Friday, April 22, 2011

Everyone is not creative.

One of the many stupidities of the modern advertising agency is the notion of collaboration. The notion that everyone is "creative."

The real truth is that not everyone is creative, it's that today everyone has been given the right to blurt because someone's told them they are creative.

I think about this as the account people have blithely turned over to me a steaming ten-pound bag of shit they call a brief. I'm to figure out what to do with it. I'm to reckon with its difficulty. I'm to make sense of it. I'm to turn it into something palatable.

All of that, all of that thinking, shaping, writing and re re re re writing is work. Creative is work. It's that simple. Creative is not blurt.

Everyone is not creative. Unless they're willing to work at it.

3 comments:

Sean Peake said...

There's a comment made by Robertson Davies during his lecture at the University of Utah that goes to the matter of creativity, and in particular, writing. He says he is puzzled by ads in trade magazines that proclaim prospective writers can "“...Make Up to $9,800 in 24 Hours!” Davies wonders why someone would respond to an ad like this; "People of that sort do not, so far as I know, imagine that they could learn to write music by mastering a few easy tips, or that they could paint pictures that anybody want. What on earth makes them think that they can be writers?"

Anyway, if you haven't read this lecture—it is a wonderful piece— follow this link the Robertson Davies "Reading and Writing" lecture to download the pdf: http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/atoz.html#d

george tannenbaum said...

Thanks, Sean. I'll check it out.

Tore Claesson said...

With crowd sourcing and a bit of luck you can make $70 in a month.