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creative

Good vs. right.

In the rush to create, the pressure often mounts to meet a deadline (right) and follow all the rules and guidelines (right.)  That is not the same thing as creating something wonderful or effective (good.)  Don’t lose the path toward something wonderful in the rush and pressure to be right and on time.  Don’t let all the voices around you convince or coerce you into work that meets all the criteria for rightness but fails to be something good, something you and your clients are all proud of.

In the end, you can beg forgiveness for being late or over budget or off the rules a bit.  But you’ll have no good response for work that’s not good, no matter how right you were, how on budget you were, or on time it was.

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David Fowler created long-running advertising campaigns for Motel 6 ("We'll leave the light on for you"), BP ("Beyond Petroleum"), Fanta ("Wanta Fanta"), Claritin ("Claritin Clear") and many others. His forty-year creative career included twenty years at Ogilvy & Mather in New York, as well as stints at Goodby, Silverstein in San Francisco, Ammirati & Puris in New York and The Richards Group in Dallas.