For goodness sake

About 10 years ago, the second agency* I nearly worked for was a small independent in Bristol.

They were founded by a copywriter and art director team. The interesting thing was, the copywriter was colour-blind and the art director was dyslexic.

So they really did rely on each other. The perfect complementary team. They offered me a job but I declined – the fact that the guy interviewing me smoked throughout put me off.

But I always wished I’d had chance to see the two of them in action – and nowhere since have I found a dyslexic art director / colour-blind copywriter team (though I’ve seen it the other way around – copywriters who can’t distinguish between “its” and “it’s” and art directors with all the colour sense of a footballer’s decorator).

Anyway. At the agency I chose over theirs, I worked with a talented, very funny art director whose motto was, “I like it... cos it’s done.”

I’m a big fan of maxims, slogans, aphorisms, mottos and motivational quotes.

You remember those Athena posters from the 80s? The ones with a picture of a mountaineer smiling with perfect American teeth and the line, “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim to it”. There’s one at my gym in fact. A poster of a woman doing a pole vault I think.

The line is, “You don’t ask for respect, you earn it”.

Awesome. I’d paper my whole house with such wise and pretty posters if I could.

And I use these great pearls of wisdom all the time. “It’s easier to destroy than create,” for example, is the one I use whenever someone wants to amend my concepts.

“If you feel in complete control, you’re not going fast enough,” is the line I use whenever people complain about my driving.

And I’m always humming, “A mars a day helps you work, rest and play” at 11:30 when the sandwich lady arrives, dishing out chocolate bars with more relish than the Child Catcher. 

But as I say, the art director I worked with, his favourite line was, “I like it cos it’s done.”

In other words, if something we’d done was good enough... then it was good enough. We could stop and move on to the next thing.

The next thing usually being a game of table football.

I mention it because it seems like he must be doing half the charity communications out there right now. So many of them seem to have been created with a “I like it cos it’s done” attitude.

I got a mailing from UNICEF the other day that was a prime example: extremely bland, utterly formulaic. My shopping lists are better written. My timesheets are more creative. And if an agency can’t create compelling work for a cause as powerful as UNICEF’s then they should be delivering the mail rather than creating it.

That art director’s favourite saying must have really stuck with me. Because the contrary line I sometimes use when looking at a piece of creative we’re doing at the agency is, “Good is a good start.”

And yes, of course people roll their eyes and shake their heads like I’m a cliche-spouting cheese-ball. They’re absolutely right, of course. I am. But I don’t mind at all, as long as it means better work.

Talking of which, I should get back to polishing these pitches.

After all, as Henry Ford (may have) said of his success, “Yes, I am lucky. And I find the harder I work, the luckier I get.”




*You’re right, I don’t look old enough.