Emma Barnett is a Creative Director on Nike at Wieden+Kennedy Portland. She started as a designer at W+K and has spent most of her career there. Her work includes Nike’s Dream Crazier, the LeBron return-to-Cleveland film Together, the Jordan Unbannable film, and Kobe’s tribute Be Better.

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We sat down with Emma at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, the same building where she has spent almost her whole career and made the work she is known for. We covered a lot of ground, trying to get at how Emma actually works, both as a creative and as a creative director.

Emma held nothing back, and the conversation went deep. Below are a few of the highlights. The full thing goes well beyond them, on the site as a single 34-minute breakdown.

As always, the clips above are only a slice of what we talked about. You can check out the whole conversation on METHOD’s site. The entire breakdown has Emma talking about the following topics:

• When the Brief Sounds Like a Headline
• On Learning How to Handle Anxiety
• Simple Enough to Seem Obvious
• Say It in One Sentence or Start Over
• Less Precious More Creative
• The Anxiety Changes but Never Leaves
• Maybe It Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect
• See What It Could Become Not What It Is
• Good Clients in a Way Are Good CDS
• Trust Comes from the Work You Do Together
• The Airport Test for Hiring
• Present Like You’re Talking to a Friend
• Happy Creatives Will Give You More Ideas

Related Breakdowns

If you liked what you heard from Emma, you will probably like some of the other conversations in the METHOD® archive. Here are a few clips from other breakdowns that expand on some of the threads Emma touched.

BIANCA GUIMARÃES (Partner / ECD at Mischief)

Emma likes briefs that sound almost dumb. Bianca Guimarães, who runs Mischief in New York, goes in a similar direction. She is always hunting for briefs that offer a simple one-liner she can start working from.

LEO & FELIPE (Founders / CDs at PORTO ROCHA)

When Emma hires, she looks past the portfolio for the human holding it. Felipe and Leo, who founded Porto Rocha, hire on much the same instinct: critical thinking, vibe, and realness over a perfect book.

About METHOD®

The whole point of METHOD is to bring clarity on how great creative work is actually made. We hope you walk away with at least one thing you can put to work in your own method.

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Andy Pearson is the VP of Creative at Liquid Death, the canned water brand that changed the game on how a brand gets built, breaking nearly every best practice the industry holds sacred and doing the things most people would call the wrong move. Before Liquid Death, he spent years at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in the agency’s golden era.

Today he leads the in-house team behind award-winning work like the e.l.f. Corpse Paint collab, the Tony Hawk blood skateboards, the Travis Barker Enema of the State kit, and the public firing of The Deep.

We sat down with Andy for almost three hours and covered a lot of ground, trying to get at how he and his team keep making work that looks nothing like advertising. We got into how he works, both as a creative and as the person making the calls and leading the team.

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Andy gave us the unfiltered version (with bits like how hating Nike forged his creative style) and we went deep. Below are a few of the highlights. The full thing goes well beyond them, on the site as a single 52-minute breakdown with only the best moments of our conversation.

Like always, the clips here are just a piece of the whole conversation. The full thing lives on METHOD’s site. In the complete breakdown, Andy also gets into:

• Break the Pressure Into Little Pieces

• When You’re Insecure, Fake It Until You Make It

• Fake Your Way Into Being Decisive

• Make the Best Thing Someone Sees That Day

• A Space With Zero Rules, but All Self-Constraints

• Think About How the Audience Will Receive the Idea

• Think of a Sticky Name for Your Idea

• Make Something People Would Pay to Watch

• On Being on the Brand Side

• It’s Not Always Comfortable, but Be Unreasonable

• Make the Team Own the Work

• At Liquid Death, Craft Is Creating Room for Fun

• Agencies Should Operate More Like Comedians

• On Helping the Team Do Their Best Work

• Liquid Death’s Not So Secret Formula

• Just Make the Brand Act Like a Real Person

• The Magic Comes From Making Stuff

• On the Beauty of Working With the Same Team

• Find the Type of Work You Want to Make

Related Breakdowns

If you found Andy’s thinking inspiring, you will probably like some of the other conversations in the METHOD archive. Here are a few clips from other breakdowns that pull on some of the same threads Andy did.

BIANCA GUIMARÃES (Partner / ECD at Mischief)

Andy makes the most irrefutable case he can for the dumbest idea in the room. Bianca Guimarães, who runs Mischief in New York, works from the same nerve — she leads with confidence even when the idea feels risky, because that conviction is what gets it made.

KEVIN MULROY (Partner / ECD at Mischief)

Andy would rather fail big than ship something okay. Kevin Mulroy, also at Mischief, treats failure as part of the job, not the thing to dodge. It is the only way to make work anyone bothers to talk about.

About METHOD®

The whole point of METHOD is to bring clarity on how great creative work is actually made. We hope you walk away with at least one thing you can put to work in your own method.

Also, a breakdown like this is just the start. It gets better the more people pull it apart and talk it through. So if a line stuck, or you see it differently, drop a comment. Pass it on to a creative who would want to think it through with you.

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Timestamps

Here’s what we explore in this episode:

00:00 Intro
00:34 What Actually Makes a Brief Good
02:28 The Anatomy of a Good Brief
03:38 On Going Wide Once Direction Is Set
04:50 Confidence Is Built Through Trial and Error
07:01 Questions That Guide the Creative Process
09:55 Porto Rocha's Point of View on Typography
12:44 Porto Rocha's Point of View on Type Pairing
15:53 Simplicity Is the Most Valuable Thing
16:48 Porto Rocha's Point of View on Motion Design
19:56 Porto Rocha's Point of View on Color
21:34 Making Color Systems That Don't Get Old
23:40 Sometimes the Right Move Is Removing Color
25:16 Porto Rocha's Point of View on Photography
27:20 Porto Rocha's Style Is Not Having a Style
29:38 The Trap of Being Hired for Your Style
30:35 Competition Is Healthy When It Serves the Work
31:56 What It Takes to Be a Good Creative Director
37:19 The Trap of Focusing Only on the Show
38:02 The Trap of Playing It Safe
38:43 Hire for Critical Thinking, Vibe and Realness
40:43 Key Questions to Ask During Job Interviews
42:19 When Designers Own the Design Studio
43:38 Build Demand Before Opening the Studio
46:11 Outro

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NOW HIRING

PORTO ROCHA happens to be hiring right now. If you love their work and their method resonates, this might be your moment. Open positions:

Senior Motion Designer
Senior Brand Designer
Senior Interactive Designer
Senior Project Manager
Senior Strategist
Mid-Senior PR & Engagement Manager

Porto Rocha’s Selected Work

Nike Run

PAC NYC

Sundance Festival

W Hotel

Google Gemini

Why a Paywall?

Imagine hiring a film crew to interview the world’s best creatives and distill exactly how they work. That would be incredible. It would also cost a fortune. Unless you split the bill with a bunch of other people at $12/month. That’s METHOD®: 100% member-funded, every dollar goes back into more interviews. Support the vision and unlock full access.

