Creativity Sells Out? How creative people need to command and deliver more value

Creativity sells out?
Creative sells out?
Creative sell outs?
A talk by Karen Hand of Curly Enterprises Ltd. to The Marketing Society,
Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin, March 6th 2014.
© karen@karenhand.co & francis@franciscurran.com

When approached to speak at this session today they said ‘we have a great title – Creative Sells Out’
& I thought ‘Wow that is a good title’ & then, being a planner I thought – ‘but what does it mean?’
Does it mean that creativity has commercial value?
Or does it mean that creativity ‘sells out’ its own integrity
when it allows itself to be commercial?
Or does it mean that the Commercially Creative sector is selling itself out
in failing to command a premium for its work?
I wanted to explore all those questions & found myself drawn to two very different stories
of negotiating commercial creativity:
The first story features myself. 15 years ago I left my job as a Board Strategic Planner in BBH London
& decided to go out on my own. I was reassured that there would be work for me but was clueless
as to what I should charge. I approached Kay Scorah – then as now one of the best independent planners
in the world - & asked her advice. She said to me - I charge £1000 a day. So I said so what should I charge?
She said - £1000 a day.
A couple of days later, a consultancy offered me my first gig. How much do you want?
I said my daily rate is a £1000 a day. They said - we’ll give you £300. & I said ‘Grand’.

“I will solve your problem
and you will pay me”
Paul Rand to Steve Jobs

The second story features Paul Rand - one of the three seminal trilogy of designers of the 20th Century.
When Steve Jobs asked him to design a logo for Next computers, Jobs mentioned that he would like to see
a few different concepts. Paul Rand refused - he would present one & charge $100,000 for it.
‘You can use what I produce or not but I will not do options & you will pay me.’
But of course the really interesting thing is how Steve Jobs responded.
In Page 219 of his biography, Issacson tells us -
‘Jobs admired Rand’s kind of thinking: ‘There was clarity in our relationship, Jobs said: He had purity as an artist
but he was astute at solving business problems’.
Everyone in the room today is Commercially Creative in one way or other –
Marketing People, Agency People, Planners, Creatives, Researchers
But if we cannot harness this creativity to maximize value for ourselves & our stakeholders,
are we really doing justice to the Commercially Creative Titles on our business cards?
How are we valuing our commercial creativity?
The path of Karen Hand, 15 years ago or the path of the master, Paul Rand?
Or as the Bible & Shakespeare said it more pithily than me
….Physician Heal Thyself…

Physician
Heal
Thyself

Creativity
Rising
in
Global
Demand
The upside for all of us who operate
in the commercial creative sector…

- Educationalist like Ken Robinson talk about the need for education
to focus on self –expression..
- Daniel Pink in Whole New Mind (2005) argued that the combination
of Abundance Asia & Automation means that Creativity is Rising in Value.
- In fact if we were to listen to most Ted talks, Future belongs to Designers,
Story-Tellers , Meaning Makers …
- Future Belongs to CREATORS (aka Us -Marketeers, Ad-Men, Strategists, ‘Creatives’)
– but when we look closer at our own sector, the story is even better…

Creativity
and
Commerce
are
lovers
The Money Men aka
Les Binet & Peter Field

Both the IPA & Corr Media in Ireland have demonstrated
the economic payback of advertising to the broad economy.
Enter The Money Men aka Les Binet & Peter Field…
- The Long & the Short of It (2013) – over an analysis of 998 campaigns
in the IPA database, across all sectors, over 30 years.
& what did they find?
- Brand Building has a higher long term return versus Tactical Communications
- Emotional Campaigns more profitable than Rational Campaigns over time
- Creatively Awarded campaigns (as compiled by the Gunn Report)
11 more times efficient than non-creatively awarded campaigns..

Creatively Awarded campaigns
are 11 more times efficient
than non Creative Campaigns
Source: Binet & Field (IPA). The Long and the Short of it. 2013

I don’t know about you but when I first read this report & listened to Les Binet highlight these findings,
I felt as if everything I had always known but couldn’t prove had been validated.
Finally I had the proof, Creativity Works.
Creativity Adds Value. Hallelujah!
But when we start to think holistically there is more to the Commercial Value of Creativity
than what can be measured in Effectiveness Papers.
Oscar Wilde could have been talking about broadening
our definition of value when he said...

