Chapter 5. Inspiration is a fickle partner.

It’s not a humble-brag to say that the work we did for Jerry Seinfeld was pretty good. It’s an actual brag. It won a shiny lump at Cannes; a city that holds all the allure of a man wearing too much fragrance and hosts a prestigious ad festival. If prestigious and ad is not an oxymoron.

Plus, Jerry himself liked it. Which is not nothing.

While it’d be nice to say our work always hit that high note, it’d be a lie and nigh impossible. Even the best people don’t bring their A-game all the time. 

Maybe it’s because I’ve recently taken up golf (stay awake now!) that I now see a creative career in terms of an afternoon on the green velvet. There are infrequent good shots, occasionally a great one, but mostly you’re just trying to whack it out of the bushes. You’re relieved when you finally get the ball close to, not even in, the hole. It’s only when you look back at your afternoon do you realize that some of the good shots you hit were actually the result of some of the duffs. Perhaps when I’ve just banana-ed a shot into the thick stuff, I’m more focused on hitting the ball cleanly and straight(ish) on my next one. 

Ok - golf analogy over. Welcome back.

There’s a saying Sir John Hegarty uses quite a lot, which is ‘good is the enemy of great’, which means by settling for good we cheat ourselves of greatness. That might be true for perfectionists – or, as they are known in our industry, pains-in-the-asses – but for the rest of us I think ‘great’ is a giant crapshoot. And one that is a confluence of influences you just can’t control: clients, money, availability, timing, audience, message, execution, geography and, of course, luck, to name a few. (My old friend and colleague Rory Sutherland would call that a concatenation but I’m a great deal less educated.)

Even if you could control these events it still wouldn’t matter: inspiration is a fickle partner.

Not every Picasso is a Picasso. Nor every HBO show, The Sopranos. Even Jerry hit some bum notes. And dare I say that some of these very chapters will be better than others. I’m kidding! They are all evenly mediocre…

The only way I’ve found to increase your chances of doing more great work is to do more work, period. So, here’s today’s lesson: be a glutton for opportunities. Big or small, accept them all. 

At The Brooklyn Brothers we took on every project we could, on the basis that it was a chance to do something - anything - and you’d never know where it would lead.

Some of those jobs turned out well, some even very well. Others only ever reached the giddy heights of meh. However, each was directly connected to the standout work that we did manage to accomplish: the work our London office did for Iceland; the film they made for Jaguar; the campaign NYC did for New Era Caps, with John Krasinski and Alec Baldwin; the work we did for NBC Sports starring Jason Sudeikis.

Our campaign for the United Nations MineAction Service also won something shiny at Cannes and was also pretty good, although not as good as when someone set it to the Benny hill music. 

This is our version.

This is with Benny Hill

Come to think of it, the NBC Sports work is an excellent example of what I was saying when you so rudely fell asleep during my golf analogy. That particular campaign came on the back of an NBC pitch to promote the Olympics, which we lost, and a pretty piss-poor strategy session. Would the work have been as good if it wasn’t for those whiffs? Maybe. Maybe not. 

Of course, that’s not to say we didn’t always try our best. But accepting that failure is part of the job is also part of the job. As Vince Lombardi said, it’s not how often you get knocked down, it’s how often you get back up. And as I said to my six-year-old son, the only way you can learn to win at chess is by losing.*

*“Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.” Raymond Chandler.