You're in a creative meeting with other teams, and the creative director is telling you about the television spot he wants you to come up with. He says the spot should be moving. Should make the consumer feel something besides nauseous or insulted. You should make it unlike anything the competition is doing. Unlike anything that's been seen or done before.
Here's the funny part.
Immediately on the heels of instructing you and your colleagues to make it different, he starts subtly dropping code words that every creative recognizes. Words that tell you to make it exactly like what everyone else is doing.
If you're not in advertising you may have a hard time understanding this. The only way you'd have a harder time is if you were in advertising.
The truth is that in creative meetings at agencies across the country, this kind of thing happens more often than a Charlie Sheen interview. It's the reason so much advertising looks alike.
A writer friend of mine (who had a joke in the meeting that I'm still laughing at) told me that he never bites the hand that feeds him. Excellent advice.
So I'll work on the spot, using the directions I was given. One of which was to make it great.
I'll start by looking at a great spot the competition did.