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Transcript

Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:40 A Good Brief Is Like a Cliff
02:08 Crystillize the Problem Before Chasing Ideas
02:23 Do Just 20% More Than What Is Expected
03:05 Observe People to Learn What Moves Them
06:06 Find the Highest Manifestation of Your Point
08:48 Viral Doesn’t Simply Happen
09:40 In PR You Only Got One Shot Keep It Simple
11:11 A Great Case Study Is a Great Story
18:33 What Makes a Good Case Study
20:15 The Basic Blueprint for a Great Case Study
22:37 A Catchy Name Is an Assignment on Its Own
23:40 On Knowing When an Idea Is Ready
25:03 Embrace Your Imperfections as a Presenter
28:13 The Deck’s Craft Is as Important as Its Content
30:10 The Secret to Sell Work Is to Not Sell It at All
33:05 Once You Build Trust You Don’t Even Need D...
34:47 The Idea That We Do Risky Stuff Is Plainly Wr...
35:26 Gabriel’s Take on Feedback in Creative Revie...
38:41 Don’t Just Point Holes Give Clear Direction
39:44 Example of How Gabriel Gives Direction
41:26 If the Teams Aren’t Delivering Let Them Fail
42:51 Gabriel’s Take on Hiring Talent
45:20 What Gabriel Looks for When Hiring
46:04 As a Leader Be Ready to Let Go of Control
47:28 Dealing With Insecurity as a Creative Leader
49:14 Two Practical Techniques to Handle Pressure
50:47 When Shit Hits the Fan, Keep Calm and Listen
53:00 Set Your Agenda With Clients From the Get-Go
54:18 Pizza for Those Who Want Pizza
56:37 Help Your Client Have a Larger Swimming P...
57:27 Being Proactive Will Help You Stand Out
59:06 Outro

Selected Work

If you’re not familiar with Gabriel’s work, here are a few standout pieces from his book:

Related Episodes

If you like this episode, you might also like these ones:

Why a Paywall?

Imagine you could hire a film crew to interview the world’s best creatives, distill how they tackle their work, and bring you the most useful takeaways. Stuff like: how to get unstuck, sell more ideas, sharpen your craft, manage clients, level up your CD game, and avoid critical mistakes. Hiring that crew would be awesome. And expensive. Unless you find a bunch of other people willing to chip in $12/month and fund the project together. Well, that’s what’s happening here. METHOD® is 100% funded by members, and every dollar goes back into making more interviews. Support the community and unlock full access.

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Transcript

Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.

Read more

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:37 Even When in Doubt, Lead with Confidence
04:10 The Most Important Piece in Every Brief
05:30 Don’t Filter Yourself in the Beginning
06:26 Try Everything Before You Choose Anything
08:15 Let the Project Lead the Style
09:40 Tweaking the Strategy Can Unlock the Ideas
13:22 If You Can’t Say the Idea in One Line, Start Over
14:41 Make a Question List You Use on Every Brief
15:41 When You Get Stuck Is When You Keep Going
17:11 Loop in a PR Partner Early in the Process
19:05 PR Needs to Be Orchestrated
21:38 Great Names Do Half of the Selling
22:40 The Most Important Thing to Sell an Idea
26:01 Focus the Pitch on What Clients Care About
28:33 Filming Yourself Goes a Long Way
30:07 How to Save an Idea Clients Are Dismissing
31:40 The Fastest Way to Earn Client Trust
35:13 Find Clients with Appetite for Responsible Risk
36:14 As a CD Learn to Get Out of the Way
37:44 Seeking Approval Won’t Make You a Good Creative Director
38:44 Don’t Focus the Creative Review on What’s Wrong
39:59 Trust Your Team and Let Them Own the Project
40:58 When the Work Is Not There, Step In
42:13 Bianca’s Way to Craft a Case Study
44:26 Build the Case as You Build the Work
45:27 Letting Go of Control as You Grow
47:28 Outro

Why a Paywall?

Imagine you could hire a film crew to interview the world’s best creatives, distill how they tackle their work, and bring you the most useful takeaways. Stuff like: how to get unstuck, sell more ideas, sharpen your craft, manage clients, level up your CD game, and avoid critical mistakes. Hiring that crew would be awesome. And expensive. Unless you find a bunch of other people willing to chip in $12/month and fund the project together. Well, that’s what’s happening here. METHOD® is 100% funded by members, and every dollar goes back into making more interviews. Support the community and unlock full access.

Subscribe now

Selected Work

If you’re not familiar with Bianca’s work, here are a few standout pieces from her book:

Related Episodes

If you like this episode, you might also like these ones:

Transcript

Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.

Even When In Doubt, Lead With Confidence

BIANCA GUIMARÃES: It’s like I think no matter how much confident I act, I still feel like I’m not confident for some reason. I remember being in jury rooms where after the jury, someone pulled me aside and was like, “Oh, you spoke so well.” I was so impressed by your take on that. And I’m like, I will talk in therapy about I can’t articulate myself well.

I know this is also maybe it’s because something that I felt for 20 years of my life, and it kind of came from not from me being a professional. So it was always me having a hard time expressing myself in general. I think I did get much better and maybe I just... And sure, I can recognize sometimes. I can get out of an interview and be like, “Oh, okay. That was good.” Or I’d be like, “Oh, I mumbled a lot.” I recognize that, but I still would have never described me as a confident person. And I think that it’s funny that it might just be something where I worked really hard on it, and I get better. But I think it’s the most important thing is that you make people feel your confidence in my position. Because sometimes people just want a point of view in regardless of is it the right answer or not. You just kind of like knowing this is what we have to do. It’s very important and people need to feel that. And that’s going to make it... It will make things, I think, much easier for everybody. Obviously, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” And I’ve done that before. I’ll be like, “I don’t know yet. Let’s think about it. See, Marani, let me run it by someone.” But I remember also having...

There was a friend of mine who I used to work with, and he was the best, the most confident person. And he would come to you and tell you an idea, and he would be like, “Yes, let me tell you this.” And you’re like, “Wow, that’s great. Yes, I love it. That’s amazing.” And then I would tell someone else, I’d be like, “It’s not that great of an idea, but he made it sound amazing.” And I think there’s something about it. As you’re presenting your idea to the client, you want to be confident. You want them to see that you believe in it. So maybe it’s because I know the importance of it. I also become very critical myself, but I recognize that I’ve become much better. And I show more confidence than I think.

The Most Important Piece In Every Brief

BIANCA: I think it would be sort of like the one-liner that you put on top of your page that you keep looking back to when you’re brainstorming. That’s like, “This is what I need to tell people.” It’s almost the takeaway in a way, but in a very simple way. So it’s exactly what I’m trying to say. So in the Sandy Hook case, it was we should stop teaching people how to survive shootings. We should be showing how to prevent.

I guess that case, that was the callback to school thing. So that maybe wasn’t the best example. But I think the main takeaway in a very clear way, in a way that it felt to me like I could already go off. During the brief, I would already be thinking about ideas or just ways in. Or just like, I feel excited to go and create the

going to my brainstorming process. And probably throughout the brief, I was like, “I don’t, my wheels are not turning. I don’t feel like I don’t get nothing. And I’m talking about like, you know, this vacuum cleaner is going to make your days brighter. I’m like, what are we doing?”

So I think it was that one line that it would be clear, but also that would get me to already see how I can have like a bunch of ideas out of it.

Don’t filter yourself in the beginning

It’s better to not filter yourself too much in the beginning. Just kind of like let things come and like write down. And as you kind of like go down in the document, like it gets, you see it’s going, getting deeper and deeper and getting better. Probably like some of the beginning stuff, you’re not even going to like go back to. And just kind of like a look, I’d be like, yeah, there was nothing. That’s not to say that you can’t come up with like a great idea right away. That’s fine.

But I, yeah, to me, it’s more just write down and then you figure out later. But I don’t think I am the person that will like think visually first either, which is funny because I’m an art director. I would think more about the concept and then I would think about, okay, how can we bring it to life visually? Sometimes here and there, there will be something that will come up. But I wouldn’t, I don’t think I’m the most sort of like, I think about visuals and then an idea come from it.

Try Everything Before You Choose Anything

BIANCA: My approach to art direction has always been very much that like, I need to try everything, which is good and bad.

But I’m almost like, I’m never done and I’m always doing different versions. So like the amount of versions that I always did of everything was kind of crazy. And that’s the way like I would experiment with kind of like color and style and like the, you know, if I’m using photography, it’s just typography and type. And just like if it’s type, what are the different ways? No way that’s not like I see now it’s not productive. I think like you don’t have to do that. Probably when I was also younger, I was like, you know, in the beginning of probably like my first year and a half in the US, it was more me helping people craft things. And so I had more time to experiment and like, until I started being able to contribute and understand what’s an idea and how to, you know, be able to add value there as well. But I just think for me, it was part of maybe my mentality also of like going down all the like rabbit holes and like testing all the things and thinking about all the outcomes, all the possible outcomes so I could like be in control of them. That’s that. Like when I’m looking for an image in like a site, I have to go into the very last page to make sure that nothing was better than the one I found before.

