SCABs

Executing. – By @laurenbodiam

By Lauren Bodiam

 

Executing.

It’s hard. painful. I think I have easily chucked 5 trees worth full paper this week. Executing is hard. Its D&AD and I’m not happy. I’m miserable. I remember Pete saying at the beginning of the year never be happy. Cracked that. I have felt pain striving to get the executions that make me excited. It hasn’t happened. There have been rabbit holes. Different strategies. Different Ideas. What do I do with it now?

It’s taken about 2 weeks mulling over strategy for us to know what to do next. Mentor after mentor has told us we have got a good territory, but we have been clueless on what to do with it now. The easy option with this was to execute it simply. Say what it is, on a poster. Simple. But that’s not us. I don’t just want poster work. A lot of my favourite ads aren’t posters. It was iterated in reflections on Friday, a lot of the ideas that stick aren’t posters. they are ideas executed in ways that don’t seem like advertising. But how, I ask? How do you come up with this magic? I don’t have the secret yet. Me and Lucy spoke to Martin earlier. He’s a ex SCA student. After speaking with him I feel I’m closer to that secret. He told us all of the best work is simple and wrong. If your work is right its wrong and if its wrong its right. A bit of a tongue twister, and something that my mind found it hard to comprehend. What he means in wrong, is the tension. Something that doesn’t sit quite right that makes the audience go ahhh!. Take the snickers ad you have Mr Bean along with ninja’s. He doesn’t belong there, thats the wrong. Then the twist is that he’s hungry and takes on that Mr Bean persona when he’s hungry.

So how do you get to that wrong? Well Martin let us in to a secret about that too. A lot of the mentors have said you need to take a creative leap. It’s felt like doing a bungee jump with no ropes. Death and a mighty fall is how the leaps have gone so far. A lot of the creative leaps come from conversation, talking to your partner and listening to every detail they say. Have a pen and paper ready. Write down your territory down. Talk about it. Lots. Keep going even if you think you have it. Go in to everything that springs off strategy. Get to the dark places. The wrongs. The weird. The funny because that’s where your leap will be. Right now I have 3 A3 pieces of paper scribbled with the dark stuff. I have laughed writing and talking about it. It’s the most fun I have had. Advertising is fun. This was a nice reminder that you should always have fun creating work. Don’t get wrapped on it being right because the wrongs is where the good bits lie.

 

The copy scores 87.6 in the Flesch Reading Ease test

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