get hands on
there’s no use emailing changes to the music house or spending hours circling/marking revisions on a visual and then bitching about it when things still aren’t “perfect.” get your ass down there and camp behind your music engineer or your DI artist. they’ll work faster (since no one dawdles with someone breathing down their necks) and you can then throw yourself a fit when if things still don’t meet your (or your eccentric ecd’s) standards.
never just throw in an option you don’t like to “make up the numbers”
scientific studies of the positioning of the moon during the 13th day of its lunar phase in relation to client deadlines have churned out cold hard facts: the one single lone option that you don’t like / that “bugs” you somehow / that isn’t quite there yet / that is a hideous assault on the cone photoreceptors of any rational homo sapien will be the one that the clients will lurve. really.
don’t miss deadlines
client gets pissed which leads to servicing getting pissed which gets the gm pissed, which inevitably and shockingly (oh no!) gets the cd pissed, will lead to your life being miserable.
don’t ever miss deadlines
no really. you’ve suddenly earned a tardy mark on your perfect record filled with shiny gold stars. you lose bargaining power. you lose credibility. and now you have to fight tooth and nail to get your crappy little promo ideas even looked at. forget getting it out and running.
meet the clients
cos some people might take your boards, visuals and headlines, and they might just chuck them on the boardroom table while mumbling something that vaguely resembles a combination of french & thai with a smattering of urdu (it’s definitely no english i’ve ever fucking heard before) to explain your brilliant idea. then they might come back and shake their head sadly, and you might decipher their grunting to mean “i dunno why la. they rejected.” then you’ll have to kill him/her. and despite all the horror stories, clients can be sane and rational and reasonable. they’re human too (most of them anyway).
know when to give up
one round. two rounds. three. still ok. 10 rounds of new ideas and we’re still at loggerheads stuck in no-man’s-land. you can choose to write something shorter, or make the product bigger, or add in another call-to-action, or adapt the regional visuals unquestioningly or open the window of the smoking room and defenestrate yourself (is that possible?). i like to give in sometimes. i’m wimpy like that.
don’t presume
being prepared and replaying every single bad meeting and living your life around an imagined disaster that might never happen are two different things. if you don’t get to the bottom of things and assume everyone hates you and your budget and your idea and your face while you sit at your desk for two weeks waiting for the nuclear bomb to drop, it will. it’s called missing the deadline. (ref. point 3 & 4)
writers get the short end of the stick
no one really knows what we do. we merely write headlines and copy that “no one reads”. how sad. art directors will get cool freebies from studios and image banks. servicing gets cool invites to cool events with lots of alcohol. and no one will share them with you. ha! nyeh nyeh nyeh. also,
writers get their visual ideas rejected.
“what do you know about visuals. you’re supposed to write copy only mah.”
writers get their long copy ideas rejected.
“no one reads long copy ads la. so boring. cannot do anything other than write copy meh?”
everyone thinks you’re goofing off when you’re really doing 5 jobs at once.
“very busy meh? writing copy only mah.”
everyone thinks you’re overrated.
“why ask her for briefing? it’s for ideas. she only copywriter mah.”
you don’t get invited to shoots even if you came up with the whole damn thing.
“writers need to go for shoot meh? no copy to write also mah.”
you don’t get credit for anything.
“job well done, art director. you should learn from him instead of only writing copy mah.”
deep breath.
add to this two copy-based creative directors who have a firm idea of what your scope should be. and you get work + responsibility – credit = misery (woah woah woah misery)
don’t depend on your art directors
directly from the last point, you’re still responsible if things fuck up. no forgetting that. i’ve been lucky to have worked with two wonderfully quirky chili padi superwomen art directors who didn’t know how to go home, gave tons of options and worked photoshop and illustrator like they were extentions of their fingers. they’re gone now. i am damn sad. like daaa-yum. yoni, ah siau, i miss you… SOBS
so look for your own damn images, scamp out your visuals no matter how horrible they are (trust me, mine resemble the scrawlings of a 5-year old with motor disabilities. no joke.) and don’t forget to come up with a zillion tv scripts (you can so totally pwn in that area).
real crafting takes approximately 3 days worth of writing 3 5 pages of copy to get 3 lines approved
i don’t even want to talk about this. -_-”
no idea is a bad idea… when you’re brainstorming
yeah, there are many lame ideas from lame people who fuck up packaging so badly (with typos and bad grammar and inconsistent spelling) then leave after 6 months citing torturous working conditions like staying after 7pm and (god forbid) working on weekends. (well, fuck you too!) but when you’re working with a good partner, lame ideas and discussions can lead to catching a better train of thought and a better solution. so i may have thrown in some ideas that made suet’s left eyebrow twitch or made janet cry (with laughter) but we did end up eventually with something workable.
some things i know in theory, but suck at the application. especially now. i’m kinda in my slacker-whiner mode. ;)
