InspiRAYtion Seven: What to do when your creative leader rejects your work
When the creative director says a no, despite a fantastic idea, see it from his or her eyes. Understand what they’re seeing and trying to show, explains adman Rayomand J Patell.
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Don’t fly into a rage. Don’t rant on LinkedIn. Don’t be passive aggressive. Neither, be manic depressive. Don’t comfort eat. Don’t hit the bottle. Don’t do drugs. Don’t kick animals. Don’t rage quit. Don’t unalive yourself. Don’t unalive your CD. Just, don’t. Simply, be.
It’s not a personal attack. Yes, we pour ourselves into our work. But our work like our children, comes through us, and this is an important but, it is not us.
Like our children, our ideas can be quite charming, alternatively, sometimes, they need manners taught. And here’s the thing. Unlike children, sometimes, no matter how good an idea is, it’s not the right one for the task at hand.
This, is what separates the children, from the adults in the creative department.
Yes, creativity is a thing that we worship at the altar of. And yes, ordinarily, a gorilla on a drum kit waiting to crash into the cataclysmic solo of Phil Collins’ ‘In The Air Tonight’ ought not to be anywhere near a brand. Least of all Cadbury.
However, when it is and please frame this word, ‘relevant’ then it could be the only thing you need.
A good creative leader knows when the bridge between a consumer and a brand can be crossed. And when it can’t be. And when the idea you have on the table, is magnificent from a purely creative point of view. And yet, it will simply not, Worli and Bandra, link.
So when your creative director is saying no, even when you have a fantastic idea, see it from his or her eyes. Understand what they’re seeing and trying to show you. Anxiety is a thing among all generations in Creative, I don’t see why Gen Z alone should have the monopoly on it. Any creative endeavour by virtue of us offering up our work for scrutiny is enough to trigger the butterflies in the best of us. At any and every point in our career. So when they’re saying the work doesn’t work, trust their judgement. They’re trying to guide you to a better place.
If you see it from your Creative Leader’s point of view, a few coffees later, you should automatically recalibrate and find a whole new horizon that leads into entirely new thoughts and ultimately, ever more powerful ideas on the creative scale and the perfectly working one on the ‘does it work for this brief’ scale.
That’s the hardest one to swallow for most mid to senior creatives and the rejection has to be done with a fine mix of empathy, passion and inspiration. You can’t critique it randomly, you have to persuade the creator to see where it’s meandered off brief and simultaneously create a new flight plan for a new runway of possibilities .
Junior to mid creatives have other issues on the way up. The most common fallacy is thinking what you’ve thought of, is the hottest thing since Bernbach. But, if your Group Head has spent any time at all in this biz, there’s nothing more humbling than realising most ideas were done way, way before you were born, on bigger budgets than you can dream of, with better execution skills than you can dream of (yes, even with AI) and because the trails of creativity are eerily similar from the same start points, your idea is up against every idea, every creative team has created from the 1960s onwards.
And so, chances are you’ll hear this, ‘it’s been done’ phrase and I know it gets your goat especially for the young ones for whom there simply isn’t this thing called the past.
But, there is. So be a student of what happened and when. Know that everything builds on continuity. Every campaign that wins at Cannes, builds upon the titans of the past and so jurors see it as a fresh new breath of air. And reward it accordingly. Use the past, to illuminate your future. Find new trails, or forge your own. Doctoral students push the boundaries of all human knowledge ahead one thesis at a time. Advertising practitioners especially creatives, push our collective stories ahead, one imaginative leap at a time.
Tomorrow when you get into work, lighten up about rejection. One day, you’ll see it for what it is, a stepping stone to stardom. Help your creative leader help you. They want to be a ‘friend of the new’. Be a creative’s creative. You’ll realise ideas are infinite within you and automatically spout ever more where you think things have dried up. And that, will take you places. To the top generally.
Caveat: I’m talking about the CDs who actually want to grow you, and make you the best version of yourself you can be. The ones who want to stifle you, the ones who are horribly insecure and political animals, tend to be present as well and sadly, that’s a level of pain to be endured for as long as it takes to find good people to work with. Recognising who’s who, will help you considerably in your career path and learning.
And there’s something I’m going to leave you with. Never delete an idea. Put it in your file, stash it away in your cloud storage. Because one day, each and every one of those ideas will find the perfect brief to be presented for again. And on occasion, they will fly and soar into the world as they were meant to the first time around in your head. But, this time, they will be so so right for the brief.
My best wishes for you to stick around long enough for that to happen. Enjoy the ride!
Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.
