Invisible Brand

Lucian Camp gives advice on how to spare creative people’s feelings when sticking the knife (or the fork) into their ideas

What you have to understand about agencies' creative work is that it's all very personal indeed to the creative people who came up with it.

(The two "creatives" in that sentence remind me of the grumpy old man in Joshua Ferris's Then We Came To The End, an amusingish novel set in a Chicago advertising agency, who says he's never been able to take advertising seriously since he discovered that in the agency world the words "create" and "creative" can be used as verb, adjective and noun, so that it is theoretically possible to describe an agency as a place where you'll find "creative creatives creating creative creative." He has a point.)

Anyway. Creative work is very personal to creatives. It makes no difference even if it isn't very creative at all – even if it's the 467th layout you've seen in your career showing a man in a ludicrously ill-fitting suit with a headline about the importance of tailor-made advice, or the 763rd showing two businessmen shaking hands. It's still very personal.

This means it's very important to have non-confrontational ways of saying that you hate it. There are hundreds of these, but here are a few to be going on with.

Useful all rounder: "Don't throw it away."
Sounds like it means: "Great idea but off brief on this occasion." Actually means: "Useless."

A bit obvious: "Wasted on them."
Sounds like it means: "Great idea, but pearls before swine." Actually means: "Useless."

Golden oldie: "Brilliant idea for Year 2."
Sounds like it means: "Brilliant, but a bit too lateral for the early stages of the campaign." Actually means: "Off brief and silly." (A copywriter friend says that for years he's imagined that down in the basement of most agencies there's a heating boiler powered entirely by an incinerator burning Year 2 ideas.)

Damning with faint praise: "Very much going in the right direction."
Sounds like it means: "Going in the right direction." Actually means: "Going in completely the wrong direction."

Very aggressive and threatening: "I'm sorry we haven't been able to give you more time on this."
Sounds like it means: "Rubbish, but not your fault." Actually means: "Rubbish, and totally your fault."

And finally: "This is great, but I wonder if you've also considered..."
Sounds like it means: "I'm looking forward to presenting this but need a Plan B as well." Actually means (are you getting the hang of this by now?): "This is staying in the art bag – I'll be presenting whatever it is that I'm about to ask for."

Mind you, all these euphemisms of ours pale into insignificance beside the subtlety of the real masters of the art. Back in my consumer advertising days, I worked in agencies with lots of Procter & Gamble business. Presentations used to take place in Newcastle, to serried ranks of P&G marketing people. It was said that you always knew you were in terrible trouble when you got to the end and the most senior client stood up and delivered the spine-chilling line "I'd just like to start by thanking the agency for all the hard work that's obviously gone into today's presentation." Dead, buried, six foot under. Killed at a single stroke. Knifed to the heart. And, of course, completely forked.