DISCONTENT IS KING
I guaran-fucking-tee you this: The Stone Roses never mentioned “career” in any band meetings. Ever. Or Primal Scream, or The Verve. Oasis certainly never mentioned it. I bet it’s mentioned a lot by managers and agents now: “Don’t do that, it’s bad for your career.” “What? Fuck off!” Like when we went to the Brits and we’d won all those awards and we didn’t play. The head of the Brits said, “This’ll ruin your career.” Fucking, wow. I say to the guy, “Do you know how high I am? You know who’s going to ruin my career? Me, not you. Bell-end. More Champagne. Fuck off.”
That’s a Noel Gallagher quote. But it could be the tipsy Friday afternoon candour of any frustrated creative in a digital agency. The attitude we only seem to demonstrate in the darkest corner of bars, well away from the sensitive ears of people who care about things like productivity and utilisation.
I’d like to say it’s these people – the suits – who are stopping us being rock star creatives, but unfortunately, it isn’t. It’s all our own fault.
We lost our way.
We got held prisoner by a steady job, big name clients and 25 paid holidays a year. Contentment set in. And contentment is last stop on the way to irrelevance.
We’ve gone the same way as Noel. Pimping ourselves out to the establishment for a few quid and dabbling in the occasional Nurofen. Radio Two sell-outs. Sandwiched between Michael Buble and Keane. Who wants that?
Not me.
Something’s got to change.
It’s time to stop knowing our place. Entrepreneurial thinking is what’s needed now.
Our mates in strategy teams already pitch for pieces of work, independent of the rest of their agency. Sometimes this work is called a discovery phase. Or a brand positioning workshop. Whatever it is, it makes them happy.
So, why don’t creative teams in digital agencies pitch for integrated campaign work?
I don’t know either. There’s nothing to be scared of. An idea is an idea, and creative is creative.
Writing in Campaign last year, Nils Leonard, co-founder of Halo and Uncommon, said: “A start-up is a promise. To each founder, investor and board member. A promise to every customer. But mostly to yourself.”
That really stuck with me as I tried to come to terms with returning to the office in 2020. I need to start treating each new year as a start-up.
Because, when I wind down and I look back at the work I’ve done, I want it to be brilliant. Littered with pieces of me at my absolute best. Work that kept me awake at night.
No creative has lost sleep over how to A/B test a call to action button. Or how to optimise a webpage for search.
It’s not that these things aren’t important and don’t really, really matter to some people. They are. They do. Just not to me.
The way I see it, being a creative in a digital agency doesn’t make me a digital creative.
That’s not me distancing myself from digital – I love where I work and the people I work with. That’s me saying digital creatives don’t exist.
Problems exist. Creatives exist. And the desire to make things people love exists too. That’s what makes great work.
We just need to stop settling.
So, fuck pigeon holes.
Fuck the people who say advertising is dead.
And fuck the elitists who think creativity is exclusive to advertising agencies.
For those of us in digital agencies, embracing discontent is the only way we can cross the bleak and inhospitable desert of business as usual and reach the Oasis.