And so for me, it was always about like experimenting and trying different things and trying maybe the opposite of like what I thought was even right for that idea.

And just getting to just basically kind of like look with fresh eyes in the morning and just reevaluate and then keep going. So there’s just, it feels like a lot of experimenting.

Let the Project Lead the Style

I think there are a lot of creatives that have like their own styles and sort of like, oh, that person is like really great at that thing or that person like, oh, I can’t see this is a XYZ type of spot or a type of like, oh, that was like, feels so up like someone like that person’s alley. And I’ve always tried mostly because generally I was interested in like different things to not have like one specific thing that I’m like kind of this is my formula, this is my style, this is my thing. And I like when people look at my portfolio or before, you know, and it was like, oh, I feel like it’s just kind of like tonal, like tonal shifts every project I click. I’m like, I’m crying, I’m laughing. I’m like, whoa, I did not see that coming. I’m like, I’m crying, I’m laughing. I’m like, whoa, I did not see that coming. I’m like, and I just lie and this is so silly, so stupid, so like whatever it is, I like that it feels unexpected in terms of it doesn’t feel like the same formula. So for my own creative process, I mostly try to just kind of like have knowledge of different things that I can tap into, like different technology, different like, whatever, like mediums just keep it different than what I’ve done before. Because I think for me, it’s really important to not be sort of like one style or one kind of like specific way.

Tweaking The Strategy Can Unlock The Ideas

BIANCA: I was part of the team running Sandy Hook, so I had a partner, Peter O’S something was great, and he and I ran a Sandy Hook account. Every year we would do a PSA for their anniversary, which was December, which was when the shooting happened. So I remember that year, like, okay, we’re getting close to the anniversary again. And the brief, we would brief kind of like middle of the year because it was always like, you know, we needed enough time to get it right and to get it produced. No, it’s like nonprofit, not pro bono itself. And so what happened that time, we sat together with the planner and because the brief was always a little the same, it was kind of like, how can we tell people that school shootings are preventable when you know the signs?

We’re like, all right, how can we like change the brief a little or add something or like, what do we do different so we’re not briefing the same or maybe it’s going to continue being the same? And in the room with the strategist and me and Peter, we all started talking about kind of like, what the landscape was. And what we noticed that like a huge difference was that school shootings were changing how now like the school curriculum worked because now they were adding classes that you like just times within those kids schedules that you would like learn shooting drills. So people were teaching kids about shootings. And the fact that now there’s like something in culture that like change about this like the subject that we talk about every year, we’re like, we can’t ignore the fact that now back to school is going to be different. Kids are going to be also be prepared to like learning how to survive shootings to like learn the shooting drills and all of that. So strategically, we’re like, instead of doing a PSA at the end of the year in December, let’s do one in back to school. And let’s kind of like get ahead and show that instead of being teaching kids how to survive shootings, we should be preventing them.

And that was all the brief. And that was all like I was in a room talking about like strategy before we put that into the creative machine to actually get to where we got. And I think just sort of like learning the power of a good brief and how the strategically, when you’re asking the right questions, when you’re like, are we solving the right problem type thing? Are we solving the problem of like school shootings by doing a PSA in December? And like kind of communicating what we need to communicate? No, like now we need to shift things and be communicating something different at a different time. And yeah, that just kind of started to get me even closer to strategy and recognize how important it is before we get the brief.

If You Can’t Say The Idea In One Line, Start Over

BIANCA: You know, if you can’t say the idea in like one sentence, it’s like probably not a great idea. And if you are at a point where you feel like you have an idea that’s very convoluted or for some reason it feels like it’s more complicated than it has to be, or if you can’t say it in one sentence, I think you probably like want to start over or just think about how to simplify it. I think a lot of the times that’s on the brief and on the client of like kind of committing to one single thought. Like you can’t communicate multiple things. You know, strategist sacrifice. So you need to pick the one maybe, you know, I usually think is like the one thing we’re communicating here. I’m sure you can tackle like maybe another thing is like all the point that’s important that you could, but like there needs to be one focus. So I try to like go and have a conversation with the client, the strategist, like what’s the one thing? What’s that one clear message that we need to be like talking about? And then just focus on thinking about how to deliver that simple one thought without thinking about anything else that usually helps me keep it simple and contained in a good way.

Make a Question List You Use on Every Brief

I love the idea of asking questions kind of like, you know, like asking better questions. So for example, what’s the most wrong thing you can do here? What if we use the components that the opponents wait against them on this thing?

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:46 Hal’s Process as a Creative
01:59 Ideas Never Come Up in the Office
03:26 Step Outside the Ad Bubble
05:45 Most Fucked, Most Creative
06:43 Make It Before You Make It
07:18 Make Sure You Land a Strong Ending
08:21 Taglines Must Earn the Final Frame
09:30 Craft Is When the Combined Pieces Lift the Work
12:37 Help Others See What You See
15:05 In the End It’s All Feel
16:12 The Skills That Matter at Each Career Stage
17:14 Adjust Your Leadership Style to the Teams
20:14 Don’t Be Just Judge and Jury, Be a Partner
21:06 Take the Brief for a Test-Drive
25:32 Examples Can Help Show What You Want
28:40 This Is Yours, and We’ll Make It Great
29:09 You Sell Better When You Know It Cold
32:15 Take Clients to Film School
35:31 Selling Work Is About Trust
36:30 Behind Every Great Work Is a Great Client
38:27 Jim Riswold’s 10% Rule on Client Feedback
40:03 Lessons from Dan Wyden’s Leadership Style
41:43 The Biggest Trap for Every Creative
43:01 Outro

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Why a Paywall?

Imagine you could hire a film crew to interview the world’s best creatives, distill how they tackle their work, and bring you the most useful takeaways. Stuff like: how to get unstuck, sell more ideas, sharpen your craft, manage clients, level up your CD game, and avoid critical mistakes. Hiring that crew would be awesome. And expensive. Unless you get a bunch of creatives to chip in $12/month and fund the venture together. That’s what’s happening here. METHOD® is 100% funded by members, and every dollar goes back into making more interviews. Join the community, support the vision, and unlock full access.

Hal’s Selected Work

If you’re not familiar with Hal’s work, here are a few standout pieces from his book:

Subscribe now

Related Episodes

If you like this episode, you might also like:

Transcript

Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.

Hal’s Process Is A Creative

HAL CURTIS: My process was a combination of having three or four different ways to think conceptually about a brief, and then having ways of executing in print or television, whether that’s music or it’s a way of shooting something or it’s the kind of layout. Having some things I’ve wanted to do that I haven’t had an opportunity to do yet, maybe that’s working with an illustrator that I admire that I want to work with, or shooting a spot in a certain way that I haven’t done yet, or working in animation in a way I haven’t done yet. All these things are in your head, and you have this brief, and you kind of pull that, pull that, and this, and can I put something together that I’m excited about? That’s the only thing I’ve ever used as a guide to what I...it’s like, “Do I want to go make it?”

Ideas Never Come Up In The Office

HAL: First of all, I’ve never had an idea here at the agency, ever. My ideas always happened somewhere else. If I was working on a campaign, and I knew I had to like in three days, four days, present work to a creative director, I gave myself little periods of time in the morning, maybe at lunch, maybe in the evening with a glass of wine or something or at a bar, or I just said, “Okay, I’m going to see if anything happens.” I would just kind of go through my Rolodex of stuff, and, “Oh, I saw that book at Powell’s,” or it’s like that weird plastic flower thing at the hardware store. It’s like, “Could I do something with a flower?” That illustrator that I worked with had...and you just start connecting things, and most of the time it sucks. I would do that 10, 15 minutes, and then just stop. If it happened, great. If it didn’t, great. Then try again at another time. I generally found that my best ideas kind of happened fast. They were kind of the first things I thought of, but I enjoyed, and I still do, I enjoy conceptual thinking.

