By Becci Ford

Being great at one thing

Yesterday we saw Sir John Hegarty speak and he was great to watch. 

But one thing he mentioned was that we should focus on only being great at one thing (either copy or art direction) if we want to be great and not good. 

I personally disagree. 

And here is why…

I think that it’s possible to be great at something and then good at other things too. 

If you only focus on one thing, it’s very easy to quickly fall out of love for it especially if it becomes your full time job. 

If your world just revolves around writing words or drawing pictures you start to resent the process that it takes to create them.

Also if you solely consume things that are to do with your one core skill, then yes you will become good at what you do. But your work will also become boring. Sometimes as a copywriter having a knowledge of layout and being able to visualise or mock up how the campaign may look can help to craft the copy and vice versa. 

I agree with the sentiment of being focused upon one goal to become great and hone in your skills – like an athlete does for the olympics.

But I think that time has changed and with the development of new technology and such a wide spread audience on different mediums now that we are expected to reach, technology has shifted this.

We are expected to be able to shape shift our skills into different forms – I agree to the extent that we shouldn’t dilute our skills by doing hundreds of different things and barely touching on each subject. But at the same time surely being in a creative team with a strong copywriter and art director who both also understand; film, each others craft, app building and photography for example. Can only be a great thing as they can accurately critique each others work to build something powerful and are also able to unlock other opportunities.

There is so much out there.

Why limit yourself to only being great at one thing, when if you put the work in you could be great at many things? 

(John Hegarty was a brilliant speaker today and he had lots of golden advice for us, this simply provided a catalyst for debate amongst us in the studio today so I felt the need to write about it.)