Popping the Integrity Pill is Hard, But It’ll Make You Feel Better.

Integrity, one word most people in the ad industry can’t lay claim to. We sell things people don’t need; we make business decisions in the face of creativity. So often we fall on our knees hoping the client won’t fire us for whatever reason has struck their fancy that week. We aren’t do-gooders, we’re not particularly green, heck, most of us aren’t even that friendly to outsiders.

It pains me to admit all this. I always wanted to save the world. Instead, I’ve sold my soul and gone into the industry that does the exact opposite. Honestly though, I don’t regret it.

I got lucky. I started my career at CP+B in Boulder, interning at an agency that, unlike most agencies, has integrity. They try to do the right thing, because that’s how Alex Bogusky has brought up their corporate culture. They try to line up their beliefs with their creative (Bramo’s B-cycle, Plum Card’s initiative to help small businesses, Domino’s transparency). The agency stands up for their creative, for their people and for the good of society (as much as the industry allows them).

I remember one Town Hall last summer when I interned at CP+B, the partners announced that they wanted everyone to spend the day coming up with a solution to stop the BP oil spill. The result of that brainstorm wasn’t much, but Just the fact that tried, made us feel better about our job for that one day. There's integrity in that intension.

Today, from where I stand, CP+B is showing another sign of the principles Alex left behind. According to him, the agency is probably parting with BK because ‘they have too much creative integrity to do the work the new BK team is asking for.’ Where most agencies would bend over backwards to keep such a big client, CP+B shows us yet again that selling your soul is really not worth it after all.

It’s not okay to just be sell-outs. It’s not okay to go against your beliefs and let the creative suffer: it’s not okay to be agencies that have no backbone. It’s certainly not okay to sell things you don’t want to sell. There is a way to be a part of a better advertising industry. We have to make those decisions ourselves.

So here’s to integrity. May we all retain ours.
Cheers.

PS check out Alex Bogusky's blog on the topic. http://alexbogusky.posterous.com/the-king-is-dead

Embrace the learning curve

Fear of making mistakes is fruitless. Instilling fear of making mistakes is just silly. The ad industry is filled with people who preach perfection. They expect new-comers to walk on water from day one – be perfect little creative robots who spew brilliant ideas, write flawless copy and spit out layouts every ten seconds.

In reality, behind the bravado, there’s a junior copywriter who is still discovering the difference between an en dash and an em dash. There’s an art director who is discovering that everyone hates Arial as a font. This stuff doesn’t just come to people in their sleep. It comes from making mistakes, from being a part of the working environment and learning from people who’ve made the same mistakes.

It’s not about hanging onto your failures but about stumbling into discovery. It’s how people grow. The really progressive agencies leave room for that growth and don’t judge you for being a little green in the beginning.

So if you’re going to prove yourself, prove that you don’t make the same mistakes twice. You just make different ones every day. The day you stop making mistakes, you stop learning something new. That’s the day you realize that you need to move onto to something more exciting.

Here's to making discoveries every day.

Cheers