Step Outside the Ad Bubble

HAL: I think it’s important for your conceptual health to be very careful about being too into advertising. I think it’s good to know what work is out there and what work is excellent, and knowing what’s in the award show books is a good thing so that you know what’s been done, you know what hasn’t been done. Your taste level in advertising is tightened and honed, but you have to be careful about that. You have to be careful about that being the only thing that informs your work, because then your work’s going to be derivative. It’s much, much better to get away from advertising and just lead an interesting life and fill your brain with things that have nothing to do with advertising.

There’s a hardware store like a mile from here that I’ve been to many times, because I like just wandering around and looking at little coffee mugs and weird bolts and paint swatches and doormats and scissors and just odd things that have nothing to do with advertising. Or going over to Powell’s and just looking at books, you know, go see a film. Go to the zoo, you know, and when you’re wandering around and you have these things, it’s interesting how suddenly you have this brief and you have all this stuff. I’ve got these ways I want to shoot and execute an ad someday. I’ve got conceptual ways of thinking about solving an ad, putting two things together that don’t go together, doing just a really literate long copy ad, doing a piece of film with just music and graphic cool visuals, doing something that’s animation, you know, doing a montage that has an emotion. And then you’re thinking about hammers and it’s weird how it’ll just come together.

Most Fucked, Most Creative

HAL: had a great saying and I wanted to say this because you always said you’re most creative when you’re the most fucked. And I always thought about that and I think it’s true. All of us in the industry can think of those moments, whether something got killed or you forgot about a presentation or whatever it is. You need idea now, you know, and I can remember Chuck and I go into lunch one afternoon needing an idea that was going to be presented at two and you just have to think of it. There’s a lot of examples like that, but there’s something about being fucked that focuses you and you’re able to access that part of your brain that just solves it. It’s interesting to me.

Make It Before You Make It

HAL: Make it before you make it is what I have always told teams, you know, it’ll be better. Struggle with all the, you know, how can we be innovative and how can we, you know, do it differently, struggle with all of that in script form and in blocking form and in previsualization so that when you start interacting with production companies and producers and directors, that’s about execution. The blueprint, you already have it. Now we’re building the house and you’ll get closer to something that you’re happy with.

Make Sure You Land A Strong Ending

HAL: The ending of a commercial to me is everything. It’s so important. You can do a lot of things wrong in the beginning or, you know, not maybe they could have been better if you nail that ending. And the ending was always very, very important to me. When Just Do It came up or when the contour bottle, you know, started the, how the last line is read or heard, but the music was doing it relative to the thoughts that are coming up and orchestrating that ending was, it should give you that, “Mmm, boy, that’s nice.”

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:19 Briefs Should Talk to Humans
04:50 Good Briefs Begin With What’s Real
05:38 Call the Bullshit
06:51 On The Strategist’s Job
08:38 Channel Your Inner Detective
10:39 No bullshit Filter
13:01 Ed’s Approach to Volume
14:37 Matt’s Approach to Volume
15:52 Do It For Yourself
19:51 The Complacency Trap
21:11 Matt’s Take on Craft
22:49 The Idea Is the North Star
23:40 Make Manifestos Sound Human
26:45 On Writing Nike “Possibilities”
29:08 When The Script Needs a Rhino
31:08 On Nike “Unlimited”
34:36 On Writing Modular Spots
36:03 On Writing Endings
37:30 Writing the Ending of Nike “Possibilities”
38:59 On Nike “Puppets”
43:18 On Writing Nike “Puppets”
49:36 Learning to Write Dialogue
55:26 How Much Does The Director Care?
58:57 Protect the Core Idea
59:41 Caring Versus Being Annoying
1:01:10 Ed’s Take on Presenting Work
1:13:18 Make the Deck Human
1:14:12 On Fisher Price “Everything Is a Toy”
1:17:50 Ed & Matt on Creative Direction
1:22:27 Help With Perspective
1:24:26 Look for the Right Energy

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Ed and Matt Selected Work

See below a few standout pieces from their books:

Transcript

Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.

Briefs Should Talk to Humans

ED: Sometimes you’ll get a brief and you can smell it. It’s like, this don’t smell right. This don’t smell like the real deal. This feels fake as a $3 bill. So then I gotta go ask questions. I gotta go sniff out what’s real. I gotta go talk to people. I gotta go talk to what used to be the account person. I gotta go talk to whoever’s got the real answers for me.

And that’s when I know what’s really going on. Sometimes the briefs get way too sanitized for their creatives. So they strip out all of the meat and try to simplify it, dumb it down so the creatives don’t get lost in the sauce. Fair enough.

You don’t wanna confuse the creatives, so they stay focused. But in the process, sometimes you lose what the clients are really looking for. And if you don’t know what the client really wants, and then you’re just off kind of coming up with your favorite creative thing to do, then you’re gonna hit a brick wall every time. No matter how much the CDs say, “I love this idea, this is great.”

“Let’s put some meat on these bones and show it to the client.” That all feels good until you get into that client meeting and they all look at you like, what the fuck is this? What is this?

I’ve had that happen a number of times where the CDs have been like, great, this is great. Oh yeah, they’re gonna love this. They don’t love it. They didn’t love it at all. In fact, they were quite upset. So I don’t know, I think it comes with some time and some experience where you just start to smell out something that doesn’t feel right. And I think it just becomes kind of a little more intuition, a little gut.

MATT: And more conversations. Definitely. I’ll do that with you, where we will make a tour around to the different departments and be like, what do you think’s going on with this? What is this? Let’s have some conversations. What do you think about this product or this idea or this strategy and just get some human responses from people?

Because often on the page, it’s not human. It’s just the data and some strategy set up. But once you start having conversations, even with the strategist who wrote the brief, just be like, no, let’s dig a little deeper. What do you think about this? Don’t tell the strategist.

ED: It’s like, it’s feast or famine, I think. Sorry to cut you off, but I’m really passionate about this. It’s feast or famine with strategists. You can get a one page brief, which I prefer, but there’s rarely enough information in there, or you can get a 20 page deck, where it’s everything but what you want. Everything but.

Anyway, sorry, yeah. How do you know when you’re ready to work? When you have some answers, when you know what you’re really doing. I’ve had briefs where it’s like, oh, this is clear as day. But those are rare. Those are rare.

It’s usually, like Matthew said, you get a brief, and then you need to go and hunt down the humanity in the brief. And whoever you need to go to for that, you do. In some circumstances, quiet is kept. You can talk to the client, if you know how to get to them, if you know where they live, where they get coffee, or where they shop.

Good Briefs Begin with What’s Real

ED: A good brief, I think one of the most important things is clarity, knowing exactly what’s expected of you. And honestly, some truth in humanity. I think a lot of briefs are missing, like truth, and humanity, and it does sometimes start to feel pretty analytical, especially nowadays when so many people are testing work, so many clients know exactly the numbers that they need to hit and achieve, and so that kind of bleeds into the brief.

And that’s okay, but trying to work to the analytics makes the creative stiff.

Call the Bullshit

ED: When I see a brief, I’m usually, I’m really hard on briefs. I’m really hard on briefs, because you can’t get going if you don’t have the foundation. If it’s not clear, and if it doesn’t help to jumpstart my thinking, because there’s something there that’s interesting to think about, then I don’t know, your foundation is just faulty.

MATT: I’ve never seen somebody argue with strategists or within you. Anytime a strategist is presenting us a brief, I’m usually just bracing myself for the conversation where Edward says, “This is bullshit, what is this? I disagree completely.” And it’s cool, because then it’ll sort of generate, I mean, again, I think we’re going for the humanity and trying to figure out what’s really going on, but I’m more the type who will just take it and go think about it, which is good to have you alongside me, because you’re like, “No, hold on. This is false.”

ED: Well, to be fair, I think everything’s bullshit and everything’s false.

