How to succeed as a creative: from 30-year ad vet and "Hey Whipple" author, Luke Sullivan
After 30 years in the advertising business, author Luke Sullivan is now chair of the advertising department at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He’s also the author of the popular advertising book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Advertising, and the blog heywhipple.com. His new book comes to bookstores in September: Thirty Rooms To Hide In: Insanity, Addiction, and Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic. Sullivan now lives in Savannah with his family and he reports that he enjoys the indoors and likes to spend a lot of his time there.
Read on for Luke’s insights on all things creative, as well as his advice for students.
The advertising world is a complex and confusing place, now that companies are expected to have a social media voice. As copywriters start writing tweets and blog posts, they’re getting more into the PR sphere. What do you make of all these new platforms? Is there an element of faddishness to it?
I love what Alex Bogusky once said; he asked his creative people, “Don't just bring me an ad or a script, show me the press release of your idea.” By this he meant that you have an idea that is so cool that it’s cool just written down on a piece of paper. An idea so cool that if you sent it to the newspaper, they’d want to write about it. The other way to put that is this: Instead of coming up with advertising ideas come up with ideas worth advertising. There is a profound difference.
From the PR angle, it is appropriate to talk about PR, because we want to make our brands talked about. As Seth Godin says, “To be remarkable is to be something someone would want to make a remark about.” Few people are going to write about “messages” or say, “Wow, I really love your message about how much more refreshing your drink is.”
As we move away from a messaging economy and into a content economy, what a company does becomes more important than what a company says. A company still needs a voice, but we won't live there anymore, we won't get our mail there anymore.
A good example of this is what Crispin, Porter and Bogusky did for the truth® campaign. When a tobacco executive said that secondhand smoke “wasn’t that bad” for babies because “they could just crawl away,” (CP+B) attached that clueless and evil quotation to the bottom of 400 crawling baby dolls and let them loose in a park. It was an event. It was interesting in and of itself. In addition to droppin’ a dime to call the news media, they filmed the event as it happened, creating video content they could use online or in a TV commercial. The whole thing was interesting.
But I don't think it's a fad, all these new platforms. They’re all going to find their groove. There was a time when people thought the web was going to make TV obsolete, and before that, radio was going to destroy the newspaper business. And yet, over time, all these media found their niche, a place in people’s lives. TV? I wouldn't be without it? Radio? Have to have it. I even like newspapers still.
What do employers look for in a student book?
I looked at books very intensively the last eight years my career. I inhaled student books. If I have seven books to go over, first I’ll make a very quick pass to take out the books that have mistakes or show weak stuff; these lapses in judgment are a quick read and an easy call to make. Next I'm looking for the crafts of art direction and writing. At the same time, I’m looking for idea people who are just really creative and show it in their book. Then there’s that old advice, start with your best work. It’s true. If I'm impressed with that piece I’m more likely to click on the next piece and so on. That's the thing, you’ve got to stay interesting for as long as possible.
Another thing I really like is the way students are using Adobe After Effects to create a multimedia story – a pitch video, basically. It's really smart. That’s how companies enter work into multimedia competitions. They should be short, 2-1/2 minutes max, and I wouldn't mind seeing two or three of them in a book. It's basically what they call “transmedia narrative,” a fancy way of describing the telling of a story across several different platforms.
A word of warning, though. When you put these videos into your book you're asking your reviewer to click on that little circle with the triangle in it and when they do that you're taking away control from them. They have to sit there and watch your work at your pace. So, when a recruiter or a CD is screaming through a bunch of books, it’s kind of a big decision whether they should click on that button and go down the rabbit hole. If your book is also full of other great stuff that can be read and assessed as good very quickly then, yes, they’ll be more likely to go into the videos and look at your bigger campaigns that spread across several media.
The thing is, you have to remember your audience. And your audience is overworked, overpaid creative schmucks such as myself, who are trying to fill a vacancy in the creative department. It's generally kind of an emergency when there is a vacancy in the creative department. The CD is wants to fill those desks as soon as possible so he or she can keep the work flowing thorugh the agency. So, remember: your market is a very overworked, very busy, and distracted person who really does want someone good. You have to figure out how your book can show you’re the right person, and show it very quickly.
