What Constitutes Creative Success?
The other day I was listening to Jerry Seinfeld being interviewed on a podcast. The creator of the most popular sitcom of all time was asked for his definition of success. He hesitated for a moment before answering, “Survival is the new success.” And right now it certainly feels that way. As we stumble out of a pandemic into a global recession, with summers getting hotter and geopolitics hotter still, just getting by day to day and managing the occasional smile is no small achievement. Still, the question got me thinking … what does success mean in the context of creativity? How should we define whether a project has succeeded or not? Is it ever possible for a creative leader to know for sure that they have been successful?
The first place to look for a measure of success is the obvious one: the baubles and prizes that mesmerize the creative industries. Say the words ‘pencil’, ‘arrow’ or ‘lion’ to a member of the public and they’ll envisage a writing implement, a primitive weapon and a big cat. Say the same words to an advertising creative and they’ll envisage black tie, the ballroom at the Dorchester and that annoying guy from accounts doing lines in the toilet. Now I wouldn’t wish to undermine the validity of any trophies you might have accumulated over your own career (undoubtedly it’s a good feeling to make your way up on stage to receive an award from your peers – and a puzzled looking B list comedian) but I have sat on enough awards juries to know that the selection process can be alarmingly arbitrary and the best work doesn’t always win. An award is great for a temporary flush of dopamine, for buffing up your ego and negotiating next year’s raise, but before you know it the nickel plating on your ‘gold’ trophy will tarnish and fade.
Where else might we look for an indicator of success? Well, there’s the whole question of effectiveness. You know, those metrics on the brief that you had to pretend were really important to you in the pitch. Did your project deliver on brand uplift? Did it lead to a sea change in consumer behaviour, smashing the 5% year on year sales growth target? Does the quant and qual research suggest an overall yadda, yadda, yadda … Look, I know this stuff does matter - it’s the reason why you’ve been given the budget to make the project in the first place - but I don’t believe this is the kind of success that motivates most creatives. Effectiveness and numbers, while important, are unlikely ever to provide you with a cosy glow as you look back fondly on your career.
It seems to me that there are two far more accurate ways of defining creative success than baubles and spreadsheets. The first concerns the projects themselves; the second the way they were made.
A really good test for the worth of your work is to ask yourself whether the world is better for you having brought it into being. Even just a tiny bit. Most advertising is disposable, each execution a lazy simulacrum of what has gone before. Like a loudmouth bore, it demands attention and gives nothing in return – which is, incidentally, why increasingly large numbers of people now pay to avoid it. Great work, successful work, has some kind of intrinsic value beyond a hollow marketing message. It makes you smile, or think, or see the world differently. There’s that lovely quote from Maya Angelou – “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” And if you can make people feel something positive and elevate them, just for a moment, out of the drudgery of everyday life, then you have achieved something.
Back when I was working as a creative director I used ‘the watch again test’. When I was evaluating an idea on paper I would project into the future and imagine an audience seeing the project more than once. Would they be happy to see it for the second, third, or even the tenth time? If the answer was yes then I knew we had something successful on our hands.
Beyond the work itself there is the way it’s made. It’s a rare commercial creative endeavour that is produced in isolation. Almost always it is the product of a collective of individuals coming together – and if you are the creative leader of that collective you have a big say in how the experience is for everyone. Whether your project will precipitate a paradigm shift in your medium is unknown, but the amount of enjoyment your team have making it is very much in your hands. We’ve all worked on those awful backbiting jobs, where trust was absent, everyone’s stature was diminished and the team became less than the sum of its parts. And then there is the inverse … those joyful experiences where mutual respect and kindness promote a surge of creative confidence. The long late nights are made meaningful by the pure pleasure of shared endeavour. This kind of success will linger much longer in the memory than whether the project went on to win awards or smash the objectives in the brief.
So is creative success simply about creating work of value and having fun making it? Well, yes, undoubtedly. But I‘m not sure we can ever really understand the true nature of success without considering failure.
In my early thirties the agency I’d founded was winning awards. We were growing quickly. We had a long list of clients who wanted to work with us. I bought a house in the country. I had lunch at Petrus. I ordered my wine from Berry Brothers & Rudd. I was, outwardly, a success. Ten years later it was all gone. I was living with my in laws, my bank account was empty and my wife and I would take solace in a very occasional bottle of Aldi merlot. I had failed. Or at least that’s how it felt at the time.
And yet, it was this experience, though hugely painful, that encouraged me to recalibrate my life. Beginning again from nothing was a far greater test of me as a human being than running a successful agency had ever been. I was forced to focus on the things that were genuinely important. I had the chance now to concentrate my energy not just on the things that I could do best, but on the things that mattered to me most. And my career shifted. From building brands to helping people build creative confidence.
Success is important. And we should, if we can, avoid being seduced by the conventional definitions of our industry and look for ones that have more meaning. But maybe failure is even more important still. It’s not whether we find success but how we cope with failure that will in the end define us. To paraphrase Jerry, maybe failure is the new success.
This article first appeared in Creative Review magazine.