On the Strategist’s Job

ED: I think that strategists, the best strategists are able to lay out an argument for what the client wants. And they need to be able to translate a very analytical, static need that the client has and lay out an argument for the creative teams about how you can tackle that in an interesting way.

They’re kind of like advertising lawyers in a sense, where they need to be really good at analyzing a lot of information and then be able to say it to them, and then be able to say it to a specific group of people in a way that they can absorb it and do something with it. And that’s a really hard job. I don’t envy any strategists, and I honestly think that strategists have to be brilliant. They do, they have to be brilliant. Like, they are kind of the engine of an agency, like especially a big one.

Because you couldn’t just turn a creative team loose with what a client wants, chaos, instantly. And that’s just what happens in a fast-paced environment. Like the strategists don’t get enough time. They don’t get enough information. They have to go dig, they have to go ask questions. Meanwhile, the creative teams are like, where’s the brief?

This thing needs to be done in a month? Okay, now it needs to be done in three weeks? Oh shit, now it needs to be done in two weeks. And the strategists are like, I’m trying. I’m trying here. I’m trying to pull something together for you. What they go through in the background is probably a lot more hellish than any creative team understands.

Channel Your Inner Detective

MATT: When I start working on an assignment, when I’m ready to go, I do a lot of research. Maybe this is not a creative thing to do, but I love learning about a client’s business and interviews they’ve done, things they’ve said, how the business is doing, what their competitors are doing, just to kind of try to understand the world.

It’s really, and also like what customers are saying, what people are saying in the YouTube comments. Like I’m fascinated by like the context of everything because then I started to form an opinion about the client or their business. And that opinion ends up being like a point of view that turns into a campaign. Yeah, I love, is that the process you’re talking about?

ED: That’s exactly your process. It’s fascinating.

MATT: Why is that fascinating?

ED: Because it’s opposite of what I do. And I’ve never once researched a client or their business. So I’ve never looked it up. Like, and it sounds like such a smart way to get into it.

And I’m always fascinated because, well, within the first hour, Matthew will have sent me 24 articles and TikTok links and he was like, oh yeah, the CEO just retired. And now there’s a new CEO. Like, we just started, how do you know this already? He’s like, here’s their address. They’re getting married next week. I’m like, you’re an insane person. He knows everything about the client in hours, in hours. He is an undercover strategist.

MATT: That is a weird way to start your first 24 hours on an assignment. That’s amazing.

I do like the way that it balances each other though. Cause then I can kind of feed you a little bit and you can be like, yeah, that’s not important. I had this strong reaction to this brief and this is how I feel. And I will say, that’s perfect because I found YouTube comments. You know, people on the YouTube comments feel the same way.

Develop a No Bullshit Filter

ED: When I first started on Nike, they were like, we’re coming out with the hyper dunk. People are gonna love it. It’s a new basketball shoe. It’s called the hyper dunk. And I swear, man, I almost got fired on my first day because I said, man, that’s an ugly shoe. That’s you ugly as hell.

And I’m from the inner city. I can guarantee you that nobody cares about this. And they were all looking at each other like, we might’ve hired the wrong guy. We might’ve fucked up here.

And it’s always like, it’s always how I take it. It’s always like, I don’t either, I think it’s awesome and true or I think you’re bullshitting people. And that’s the ad I’m gonna write. That, hey, guess what? You know how much you love this shoe? And then somebody on him is like, we don’t love that shoe. We ain’t never heard of that shoe. I don’t know what shoe we want. I wrote that ad for Nike. I really did. And it never got made. Good for them.

But I just felt like if you’re going to have like an honest, authentic conversation with people, be honest and authentic with them. Don’t try to like pull the wool over their eyes or like try to snow job people into believing something they don’t.

This power that we have, this industry that we’re in, it’s really powerful. We can sway public opinion about things in ways that people don’t even know that their opinion is being swayed just by the amount of money that people throw at our ideas. I’d rather not be slimy about it if possible.

And if you can be really honest with what people are going to think and what people are really thinking and put a spin on that instead of trying to push them to thinking something that they didn’t think was true, that’s a more interesting way to go about it.

It’s like, we know you don’t like Cherry, but we think you might like this version. We know that historically, Cherry hasn’t sold very well for us, but that’s okay. We got a new one coming for you and you might like it. Just give it a shot, please. That’s more fun than, I don’t know. I think advertising can get really slimy really quickly if you’re just trying to solve the brief and give them exactly what they’re asking for.

Ed’s Take on Creating Volume of Ideas

ED: I hate volume, I do. And that’s as a creative, as a CD, I love volume. I was like, please bring me as many as you can. But personally, once I get past my first idea, I’m not really searching for a whole lot more.

I know that there are other solutions out there, but past the first two or three, now I’m just reaching. They don’t feel honest to me anymore. Now I’m just trying to satisfy what I think the CDs want because I know that the CDs want to have options to choose from, or they might see something and something, and they’re like, oh, but maybe try this. And that’s great.

But when, I feel like I put so much effort and so much of myself into searching for something that I feel is honest and interesting, and that people might actually respond to, that I’m usually torn down and beaten up and kind of out of gas after the first one or two. And the second one usually is a derivative of the first one.

It’s usually like, oh, I got this really, and then my partner will say, that’s great, they’ll never buy it. Okay, well, maybe we can do this. But that takes so much of my energy that I’m just not big on volume.

Matt’s Take on Creating Volume of Ideas

MATT: I don’t know if this is everyone’s experience, but my relationship to the volume of work was that it was an inverse to the amount of experience that I had. In my first year in advertising, I produced the most volume. Last year, I didn’t care at all about volume. It was like a chart, an inverse. The more experience I have, the less volume.

It almost sounds like I’m less productive with age, but I think it’s just we have learned to creative direct ourselves. We’ll have all the ideas. We’ll have the 20, 30, 50 ideas, but we’ll kill them, kill them, kill them, and we’ll only bring the good work now, the work that we believe in, we’re like, oh, there’s something there.

Whereas when I was younger, I didn’t know what good work was, so I just brought it all. I just shoved it all in front of a CD and said, I got this, I got this. I don’t believe in any of it. I don’t know what is good. You tell me. And usually it was all bad, or there’d be one thing that they could pick out of the pile.

But now I think we just have enough experience that we would be ashamed to bring something that we didn’t think could be awesome.

Do It for Yourself

ED: The things that I’ve done that I thought were good, I had no idea they were good, no idea. They were just things that made me laugh or made me feel something. They just made me feel something.

And I learned from a partner a long time ago. He said, Ed, if it doesn’t make you laugh when you’re reading it, it’s not gonna get funnier when they film it. And man, that stuck with me because, you know, you kind of get to a point in advertising when you think you know enough, and then you’re honestly just going through the motions, you know, just, you know, you know how the process works, and then you just do the things that you need to do to get through the day.

But staying true to the things that make you feel something, I think is an important component to knowing if something is good or not. It’s gotta be good to you first.

I think it’s one of those things as a writer that’s really important. Like, you’re not really writing for your readers. You’re writing for yourself. And if your readers are in tune with your voice and the things that you’re saying, then you’ll attract those people.

So when I’m writing, I’m writing for me. I’m always writing for me. I’m always writing and asking myself, am I feeling anything here? Am I laughing? Am I crying? Am I, you know, reflecting? Anything.

And it’s kind of a burden because there’s not a lot of things that I write when you feel something. And so it ends up being a lot of like, well, this sucks. And a partner’s saying, hey, how’s it going over there? Nothing yet, I don’t know.

It’s really tough. I mean, you get a lot of calluses working in advertising because on one hand, you gotta grind it out and do the work because you got a deadline and you gotta meet the, you know, the client wants to have this thing on air, you know, October 1st. And today’s, you know, September 1st, and you know, you gotta have a check-in in a couple of days. And it’s like, is there anything here? Who knows? It’s a tough one.

