« Review of the Week: Join Me! | Main | Katrina's Lesson for HR »
September 09, 2005
The World's Best Selling Book by Paul Arden
Actually, the book's name is "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be," which highlights Arden's one shortcoming in this text: an over-reliance one-line aphorisms.
But in a funny way that's also the book's strength, because when he gets it right, his insights are terrific, so for much the same reason as I don't care for the title, I prefer the subtitle's subtle play on words.
Beyond the title, what's wonderful about Arden's short treatise is that it provides a dense, visually entertaining and intensely readable guide to business through the lens of what it takes to succeed as an art director. (Arden is a former Saatchi & Saatchi Executive Creative Director.)
While this shouldn't be required reading for "creatives" (and while I don't expect any will be coming to me for reading recommendations), I do think it's a great, short guide to how agencies work, to the creative development process, and--most importantly--to the difference great creative can make.
But there's a catch to this last point, and this may be the most important lesson to take away from Arden's aphorisms. Great creative involves risk.
Risk for the artist. For the agency. For the client.
One of my roles here at TMP is to lead the research that ensures that the creative brief reflects the workplace reality. That also helps, once the creative is executed, to validate that the creative is "on brief." That's the recipie for good, solid creative.
This is also a really important ingredient in great creative, of course, but Arden makes clear why great creative also takes a dash of risk on all sides.
The book is full of illustrations that make the value of taking this leap of faith, but my favorite comes near the end, in a chapter entitled "My Finest Hour."
Arden had been working with legendary photographer Richard Avedon for "a very ordinary client in the fashion industry," shooting a campaign on African print dresses.
Leni Riefenstahl's Nubia woman was the brief, so when Avedon asked whether he could put the skirt on the model's head, Arden "swallowed hard and said yes."
I won't steal Arden's thunder by detailing where the shoot went (and there's an unforgettable image to go with the narrative). Suffice it to say that when he left the shoot, he writes, "my feet seemed not to touch the pavement and I thought, 'I am going to be fired for these pictures."
Risk for the creative director.
"Fortunately," he writes, "the client loved them. 'This is art, he said.'" The creative community shared the client's tastes: according to Arden, the creative "won every award there was to be won."
Unfortunately, the client was fired. Risk to the client.
Now, before I'm accused of saying we should all blindly follow our muse like lemmings off a cliff, let me share Arden's most important insight.
Shortly after his realization that he could be fired for the art he was about to bring his client, Arden asked himself a rhetorical question that is, I think, an outstanding litmus test for business ethics: "would I rather be fired for having done them, or not be fired for not having done them?"
"There was no doubt in my mind," he writes. I would rather be fired. Those few seconds on 74th street were my greatest moment in advertising."
The lesson here is obvious. Great risks won't guarantee great rewards. But great rewards can't emerge in the absence of risk and trust.
Posted by at September 9, 2005 11:09 PM