By Ruby Quince

20 Reasons a PR firm may not want to hire me.

I’m through with 10 people in a brainstorm. I’m over throwing ideas at the whiteboard and just going what sticks. I’m finished with ‘two brainstorms and we’ll go with what we’ve got’.

I’m through with the assumption that few people are always going to have the ideas, it’s usually the least expected people that give sparks to fuel the best campaigns.

I’m though with accepting that the idea is what first comes out of someone’s mouth, and not pushing, probing, pulling apart, rebuilding.

I’m through with falling blindly in love with ideas; I’m done pitching an idea that has no love in it.

I’m through with relying on PowerPoint for design: It just wasn’t made for that.

I’m finished with “it’ll take 10 minutes”.

I’m done with Kool-Aid. I’m done with insights that don’t stack up. I’m over building on wonky foundations in a brief.

I’m over validating an idea for an audience that isn’t us with the only black/ disabled/ gay/ young/ old/ young/ East Londoner/ foreigner/ Muslim etc. person in the office. I hope that I’m not in an office were that is the case.

I’m done with putting a budget in without speaking to the supplier and then having to ‘make it fit’.

I’m finished with beating any life out of an idea to make it safe, sterile, ‘buyable’.  I’m done with boring clients into a strategy.

I’m done with campaigns that shoehorn in a social add-on because we just should, or using user generated as a shortcut. I’m finished with pretending to know how the Google/ Instagram / Facebook algorithm really works. I plan never to use the word ‘viral’ until after a campaign.

I’m done with assuming something that worked once will work again. I desperately want to avoid briefs that ask for a new version of the great thing a competitor did. I hope never to be asked again for proof that an idea that hasn’t been done will work by finding examples of where it’s worked before.

I’m not through with floating things down the Thames, Potters Field Park, pop-ups if they are the right thing to do. I’m not over chunking the right celebrity at it. Research pieces aren’t always lazy. 

I’m done with presentations that start with 20 pages of who we are, where our offices are, what we’ve done, our philosophy and principles. I’d hope that those things have got us into the room in the first place.

I’m through with not giving the client a single idea until 20 minutes into a pitch and then having to rush the detail. I’m done with forcing the client to squeeze the Q&A into the last 5 minutes of a pitch.

I’m done with saying ‘yes’ when I know it’s a ‘maybe’ at best, but probably a ‘no’.

I’m over hiding failures if we can learn from them (we almost always can). I’m done with accepting ‘we came second’ as ‘almost won’.

I’m through with partners that think PR is a lesser art.

I’m over being in meetings where we conclude that we need to change things and then do nothing about it. I’m done with only hiring people that sound/ think/ act/ look like everyone else.

I’m done with not getting better at my job each year. I’m through not learning new tricks or at least modifying what I do to fit the changing world.

The copy scores 77.7 in the Flesch Reading Ease test