MATT: So I’m exactly opposite of you. Again. That’s why we work so well. When I’m writing. Or do we. (Laughs)

When I’m writing or thinking of ideas, I am writing for my partner. Like I am trying to get a reaction out of somebody else. And the same way that a piece of advertising communication ultimately is trying to get a reaction out of somebody where they’ll feel something or they’ll respond.

And so I feel like a standup comedian slash therapist or somebody where I’m looking at the person across the table from me. And I’m trying to figure out how I can get them to laugh or how I can get them to feel something.

And so I will often tailor my ideas in a way, just like you would in a conversation to get a reaction out of them. And usually I’m trying to make you laugh. And that is often the genesis of like a thing that becomes a spot or a campaign.

And it doesn’t mean I don’t believe it or it’s not something that’s true for me, but it all starts with that one on one. And I’ve had partners that they’ve got nothing, which is cool, because then I try even harder. I’m like, what about this? And like, how about, what if I said this? Does this make you feel anything?

And often I won’t know what’s gonna hit. Usually I’ll say, I’ll try five things and everyone’s like, yeah, that’s bad. That’s an ad, that’s bad, that’s an ad. And I’m like, I’ll keep going. And then I’ll just say, like, I throw away stupid thing. And you’re like, hmm, there’s something there.

The Complacency Trap

ED: If you’ve gotten into advertising, you can get to the point where you understand the industry and you can solve a brief, you can understand it, and you can come with ideas, but pushing yourself consistently, like always saying, ah, but I think there’s more. I think that we can do a little more here. Like that takes a little bit more.

And it’s easy to lose that, really easy to lose that. It’s also easy to lose yourself and forget that you have a point of view that should be different than everyone else’s. And just start doing work that is expected. And forget that you have a unique voice because that voice will get squashed.

There will be a lot of clients and assignments where they’re like, can you just do this? And then sometimes, oftentimes you’re just gonna have to acquiesce and say, yeah, okay.

But if you let that happen enough that you forget yourself and your voice and why you maybe wanna do this, and the fun that you can have doing this, that sucks.

Matt’s Take on Craft

MATT: That word craft always intimidated me because there were people around me who I had considered to be much better crafters or obsessed with details. I have to admit sometimes it’s not laziness, but sometimes I can check out with like, how detailed can you get? How much can you care about every pixel or about every choice?

And that requires a certain amount of relentlessness to like care about everything. And at a certain point, I just want people to feel something or have a reaction. And that doesn’t always get impacted by every little choice.

But sometimes specific choices can make a bad project sing. And you can’t really predict what those things will be. It might be a particular actor or a particular song can make all the difference in the world. So you have to just keep plugging away at it and hoping that one of these things is gonna pop. They can’t all pop.

Not everyone’s gonna care about like the color treatment on a film. All right, so you made a blue-green, who cares? But if enough of those things, if something like really makes an impact, then that’s cool.

The Idea is the North Star

MATT: When I’m trying to make a decision, it’s helpful to have the idea written down somewhere just so I could be like, okay, if that’s the idea, then that means that this is the person we should cast. And if that’s the idea, then this is probably the type of music that will point back to the idea.

It doesn’t always have to be the way because you don’t want it to be like idea, idea, idea, idea. But it is helpful to remember this is what we’re trying to say. So if everything can point at that, that’s cool.

And then there’s the craft of making something interesting for somebody. Like the odd choices you can make along the way that make it more fascinating for somebody who’s like, whoa, that’s weird, that that’s in this spot.

Make Manifestos Sound Human

ED: I dislike manifestos because I don’t know if they ever really feel honest. I’ve seen a few. I’ve seen a few, but none of them ever feel like manifestos. They just feel like someone feels strongly about something and they’ve written honestly about it.

But then when you start to, where they always go south is when you start to inject the client’s needs into it. And then they just kind of get weird. Somebody’s feeling really passionate about a thing. And then it’s like, and that’s why you need to go and buy Tide because Tide will never let you. And I’m like, oh, this not, you left your integrity like in the last paragraph.

And I had a CD tell me, I think it was Jeff Williams said that, have an idea first and then write a manifesto. And that’s usually what I try to stick to.

If I can avoid writing a manifesto, I will at all costs because there’s always a potential that a client’s gonna wanna just make the manifesto into a film. So if I do need to write a manifesto, I try to make it as honest and simple as I can. So it doesn’t feel like one.

It’s really hard to write a good one. You really gotta really feel strongly about something to write a great manifesto.

MATT: Nobody wants to know what a brand thinks about anything. So the only way a manifesto could ever work is if it’s from a human being, not a brand.

That’s what I love about the jogger script. It sounds like a person just talking. There’s like in little turns of phrase, like where you can forget that. It’s a phrase I always remember in the jogger spot because it doesn’t sound like a brand. It just sounds like a person who’s just thinking about something and talking to you as they think about it.

NIKE GREATNESS COPY: Greatness, it’s just something we made up. Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is a gift reserved for a chosen few, for prodigies, for superstars. And the rest of us can only stand by watching. You can forget that. Greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It’s not some precious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We’re all capable of it. All of us.

Matt: But no, nobody needs opinions from a brand about culture or the world. They might need it from other human beings, but that’s the danger of the manifesto is you want to hear from a great thinker, not a corporation.

On Writing Nike “Possibilities”

ED: Possibilities was never a manifesto. It was straight from the head to the script. And me and my partner, we had worked on that assignment for, I felt like, 20 years. Nothing was clicking, nothing at all. Like every idea, it was a big assignment, big brief. Nike, JDI, and we had a lot of people Nike, JDI, and I had never worked on a JDI before, or at least never sold anything.

We were trying really hard. And we had gotten to the point where the CDs were writing their own scripts to sell because we just weren’t nailing it.

So that script was actually something that my mother had told me when I was younger. She religiously would tell me that there’s always someone out there better than me. No matter how good you get, there’s always someone out there better than you. Which kind of led me to think that I could always get better.

No matter what I’m doing, I can always push to get better. And those increments don’t matter as long as I’m always getting better. Which led to the script, which is just a simplified version of that.

Read more

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:07 Selected Work
07:56 Good Briefs Are Like Buckets
09:00 Know Who You’re Talking To
09:56 Research on Etsy & eBay
10:50 Find Something You Relate To
12:11 Have Opinions on Everything
13:14 Lines for the Most Interesting Man
15:25 Client Input —in Dos Equis
16:55 On Not Getting Angry
17:49 Chase What Sounds Real
18:59 The Process of Writing
20:19 On Writing Taglines
21:00 The Power of Headlines
22:10 On Manifestos
23:43 On Being Resilient
24:35 On Deadlines
25:36 On Writing P&G’s Moms
27:06 The Ending in Never Walk Alone
28:13 On the Tone of P&G’s Moms
30:02 On Sharing Early Edits
30:25 On Director’s Treatments
31:45 Keep the Vision Aligned
33:20 When to Go Full Craft Mode
34:01 Craft Is Not Beauty
35:14 On Craft Vs Point of View
36:09 On Creative Direction
37:13 On Creative Feedback
38:36 Right/Wrong Vs Good/Bad
40:02 On Deciding Between Ideas
40:46 On Many Teams on Projects
42:26 Karl’s Favorite Creatives
42:59 Being the Right Kind of Boss
44:10 On Watching People Grow Up
44:51 On Presenting Creative Ideas
46:38 On Sharing Stuff Early
47:39 On Pitch Decks
49:29 How Much Work to Present
50:25 Excitement Alignment

Why a Paywall?

Imagine you could hire a film crew to interview the world’s best creatives, distill how they tackle their work, and bring you the most useful takeaways. Stuff like: how to get unstuck, sell more ideas, sharpen your craft, manage clients, level up your CD game, and avoid critical mistakes. Hiring that crew would be awesome. And expensive. Unless you get a bunch of creatives to chip in $12/month and fund the venture together. That’s what’s happening here. METHOD® is 100% funded by members, and every dollar goes back into making more interviews. Join the community, support the vision, and unlock full access.