Apps are becoming essential in advertising. How should a student approach showing examples of apps in their books?
Unless you have an idea that's really spectacular, you probably shouldn't do an app. Some of the apps I see are kind of clever, but they’re not, as they say in RG/A, “beautiful, useful or entertaining.” Apps in particular have to useful. I see a lot of kids who seem to be just checking the box. “Here, there’s my app.” Don’t check the box unless you’ve got something remarkably cool.
Along those same lines, it seems like we’re expected to have an awful lot more technical skills starting out.
What creative directors are looking for is someone who is radioactively creative. Students need to have the core disciplines of art direction and copywriting. I don't care if we end up living in a Philip K. Dick novel, at the end of the day someone is going to have to write something and someone is going to have to that on paper, or on a screen, or somewhere.
Having said that, we've all heard of the “T-shaped person” and you do in fact need to have a wide variety of skills. That’s the horizontal line across the top – you know Flash, or Dreamweaver, maybe you can code. But that vertical line below? That is your core skill, the thing you are really good at and the skill the team can really depend on you for. Teams these days are very collaborative and you can’t have someone on the team who’s clueless about everything except her particular skill. “Hey, if you need a headline written, give me a call.” You need to be able to speak fluently in a digital platform, and not just nod your head, but actually contribute. And to do this, you’re going to need a lot of exposure to all the skills necessary in this business, and then find skill that you just love, and get great at that one.
Is it important for students to win awards?
I was crazy about winning awards when I was a kid. I probably had issues, I’m serious. But even to this day I think the shows are a good thing. First of all, it allows people to see work that normally they wouldn’t get to see. Also, its competitive structure can incent creative to work even harder. It makes people show up, put on their Sunday best, and really dig in. For my money, the One Show and the Young Lions Show in Cannes are the important ones for students. Just don’t do what I did. Don’t beat yourself up over the awards. I used to think if I didn’t get into the One Show, I was a hack. It was only after I judged a One Show myself that I realized how capricious shows really are. Great work can just die for no real reason. It can be because a couple of judges are tired, or maybe the print ads were laid sideways on the table. Seriously. I actually saw some judges not look at a whole campaign because they would have had to walk around the table or tilt their heads a little.
I’m glad I won those awards, though, because it helped me become a known entity. Helped my brand. If you start winning in the shows, people start to find out about you. And that can help your negotiating power in an interview, when you can legitimately say, “I’m winning national awards in tough competitions.” Just don’t judge yourself over it, either way. You’re not a hack and you’re not a genius.
Have you found it difficult to balance your professional and private life?
My old boss, Mike Hughes, the best boss in the world, said, “Kids are the best reminder that there is life outside of advertising.” My two boys have brought great balance into my life. You can sit at work and struggle with some idea all day, but when you come home and see your child waiting at the door for you, all that creative worry? It all comes into perspective. When I was at Fallon, if there wasn’t some huge pitch going on, most of us went home at five bells. We had a very good work/ life balance. Everyone worked their tails off during the day, and then went home to be family people. It was normal. There are several great agencies out there that I hear have a pressure-cooker environment. And they’re doing incredible work. It’s just that I wouldn’t want to work there. Maybe it’s okay work a little too much, too hard, too long during the first half of your career. I mean, we all have to do an apprenticeship. But that’s not a pace you can keep up indefinitely.
Any thoughts for students who want to work internationally?
The world is arcing in that direction. As bigger brands go global, they want global representation in their creative departments. I remember at Fallon we hired “The Swedes,” Linus Karlsson and Paul Malmstrom. See, at Fallon, we were fairly inbred and you could argue we had a certain brand of creativity. Then these guys came in and did some completely out-from-left-field work. And it really mixed things up, added a nice flavor in the pot. So yes, by all means, it’s great if you can get some time working in another culture. A warning, though: you need to be able to speak the language. Because advertising is largely language-based, which means there are idiomatic structures and cultural references and memes that you need to be fluent in. If you’re not a fluent speaker of the language, I’m not sure how well you can contribute.