age of 23.
Stop laughing, I know I'm still young and have years of this nonsense to go yet.
But to relate this back to the ad world, a big thing in this industry, with writer's particularly, is finding your own voice. Even after writing for as many years as I have been, and believe me, I started abnormally young, I'm still finding little niches and crannies to cradle myself in while I try to assert myself in both verbal and non-verbal manners. It all has to do with my surroundings. Could have to do with the fact I just watched 'Lock, Stock' for the twelfth time, could be that I listened to a lot of sad bastard music this weekend (with female lead vocals, no less), could be that I've been eating an absurd amount of Pizza Hut (gross).
Who knows where inspiration really comes from, but I'm glad it's around, otherwise I think I'd be an empty well. But back to the original topic, how does one really find their own voice, especially in advertising? Is that the work that wins awards? When the creative team truly puts themselves into a piece? Or does it win awards and sell product because they're just finally effectively communicating the USP in a creative manner that hasn't quite been unearthed yet?
I'm being excessively wordy. My apologies.
The goal in advertising, or at least what I've conjured up in my own fucked up head, is to sell products and do so by whatever means necessary, not to promote your own ideals and creative methodologies. When I sit to put together ridiculous menu copy, I'm not thinking about how I would write the novel that I've always wanted to (or at least collection of essays, but nothing like the tripe that Klosterman compiles for a paycheque). I'm thinking about the 34 year old man that's taking his young family out for dinner and trying to ween as much coin that he can't afford out of his pocket so the company benefits and so they come back to the agency with positive results so we can all keep working.
If I truly knew what a catch 22 meant, I'd expect that to apply here. I'll eventually look that up. Fuck, I even own the book - I guess it's just for show.
Can people submersed in this game look at the print ad or a 30 second spot and say who specifically put it together? Well, with Rethink, we all know how easy that is (hi, Mr. Staples), but I'm talking about the less obvious ones. In college, I found it was pretty easy to attribute a piece to its author, but the ad industry's a bit bigger of an aquarium to drift that net through. I don't expect one day that someone'll rip out a page from Mclean's because it's a St. Pierre ad. My ego would love the stroke, but let's be honest here.
So is it important to have your own voice, or just to do a good job at selling? Or really, are the better players in this game the ones who combine those two best?
Sorry for running my own post in circles. Just imagine how people close to me feel these days.
Time to finish Klosterman IV.
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