Transcript

Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.

Chapter 1. Good Briefs Are Like Buckets

The briefs I like the most are more about spaces and places to work in, like really simple things. Like that “Dos Equis” was about interesting and “P&G” was about moms. When you get a brief that’s just like more like a bucket, that’s what I feel most comfortable with. “P&G,” proud sponsor of Moms. The logic for it has a lot behind it, but the ultimate thing is they’re like, “Can you do something about moms during the Olympics?” And you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, absolutely.”

Chapter 2. Know Who You’re Talking To

Honestly, the one thing that is the most important leaving a brief is like knowing who you’re talking to. And then either that’s an audience that really resonates with you or an audience you have to kind of find a way for it to resonate with you or that you have to get familiar with. But like you have to be having a conversation with someone. That is the key to doing great work is that it’s basically two people. Dan, I used to say this, it was just like, “Great work is a conversation between two people that other people will be interested in listening in on.” I’ve always loved that. And I think that’s so true. And so when you walk out of a brief and it’s like, “Oh, so it’s for people who, they’re cat people. They love cats.” You’re like, “Okay, I know cat people. My sister’s a cat person. I had a cat.” I get, I know that space, so then I’m gonna know how to have a conversation. So I think that’s always the most important thing in a brief is like, it’s really clear who you’re talking to and it’s really clear what you’re gonna be talking to them about. That’s a great brief.

Chapter 3. Research on Etsy and eBay

When we get a new brand, I love going onto two places, eBay and Etsy. And like, if you search vintage blank on eBay, it’s fascinating the stuff that people sell and have kept and see value in. It’s also like a really interesting like walk down the historical path of a brand. So like eBay is an awesome research place. And then Etsy is crazy because Etsy does have some vintage items and things like that. But then Etsy has a lot of people’s own interpretations of the thing. So like, you know, laser carved signs, t-shirts, memes and all that stuff lives on there. So that’s always really interesting to see like, okay, if it’s like Tang, what are people into about Tang? Like, are they selling vintage packaging on eBay? Are they making their own like Tang shirts? Are they done? And like a lot of time, those two spaces are to kind of inspire everything.

Chapter 4. Find Something You Relate To

The thing that’s been really fortunate for me over the years is I’m always, I’m usually working on stuff that like I relate to or that’s like important to me. Like it’s been like beer, cars, sports, you know, food. Where we rarely ever get a brief where it’s not something that myself or a lot of people have a lot to say about. And if it is, usually I feel like our planners come around putting the brand, maybe you don’t have a lot to say about, but you put it in a space where you have a ton to say about. So like for Old Spice, it was really interesting. Cause like, I probably don’t have a ton to say about deodorant, but when it ends up about being like masculinity and adolescence and like manliness, that’s like, oh right, you could write about that for days. So I think I haven’t had the challenge where if someone was gave me something that it was either a product I didn’t really have any opinions on or a space that I didn’t have any opinions on. Like if it, I’m trying to think of a thing, if it was like, well I’m bald. So like if it was like, we need you to write about conditioner. I might not have like a ton to say about conditioner and that might be a little hard, but even then I’d probably have a lot to say about how I can’t use conditioner. And how frustrating it is that when people complain about having to condition their hair, I’m like, you know, I would fucking love have to condition my hair. So I don’t know. As long as you’re just like writing about real stuff, I don’t know if you really need tricks, I guess.

Chapter 5. On Having Opinions on Everything

I think the whole thing is just having an opinion about everything. If your opinion is that this thing sucks, it’s just as valid as if you think it’s great. Like you can have an opinion about something and think it’s absurd. When Brandon Henderson and I got Dos Equis, the thing was that young men will choose a beer that they think makes them look interesting. And we just thought that was kind of absurd. We’re like, a beer can’t make you interesting. That’s ridiculous. And we were having a hard time coming up with stuff, but then we were like, oh, what if we just completely bought this premise? And we’re like, this beer makes you interesting. And like, and if you drank a lot of this beer, you’d be really interesting. And so who like the spokesperson needs to be the most interesting person in the world. Because of course they are the most Dos Equis person in the world. And so we just like went with that and just like accepted this premise we disagreed with and kind of made fun of it the whole time.

Chapter 6. “The Most Interesting Man in the World”

What we ended up doing was we wrote about stuff that we hated about ourselves and had him do the opposite. And that became kind of easy, right? Because if you’re hard on yourself, there’s a lot of things you don’t like about yourself. And so the way we got to him being interesting was that he just wasn’t like us. And once you sort of crack that, we could write for days. Like I remember one of the lines, I think Brandon wrote, it was funny, it was like, no matter how much he takes out of the ATM his balance never changes. Because we were really broke, you know? We were always like, they’ve got to find a $5 one. Cause I’ve only got like, I’ve only got like $17 left.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:19 On Fast Decisions
02:35 On Competition and Imposter Syndrome
04:05 Honesty When Facing Failure
06:34 Overconfidence Leads to Numbness
07:48 Sharpen Your Critical Thinking
09:35 Thinking Critically About Your Own Work
11:19 The Deal Between Brand and Customer
14:02 Fabio’s Approach to Briefing Meetings
15:27 Facing the Blank Page
16:37 The Art of Saying Just One Thing
19:56 Constraints Help You Be Creative
20:42 Example of Turning Constraints into Fuel
23.51 When Advertising Becomes Culture
26:05 On Writing in Advertising
27:25 Critical Thinking in Action
28:52 Writing with Sound in Mind
28:52 Fabio on Writing Scripts
32:30 Fabio’s Take on Craft
34:11 The Mirror Trap in Writing Manifestos
36:35 Sold Work Doesn’t Mean Great Work
37:40 If You Don’t Believe It Don’t Sell It
39:33 Use Presentations to Improve the Work
40:06 Never Stop Creating as a Creative Director
41:58 Lead by Example
43:46 Shaping Culture at the Agency
46:23 Character Is the Key to Hiring
48:48 About the Current State of the Industry
50:08 Outro

Transcript

The below is a true verbatim transcript taken directly from the video. It captures the conversation exactly as it happened.

Chapter 1. On Fast Decisions

I usually make decisions very quickly. I think I’ve kind of trained myself to be this way, especially when it comes to creative things, because I became a creative director very early. I was basically a kid when I got that role. And very early on, I also realized I shouldn’t give up the craft of creating. What did that do to me? It could have made the work much worse, but what really happened was that my life got much worse, because I would leave the agency at 4 a.m. since I refused to stop creating. As a side effect, it left me with this ability to make decisions quickly, because I didn’t have time to keep thinking and rethinking a million things. So usually, I have a sharp sense of, “Yes, got it, next, I got it.” To the point that, as a creative director, I would always tell people, “Listen, if you want to tell me the idea instead of writing it down, you can tell me. The only difference is that I think you develop the idea better when you start to write it. But I’ll be very quick to understand whether it’s good or bad.”

Chapter 2. On Competition & Imposter Syndrome

I’m competitive, but before anything else, I worry about what people will think of me if I mess up. It starts as this need to explain myself and to not let myself make mistakes in public. And our work is public, right? So I chase perfection at an almost obsessive level I’ve had my whole life—not to compete at first, but to leave no gaps, no room for people to see that I’m a fraud. But once the work is done—once the “doing” part is over—then competition kicks in, because everything gets compared. What we do always ends up being compared to something else, on two levels. There’s the market level, which I honestly don’t care much about in terms of what our craft is really for. And then there’s the consumer level, which, in my opinion, has always been an important lens for my work.

