Welcome to another Method Breakdown, this time featuring Hal Curtis. As a creative and creative director, Hal has made some of Nike’s and Coca Cola’s most memorable spots. Below is what we covered in this episode.
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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Hal’s Selected Work
If you’re not familiar with Hal’s work, here are a few standout pieces from his book:
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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.”
