Five important things about craft
- You need to really make time for craft. The team at Droga5 spent weeks trawling through footage, voicemails, texts and photos for their New York Times work: it was meticulous and exhaustive. They didn’t cut corners – and it shows. Referencing this piece in his ‘Expert Wrap-up’, Anselmo Ramos, GUT Co-founder and Creative Chairman, drew viewers’ attention to the details of the work that he admired: the music, the pace, the energy, the visuals.
- It’s often lamented in adland that no-one is a specialist anymore. Everyone is a generalist. So look out for people with a unique skill set. IKEA Tel Aviv described Copywriter Eldar Yusupov’s superpower as being thinking rather than talking and that’s how he brings value and insight.
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Really get under the skin of the client: what they do, what they think, what they worry about.
“Listen, listen and listen again until you get to the least obvious, most valuable insight that can inform an idea’s execution.”
Chris Beresford-Hill, Chief Creative Officer, TBWAChiatDay New York -
Writing about his home city of Dublin, James Joyce said, “In the particular, contains the universal” and our speakers echoed his sentiment. Many speakers advised creatives to niche the idea down until it’s at its most reduced but also its most potent. BBDO and Snickers talked of the “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” platform being both simple but also open to precise cultural nuance – and this is one of its secrets to success.
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Just get on with it. Don’t let the big idea paralyse you. Heavyweight creatives from Kate Stanners to Marcello Serpa talked of the perennial ‘still being afraid of the blank page’, even after years in the business.
Once you pick up the pen and tap out a few words, you’ve overcome the very first hurdle. As Marcello says, “You have to vomit ideas up. Once you have the belief in you, once you have the problem that you have to solve, just vomit ideas.”
Craft and artistry do still matter.
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