Chapter 3. Honesty When Facing Failure

There are different kinds of failure, right? There’s the kind that has more to do with our self-esteem and pride than with whether the job actually works. Sometimes the work doesn’t please you, but given the job, the client, and the money they’ve put into it, your doubts don’t really make sense. So they’ll say, “I get it, but I think it’s great.” That’s tough, because in the end they’re funding the project. You’re working for them, not for your ego. And there were times when I realized halfway through that it was wrong. That’s more serious, because then it’s not just about your taste anymore, it’s a strategic mistake for the client. In that case, nothing beats being honest. In our field, that’s risky—we all know that—but it’s about professional integrity. If I think something, I say it clearly to the people who trust me. Even if that might create some mistrust in that person from that moment on, I’d rather fix the situation now and avoid the cliff I see ahead than stay quiet thinking about my long-term payoff, especially if that means lying. Many times that led me to take a loss, and in cases with clients who really trusted me, sometimes they took the loss. A few times in my life—not billions, but still a few—I had to say, “Guys, it’s bad, it’s ugly, it’s poorly done—it’s wrong.” And the client said, “OK, toss it, let’s go to the next.” That only happens when you have a top-notch relationship with the people who work with you and the people who hire you. I still think it’s better to be honest than to stay quiet thinking only about your future payoff.

Chapter 4. Overconfidence Leads to Numbness

I don’t think it’s good to start creative work without at least a bit of a knot in your stomach, otherwise you become cynical. It’s important to question yourself all the time. Self-confidence is essential, but overconfidence can lead to numbness. If you’re 100% confident all the time, you most likely won’t feel that restlessness of constantly asking, “What if I’m wrong?” “What if it’s not that great?” or “What if I did it differently?” “What if I didn’t consider it done and built something bigger from that same idea?” It’s that insecurity, that fear of being caught—what always drove me was the fear of being caught. I refused to admit I was a fraud, so I pushed harder. I had to go further, try more. And one day you realize that meant being good, but really, from the start, it was a huge fear of being bad.

Chapter 5. Sharpen Your Critical Thinking

I think the key trait for a creative is critical thinking. That’s the main one. It’s unlikely someone will be creative in any field without a core need to always look at things critically. It’s like nothing should ever stay exactly as it is. With everything, I think, “What if we did it another way?” It’s often hell for the people who live with us, right? With my kids, for example—if something’s happening, I’ll go, “But why?” And they’re like, “Oh my God, here he comes.” They get nervous because they know I’m about to question who decided that this is the standard and that it has to be this way. I see that it doesn’t have to be this way, or that there’s a much better way. Why is it like this? Who decided it should be this way? Wouldn’t it be smarter to do it differently? So there’s something very inherent to a creator’s personality. I’m not saying everyone is like me, but that’s what I see in most cases—writers, visual artists. There’s this common thread: critical thinking. A need to constantly evaluate what everyone takes for granted. And we don’t just go along with top-down decisions or whatever someone says is the right way.

Chapter 6. Thinking Critically About Your Work

Thinking critically about your own work is the highest level of craft. When you reach that, you’re at the top. Early in your creative career, you don’t know much—you can’t even really judge work yet. You go on personal taste, like “I think it’s funny,” but you can barely rank what’s better or worse among what you’ve seen. For example, when I started, I went through international and Brazilian award annuals and treated them as absolute truth, no questions asked. Gold beats silver, which beats bronze. I learned what was good, great, memorable based on the criteria of people I felt I should respect, as if they were up on Olympus. Later, I got bold enough to say, “Damn, this is way off—this isn’t bronze, it’s gold,” or, “This isn’t gold at all; it shouldn’t even be in this book.” I reached a point where I understood and built my own criteria from all that information and all those expectations. And the hardest step is applying that same critical sense to what you’re making right now—the line you just wrote, the idea you just had. Because you tend to get attached and rationalize: “Damn, this brief is tough,” “It came in late and now I have to rush.” You can keep giving yourself excuses, but none of that goes out with the idea you put on air. No one will say, “This is bad because it was a quick turnaround.” That won’t be there. So building critical judgment about your own work—self-critique—is what makes you stand out in this business.

Chapter 7. The Deal Between Brand and Customer

Advertising is paying to say good things about yourself. No one runs ads to talk shit about themselves. That’s the basic deal between a brand and a consumer in any ad. That’s also one of the reasons ads feel so worn out to people today—especially in a super-fragmented media world where consumers question advertisers more and more. People see brands just buying space to praise themselves. Good advertising—now more than ever—is about knowing how to deal with that. You have to start from the premise that the audience knows exactly what you’re doing. The conversation should assume no one’s trying to trick anyone. Still, you might think I’m here to trick you—it’s plainly an ad. So how has advertising dealt with this today, in 99% of cases? It’s given up. It decided people won’t let brands be provocative, funny, and smart the way they used to be in the past. The industry just gave up. Since you know it’s an ad and I’m not fooling you, I’ll just tell you some things and hope you remember me when you buy. In the other 1%, it’s that old, fun cat-and-mouse game—we both know it’s a game. It assumes no deception, and if at any point someone wonders whether they’re being tricked, they quickly see their intelligence is being respected. That respect is key to building brands through communication—the kind of brands we’re talking about here.

Chapter 8. Fabio’s Approach to Briefing Meetings

In a briefing, I need to leave knowing there’s a funnel—a clear direction. If not, I’ll end up doing that work mentally, on instinct, while I’m creating, constantly rechecking as I go. I need to feel grounded, right? Being grounded means I can’t be thinking about every possible path, but I do know that whatever’s left really matters, and it’s worth the effort to get there. Another key thing for any creative is knowing exactly what will stick with the consumer after they read, watch, or listen to the ad. It’s not going to be 30 things. Cutting the other 29 is crucial. For me, that’s always been a big point in client meetings: whatever won’t fit, we won’t put in. We’re not going to force things in just to tick boxes—“we said this, we said that.” We can give those things a quick nod somewhere, but ideally, they don’t crowd the core message.

Chapter 9. Facing the Blank Page

For me, starting means putting in front of me everything I need to show or include. I don’t avoid that stuff. Then I can start thinking about things that question it, and I’m like, “Damn, yeah, maybe we don’t need this,” and I feel like I can convince the client. But first, it’s this: if we decided we’re going to say something and everyone agreed on it, I need to say it in the best way possible. I need to show it in the best way possible. So I stay focused on that. Of course, it’s natural to go off track—your mind keeps going, other ideas pop up. Sometimes they’re so good they’re worth questioning the rest. Or you think, “That’s for another moment, another day, another time. I’ll save it.” Because if we’ve agreed that, for this brand’s story, we need to tell this chapter now, then what I have to do is create something that doesn’t make me sad about not doing something else—I have to make something better.

Chapter 10. The Art of Saying Just One Thing

I made Philco’s “little ants” commercial. There were about 30 things to say about the product, because it was a kind of sound system Philco didn’t usually make. It had LEDs, new surround sound—a ton of features. Once I convinced the client that the main focus should be the power of the sound, that’s when the insecurity kicked in. You’re telling someone who has other beliefs that this is the most important thing. At some point they go, “OK, let’s do what you’re saying.” Then they look at you like, “So? What’s next?” And you think, “My God, now what?” I convinced them, now they’re waiting on me. Like I said, when I’m insecure, I stick to the focus: power, power, power, power, power. How do we show that in a way that looks totally different from anything we’ve seen before? I’m very visual. Even though I’m a copywriter, I’m very visual. I strip things down to the minimum. So if what we’re going to say is “the sound is powerful,” I still don’t want to just say it—I want to show it. But how do you show sound power on TV? With sound? On TV? You can’t, because it’s the viewer’s TV volume that decides whether it feels powerful or not, loud or not. So how do we make power visible? I thought about the impact on the speaker—when you crank the bass and it shakes. The first idea was to hang something on the speaker and blast it off. The next idea—second, third, fifth, whatever—was to make that “something” an ant, an insect we’d eject. Then I built the story backward. I wouldn’t start by showing a speaker pushing the ant away. I’d start with the story of three crazy ants that keep going to a place we can’t see, and then they come out up top, flying. Then we pull the camera back a bit, or slide it over, and reveal the ants’ game: climbing onto the speaker and being launched away. That endless loop was their little ant party. That was my thinking.

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