Springsteen talks about chasing a silver thread between him and the audience, and some nights he grabs it on the first note and holds it the whole way, and some nights he spends every second trying to catch it, only to have it constantly slip away.I'm feeling a little confessional today.
Don't know whether that's due to Matt quoting Bible verses at me while we argue over if Mother Theresa was a good marketer, but I had trouble getting started yesterday and today doesn't feel much better.
One thing there's never a shortage of in advertising is confidence. Confidence and ego. When I made games a good friend and I would meet up at conferences and make secret confessions that we spent so much time second guessing the design decisions we were making it was a miracle we hadn't been exposed for the frauds we were. That friend then played a lead design role on Bioshock, a game that appeared and mopped the floor with everything else that showed up to dance last year.
In the time since we'd both rationalised those feelings through many encounters with others who never lacked confidence, yet consistently produced mediocre work; if you think every idea is sprung from genius, you're not likely to try harder at anything.
I say all this sitting on an idea for a client. A great idea. Game changing, Lion-winning, great idea. I know in my gut it is a great idea, and I'm struggling to boil it down to a simple, one line pitch, which it needs to be as the company is quite conservative. It needs to hit home and they need to get it before the sentence finishes leaving my mouth.
I'm searching for that silver thread today, and the bitch is if I knew I'd find it then it wouldn't be worth a thing.
This reminds me of something Seth Godin was talking about when I was reading through one of his books last week. -All about aligning your story or idea with perspective and the client’s worldview.
ReplyDeleteA lot like the strings on a piano. When they hit something, of the same frequency, they resonate, and here it resonates creativity. Cause and effect embrace each other. And that’s when the story sticks or you catch the silver thread. :)
So when your story aligns with the client’s worldview, well you have plenty to hit home. When it doesn’t, your ideas are likely to be invisible.
That's very insightful Ms. Sandow...I'm going to get busy aligning my story =]
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