Wednesday, July 18, 2007

A thought on Grace.

Roy Grace, that is. Formerly of DDB and of Grace & Rothschild. Responsible for so many great ads and spots. Someone once asked him what he did as a creative director. Grace replied:

"I take out the garbage."

Grace meant, I think, that he eliminates work from the mix that isn't good enough. And he removes the extraneous crap that somehow always seems to get shoe-horned into work. I'm no Roy Grace, but I often disparage ads by saying "they're a negotiation, not a communication." That is, along the way different constituencies argued for and got their way and stuck in their idea. The end result is a rat's breakfast. And that's something no one wants to look at.

1 comment:

Tore Claesson said...

In theory most everyone in advertising (and marketing) understands the concept of singularity.
In theory most everyone in advertising understands
the effective communication depends on clarity.
In theory most everyone in advertising knows that the consumer of ad-messages is bombarded with thousands of messages competing for precious little time available.
In reality none of this knowledge is taking into account when creating ad messages.
The consumer is the least important partner in the mess we call advertising.
Ads are created built on rules, mandatories, internal politics, insight-less research (crap in-crap out type of research). Not on what might a person react positively.
The consumer is just an excuse. or so it seems.
t.