A cynic is a man who knows
the price of everything
and the value of nothing
Oscar Wilde

Not
everything
that can
be counted
counts.
Not
everything
that counts
can be
counted.
Albert Einstein (attributed)

....said by the mathematical genius, Einstein himself recognizing the limits of measurement.
Commercial Creativity - A Whole New Value
See Graphic – Value is a Holistic Thing – framed by the expectations of both parties,
delivered by the practices of both parties, measured in all its aspects & then moved on
iteratively via conscious learning on both sides to frame
the next commercial creativity contract…...
Ultimately, I feel its important to focus on identifying & developing our creative advantage
to command value…
In the past, a certain amount of the tools & tricks of creativity like graphics & slides & printing
were the preserve of those who had the title ‘Creative’.

A Continual Journey of Negotiation
Creative
Competitive
Advantage
Contract
Measurement
Learning
Practice

Physician
Heal
Thyself
Creativity now comes from many sources and from many markets.
One of the consequences of Creativity Rising is that many more people
can produce creative materials, put them out there & learn & adapt.

Everyone is Creative (iphones to TWEAK) We can all instagram & snapchat& pinterest & go viral…
but for professional people in the commercial creative space it begs the question:
What is your Creative Competitive Advantage in the Global Village?

So where is our Competitive Advantage?
We’re all Individuals. We’re all Creative.

BuskerGenius
Joshua Bell in the subway where no-one knew him versus Joshua Bell in the Met.
Source: Pearls before Breakfast - Joshua Bell subway experiment. Washington Post. 2009

Value is Highly Contextual
Some of you may remember the 2009 Washington Post Experiment
where they asked virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell to busk in the sub-way for an hour.
The big question? Would the public recognize genius?
Washington Post interviewed a social psychologist who forecast that Joshua Bell would net only $150,
this for a guy who can command $50,000 for a performance in the Met.
Reality - he got $32. Very few people remembered or noticed him & afterwards when they interviewed him,
Bell said the hardest thing for him emotionally was that each time he finished a piece of music - there was silence .
No applause.
As the Washington Post said in their article - If Joshua Bell plays in the subway - is he still Joshua Bill?
& of course the answer is that he may well still be Joshua Bell the product
but he was no longer Joshua Bell - the ‘brand’.
& I believe the money he got & the self-value he got all relates to the actual value he delivered because
ultimately value in the creative space relates to the needs of both parties, not merely the bottom line.

Value is
a mutual
negotiation

I have two goals as a designer.
The first is that everything I do
has to have an idea:
it cannot just look nice.
The second is,
it has to look nice.
Paul Rand
Value is a mutual necessity with both parties
needing to achieve something worthwhile

Back to Paul Rand - Value is a Two Way Street.
Paul Rand – I have two goals as a designer.
‘The first is that everything I do has to have an idea, it cannot just look nice.
The second is that it has to look nice’.
His motivation is part of the value equation as well as the clients. I remember back in BBH,
our Polaroid client came to us & said they wanted to be the client that everyone in the agency
wanted to work on. They wanted to match their motivations with ours.
Beyond our mutual motivations, I believe we need to ensure we are developing/sustaining expertise
as commercial creators…
Identified by Anders Ericsson (1996) in his work on Expertise & popularized by Malcolm Gladwell…
- 10,000 hours to be a master
For anyone in the room who has been working in commercial creativity,
if we take a 40 hour working week, it would seem easy to notch up 10,000 hours -
within 5 years as a marketing or creative professional..
But hang on - says my inner-Einstein, does 10,000 hours of sitting in meetings count,
in my quest to become a Master Creator?

10,000 hour rule
Does 10,000 hours sitting in meetings count?
Source: Ericsson, 1996.

