Earlier this summer, I spent a rainy day judging for this year’s Creativepool Annual and, as always, the judging experience was an educational one. There are posts floating around talking about how some are starting to turn down these requests, since being on a jury takes a lot of time and offers no compensation in return. But I’m just too nosy for that kind of integrity. So I always say yes.
I love poking around other people’s work and seeing how their ideas are constructed and the narratives they’ve built around their successes, failures, happy accidents, and the pure unstructured nonsense that is an inevitable part of running a marketing campaign. It’s good fun.
This time, the category was a weird one: concepts that didn’t make it past review or client approval. At first glance, indulgent. Navel-gazing. The once-killed darlings that the Annual was now resurrecting in a parade of undead creative. Weird.
But it was interesting, nonetheless. The work itself, even if good, offered few insights to take home. Instead, I started thinking about the creatives behind the work: the attachment to an idea, the ownership felt for ideas they’d left behind when moving on from their agency, the justice sought for the potential no one else could see.
Some I really felt for. Solid ideas with great potential. The kinds creatives see culled for a myriad of reasons on a weekly, if not daily basis. I know I can name a few I still carry a torch for and would argue for today.
And some of it was just plain old bean ballet. Bean ballet, you ask? Remember that Mad Men episode where Peggy has that godawful idea for Heinz she just refuses to let go of? Yeah. I’ve also been there.
As creatives, we’re ultimately all about the ideas. But ideas are fragile, and their survival rate is pitifully low. It can be demoralizing. The ones that really get to you are the ones rejected for a lack of bravery or because they seem like too much work. It all might have been worth it! I hope we all – creatives, account people, and clients – get better at picking them out from the bean ballets.
