First and foremost, I wanted to say thank you to the kind “coffee purchases” (sounds better than donations?) that have helped me get the scrapbook v2 workstream back up and running. Expect intermittent updates and occasional requests for your point of view.
If you missed the last newsletter– I am committed to never having a paid version of STRATSCRAPS, so the “buy me a coffee” thing is helping me fund some bigger projects that will come from this while not restricting access to only those who can pay.
If you didn’t, but would like to contribute, you can here.
Anyway, back to the nonsense…
Lots of words today, so lets start with a picture…
Now for the words…
First, a question: What are some things that work in practice, but not in theory? There is no reason that I’m asking this, just popped into my head…
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I read an article. Specifically, this one: “Digital Kinship, How the internet is reacting to the loneliness epidemic”
It’s a must read IMO and about far more than baby names. There was a passage about baby names however –screenshot below– and how they relate to shifts in American individualism vs community.
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What an interesting way to measure individualism in culture.. The author also states in another post:
It will be interesting to see if kids start having common names again as a result.
…
Anyway, everything this dude writes has been a good read so far. Here are some other screenshots from my dig into his back catalogue:
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Willingness to fail and high output is more important than genius.
These are the only two accurate predictors of success. This is proven.
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Tom Callard wrote one of those “[#] things I learned working in advertising/agencies” posts, and it is worth a read. He’s also self aware and gives credit where due. Below are the most important things on the list (IMHO anyway)
Hunt for revelations, not ‘insights’ (thanks Richard Huntington).
Petition to make this the industry standard language.
The job is subjective but we are paid to sound objective - don’t forget it really isn’t.
Preach. But can absolute best at sounding objective compete with the brand team who knows it to be subjective? Genuine question.
High performers need carrots not sticks (they wield a stick larger than you could carry and hit themselves with it).
I’ve never heard this said this way, but wow did this hit home… Well said Tom.
The four Cs aren’t equal - and you can often guess which one may hold the answer.
I’m looking forward to complicating this visual with varying degrees of circle sizes.
Brands are more nuanced than a sentence or an ‘onion’.
Ogres are like onions.
You’re not the first person to ask this question, find out what smarter people than yourself thought.
Know where you are in the process - convergent or divergent. Are you adding or honing - they’re different skills.
KNOW WHEN TO STOP ADDING
Creative reviews should be fun.
Interesting beats right every time.
Trust your gut, but also try to prove it wrong.
This is my personal maxim.
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Hypothetically…
if your job security depended on the success of a campaign, and clients wen’t allowed to give input…
would you give different creative feedback in internal reviews?
Probably so for me, and I think thats bad.
(yeah yeah “well it depends on how success is measured” shush, its a hypothetical)
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I used to say “creative ideas need a log line.” But I was playing myself by talking like a strategist. Talk how people talk, not how another niche industry talks…
So instead of “creative ideas need a log line.”
…Sell creative territories like friends episodes.
The one where… we visualize what the rainbow might taste like
The one where… we position our product as a beach in a bottle
The one where… We show how people aren’t themselves when they’re hungry.
The one where…
Use this format for an easy starting place for log lines.
If you cant write the basic creative concept as a friends episode title, you probably need to refine.
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Step one:
“Visualize outcomes, list barriers”
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I’m a recovering sociology major, so I’ve been un-training myself for a decade on how to say less.
pudding.cool, the wu-tang clan of data journalism, recently did a piece on accessibility in writing. While of huge importance for the literal accessibility goals, this is also a good guide on how to write simpler in general. (link)
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3 Quick Links without much commentary
Moon trees are a thing. Find one near you! (link)
Laws, Theories, Principles and Patterns that developers will find useful. A very large percentage of these are relevant to advertising/strategists as well. (link)
A person listing all the mistakes their agency made in the past 3 years (well, this is from 2018, so I guess it includes none of the mistakes they’ve made in the most recent 3 years) (link)
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A list of excerpts from a random excerpt of ~40 pages I found on dropbox. I thought it was from “Sweet Theft, A Poet’s Commonplace Book” (DL link), but the formatting looks different. Anyway, commonplace books are dope.
And this one, which is to me more about life than it is about planning:
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I think I’ve probably pasted this before, and in many ways it is redundant to Tom’s point above about convergent vs divergent, but going to end with this: