Please, please stop saying "Anybody can be a creative."

There is a clandestine effort – conscious or deliberate, I cannot say – to diminish the value of creative. The thinking that fuels this conspiracy is that being creative is more a hobby than a career path. As a writer, I'm often asked to "come up with something fun" for a neighborhood event, a relative's wedding, or a school project, as if nothing were more fulfilling than to add more work to my life.

"Anybody can be a creative" is a phrase I hear bandied about ad agencies, usually by upper-management types who are trying to foster this wild idea that creativity lives in the ether, waiting for anyone to pluck its fruit. I believe the statement is said as an attempt to be inspirational. It's not. It's insulting.

For example, were I to approach my mechanic and say, "Hey, anybody can fix a car," he'd likely take umbrage. My mechanic, born with a clever knack for understanding complex machinery and trained to be among the best in his field, deserves better than my droll assessment that his skills are pedestrian at best. As creatives, we deserve the same courtesy.

After all, not only are we born with  more weight on the left sides of our brains, we have honed and labored  our craft since our childhoods. To say, "Anyone can be a creative" is no less ridiculous than saying anyone can be a brain surgeon or an NBA power forward. 

I could never be an accountant. I could never be a world champion hotdog eater or a capable plumber or a cutthroat divorce lawyer. I haven't the talent for any of those pursuits, but I appreciate those who do. I should hope they have the same respect for me. 

Jeremy Harper is Chief Instigator of Storm the Castle Creative and is not available to create your birth announcement. 

The one good practice marketing execs must adopt in 2018.

Engaging the theater of our minds, let us pretend you have $100,000 to spend on producing a TV spot. We know the reality falls somewhere between $5,000 and $2,000,000, but bear with me. When you presented your budget to your agency, the account executive probably said something dashingly low-key, like, "We can work with that," as if they had a choice. From there begins the beautiful machinations of building a TV commercial. What fun!

What you don't see on Mad Men is the barbaric process of elimination that occurs in pre-production – an exercise that whittles the copywriter and art director's epic vision into a grotesque Frankenstein that is an affordable marketing message. Most of these cuts are purely pragmatic. ("Why don't you just set this spot on the moon?" a frustrated production manager once screamed at me).

Every cut is felt, however. Shooting will be reduced from three days to one. The script will call for a majestic scene atop a Hawaiian volcano, but will ultimately be shot in the creative director's back yard. The celebrity voice over you pitched in the creative presentation will become a local talent who can manage a passable British accent. 

These are all age-old sacrifices. However, smart branding managers (like yourself) should resolve to stinking to an unbreakable production absolute in 2018: never skimp on the on-camera talent.

It is said that great photography is all about proper lighting (which is something you should never mention to a photographer). Likewise, a great TV spot is all in the casting (though you should spare the writer that truth). 

Consider a recent campaign for DirectTV, which pokes fun at backwards consumers who prefer cable TV over Dish. Conceptually, it's a mediocre idea with a big media budget. But what makes the campaign work (and work well, apparently) is the professional casting. 

Brands with heroically small budgets are tempted to cut costs by casting their articulate employees, cute relatives or (gasp) themselves in their TV spots. This may save you a fee, but it will cost you magic. Behold DirectTV's perfect casting! 

Whether plucked from the local stage theater or selected from a well-connected casting agency, the actors employed by DirectTV are the best part of what could have been a boringly juvenile idea. You can bet these thespians came at a significant cost to the brand. However, what price might have the brand paid had the campaign failed to penetrate consumers' minds and bounced ingloriously into the ether?

In 2018, resolve to improve your branding through acting. The initial costs are high, but the end result is rewarding. 

Jeremy Harper is Chief Instigator of Storm the Castle Creative and is, according to his wife, a very poor actor. 

Push Your Brand Forward Five Years

A couple years ago, I was working on conceptualizing a television spot for a small (but rapidly growing) brand.  Many people in the room seemed to carry a pre-conceived view about the brand, often dismissing and even smirking at concepts that placed the brand in an elite light.

Jump into your time machine and concept five years into the future. 

“Come on,” was a common assessment. “That’s not who they are. Be realistic.”

Rather than build up the client, there seemed to be a greater focus on bringing the brand down to earth. I suggested that we focus on what the brand aspired to be. Why? Because this is how we want our consumers to view our brand.

Aspired Advertising accepts that we as advertisers aren’t 60 Minutes. Our lot is to enhance the image. Though we should never embellish the brand beyond disbelief, we should proceed using the brand’s potential as the base.

Here are three Aspired Advertising tips that can accelerate the process:

1.    Move the brand up five years. Never start at the brand’s current state, but imagine where the brand could be in five year’s time. It will have grown, right? Become stronger. More attractive.  Start with tomorrow.

2.    Push to be bold. Many clients are modest to a fault, hoping that consumers will organically see and accept their beautiful attributes. Instead, be brazen and bold; as bold as your audience. For they do not wish to associate with tepid brands. 

3.    Respect a brand’s challenges. Small brands that take on the Brand Establishment are brands deserving respect. Take up the creative sword and adopt their cause. View the battlefield through their lens. Then you will work to elevate your creative to the brand’s aspirations.

Bonus advice: If you can’t be excited for the brand, tap out. It’s okay. Find a brand that stokes your fire. 

Confessions of a Macho Marketer

I can do macho. Don't let the hipster hat fool you. I've chopped wood. I've been known to eat a rare steak. I once popped my own jammed thumb back into socket and only cried for an hour. 

Are men really on the sum of that one part?

In advertising, writers are sometimes required to perform Macho Marketing, which is to fluff the chest hair of a product or service. The creative brief reads something like this:

AUDIENCE: Men, TONE: Manly, DUE: ASAP

For nearly 20 years, I've pumped iron for dozens of brands, in categories ranging from power-tools to golf tournaments, men's hair cuts to hunting. Over the years, I've noted a number of trends associated with Macho Marketing. We men are simple creatures, content with our grilling and overstuffed recliners, subservient to the intelligent practicality of the women of our lives (if secure in our belief in our superior upper body strength). We're not "politically correct," though we're resigned to be seen antiquing with our spouses if it means being allowed to watch a football game later in the day. 

We ignore our rising blood pressure, our weakening hearts, and our bad cholesterol, but place the utmost importance on maintaining an erection that lasts just short of three hours. 

We look terrific without a shirt. Except when we don't, and that's cool too. We're unafraid to show our adorable dopey side, willing to set aside all sensibility for the sake of an enormous television we can't afford. Oh, we do speak knowledgeably on the important topics: beer, sports, mowing grass, grilling. We're only made completely helpless when asked to watch our kids or to make a reasonable decision about home decor.

We go big or not at all! We admire the imagination of the dudes who transform backyards into hockey rinks. Our heroes wrestle bears and bungee jump from bald eagles. We ignore our rising blood pressure, our weakening hearts, and our bad cholesterol, but place the utmost importance on maintaining an erection that lasts just short of three hours. 

Hand us a pistol and we'll shoot you a bullseye. Send us for groceries and we'll come home with frozen pizzas. Request romance and receive tickets to a monster truck show. It's all good, because we're men, as noted by our baseball cap worn backwards.

Yes, I am an unrepentant Maestro of Macho Marketing, and I have the beer-breath to prove it. Should I be worried that I've contributed to an industry that has whittled an entire generation down to a Horrible Hagar cartoon? Should I not probe deeper into the male psyche and learn his secret yearnings, his hidden talents, his deepest wishes for his enduring legacy?

Nah. (Burrrrrp)

Courting Rejection: a creative's cruel mistress

Many years ago, as a young and dumb copywriter living in Memphis, I was hired by an ad agency whose lead writer was moving to the distant metropolis of Kansas City. We sat together in her office, surrounded by her nicknacks and tchotchkes, reviewing all the clients she would soon leave behind.

"Have you found a new agency in KC?" I asked, making polite smalltalk.

She shook her head. "Nah."

"Easing into it?"

"Nope. I'm actually enrolling in veterinarian school."

She was no hack. She had done great work in Memphis. Her career in advertising seemed golden. I was stunned to learn she was abandoning it for a lifetime of treating lyme disease.

You get older, you understand. Your stomach becomes too soft to take any more blows. The acceptance you once so desperately craved – the jealousy of peers, the praise from clients, the acknowledgment from the agency's elite – transitions to something simpler: the primal need to please yourself.

Rejection is a creative's coy and cruel mistress. She leads you one with faint platitudes before leaving you alone at the table with a sheet of white paper stained with red ink and vague redirection. A relationship with Rejection is exhausting and punishing. Early on, you endure it because you like the challenge. And because you're stupid. You think you have the energy and charm to woo her. Win her over.

But Rejection never evolves. She refuses to adopt your perspective or even try to work it out. Rejection only wants you to conform to her. There is no give and take. No 50/50. She'll toss you a scrap before taking her pound of flesh.

The sizzling relationship eventually becomes an emotionless business arrangement. Rejection keeps your work honest and maybe even profitable, but the romance is gone. You've received too many eye rolls and snide remarks to consider Rejection anything more than a not-silent-enough partner.

And that's how you endure in advertising. Rejection knocks, and you coldly open the door and invite her inside. She'll talk and talk and talk. You'll nod and agree at the right places. The things she says hurts because much of it is true.

But you can still surprise her. Every now and then, you respond with something sharp and clever and reminiscent of those days when you thought everything you wrote was sharp and clever, and a genuinely sweet smile appears on Rejection's ruby lips

You still got it, handsome. Now give me two alternatives.