The best in the world practice
Twice as much as the second best

I fear not the man who has practiced
10,000 kicks once,
but I fear the man who has practiced
one kick 10,000 times.
Bruce Lee

We enter this business because we have taste but
having taste doesn’t mean your work is world-class...
IRA Glass
Source: Ira Glass. On the Creative Process. 2011
(any more than eating in a Michelin Star restaurant turns you into Michel Roux)

The Great
Gatsby
by
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson typing out The Great Gatsby on his typewriter
to FEEL what it would be like to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We ARE what we
increasingly DO
Aristotle

Great work has Great Workers Working

Unlike gold bullion, commercial creativity is a complex commodity.. ..
Commercial creativity is not a tap we just turn on:
‘I’ll have three Grand Prix Effectiveness Campaigns and two Effies please’.
Requires Hard Learning - Les Binet Measurement
Also Requires Soft Learning - mutual discovery, trial and error
grounded in a trust that we will get there in the end.
(To paraphrase Cindy Crawford, not even Les Binet wakes up feeling like Les Binet every morning
....Effectiveness is a Practice, we try, we fail, we learn)
Commercial Creativity Needs Cultivation
Stefan Sagmeister taking a sabatical every seven years...
not just for the good of his health in its biological sense -
it’s to sustain his creative health in its commercially valuable sense...
I met a client of mine back in November for an idea - generation session, he entered the room,
exhausted at 4pm, having been in back to back meetings since 8am - he said to me ‘I feel like a busy fool’ -
but we are all busy fools if we burn out the creative resource that makes us valuable,
especially in an era where other areas of our job may easily be done by cheaper resources.

Value is a journey, constantly changing
trial and error - start with a problem.

The Power of Time Off
Stefan Sagmeister
Every 7 years, he takes a one-year sabbatical.
Source : Stefan Sagmeister. The Power of Time Off. TED. 2009

Battery Chickens don’t lay Golden Eggs
There has been a tendency in recent years to ramp up the ‘billable hours’ but this ignores the human aspects of creativity -
ultimately our stuff ends up being more & more the same - & where is the value in that…?
In this context, it’s not surprising that ...we start to value each other & the work less & less...

“Every job I get seems to have been
kicked by everyone in the agency”
Dublin based photo retoucher. February, 2014.

A Continual Journey of Negotiation
Creative
Competitive
Advantage
Contract
Measurement
Learning Practice

1. What is my Creative
Competitive Advantage?

2. How do I negotiate Contracts
that command and deliver Value?

3. What do I need to increasingly do to cultivate
and sustain my Commercial Creative Value?

What behaviours do I need to practice to cultivate
and sustain my Commercial Creative Value?
The most poignant anecdote I have ever read about somebody in the Creative Business
was the story of Alex the Account Director in Peter Carey’s first novel Bliss.
Alex worked on a large pharmaceutical client but every Saturday he got coffee and doughnuts,
went into the office and re-wrote the Contact Reports (meeting summaries) so that they reflected
what he wished he had said e.g. Agency challenged Client viewpoint, refused to commerce campaign
on ground of effectiveness and brilliantly argued the need for a creative solution....
Recent ADAPT report from Ian Priest in the IPA featured that well known adage:
‘Clients get the agencies they deserve’.
- this is undoubtedly true but I would also reverse that statement to say that
‘Agencies also get the clients they deserve’
- there are two people in every ‘under-valued’ relationship….
The Virtuous Circle of Valuable Commercial Creativity.
To be even more provocative we have the defensive agency cliche that
‘If you pay peanuts you get monkeys’
but if I choose to accept peanuts as payment,
then effectively ‘I am a monkey’

Agencies get the Clients they Deserve
Clients get the Agencies they Deserve

Psychology of Negotiation
creative negotiators find ways
to make the pie bigger
Also Source: Bazerman. 1983

It is up to all of us to stop fighting amongst ourselves to carve up
the ever-diminishing pie and instead to go out and create
a much bigger more valuable pie with plenty to go around...
Shakespeare would tell us “the answer dear Brutus is not in the stars but in ourselves”,
David O. Russell put it succinctly recently when he said…

“Everyone is selling something,
mostly to themselves.”
David O Russell

Commercial Creativity – Whole New Value
The Virtuous Circle of Valuable Commercial Creativity.
As people who make our living from Marketing and Creativity,
I believe it is important that we step up to the plate,
set out our stall and work to continually deliver and surpass ourselves
and our clients or audiences, commanding and delivering high value.
We can be Marlon Brando muttering into our soy latte,
saying ‘I could have been a contender’ or we can be Paul Rand
valuing himself & deciding to Contend.

Creativity Sells Out? How creative people need to command and deliver more value

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