Doing your job.

Too many people don't do their jobs because they do the job.

They do only what is asked of them or what is scoped or what the time allotted (by people who have never created an ad) allows. More often than not, there are branches that grow off the original assignment, there are ways to make the original task larger, broader, better for the client, the agency, your portfolio.

The client asks for one commercial, your job is to show them how they can shoot a campaign. Or the original commercial and some web content.

This is how good sales-people work. If I go to Barney's to buy some pants, a good salesman will show me shirts, belts, shoes and more. He's not being a goniff or a handler, he's being smart, helpful and ambitious. (goniff--Yiddish for thief; handler--Yiddish for peddler.) That is our job too.

Years ago an ECD I worked for berated a group of his creative directors this way. "I'm not mad that the worked sucks, I'm mad that our level of ambition has started to drop."

Our real job--whether you're a "creative" or in account, media, project management or make coffee in the coffee bar, is to keep your level of ambition high. To keep trying, keep pushing, keep selling.

That's the only way to succeed.