Work meet personality

At times, we’re a branded voice. At times, we’re a voice of brands. Yet still, on occasion we’re a solo voice. This post is about a band of voices, my work team @bridgeworldwide. Bridge Worldwide, my employer, won a Cannes Cyber Lion Gold for Pringles Can Hands banner ad last week. It’s a banner ad. Yup, it’s a DAMN good banner ad. While I appreciate the award and love the banner, what stands out to me is the team that helped create the piece and their personality. Their personality made it into their work and it is delighting lots of people.

If you are a creative at an agency, you probably know what I'm about to say, but if you’re not familiar with a creative/advertising agency and thinking about getting in the industry, read on.  Creative work is hard. It’s time consuming, takes a specialized talent and dedication to a craft, like painting, art or music. You have to put thousands of hours to be just mediocre. Rarely do phenoms exist anywhere in life. Most are a product of hard, diligent effort and creative-types fall into this category. Everyday creative-types put their heart and soul into something that probably will not make it out of the trash can. They are probably in a career where they never saw themselves in the first place. Now let’s get a little deeper. Their work gets judged with ferocity at an agency—too much this, not enough that, doesn’t meet brief, not sure it’s on strategy, not feeling it. Most people hate criticism in any form and creatives put their work through the ringer daily. It simply isn’t easy work.

As I reviewed our award winning work, I was (obviously) proud. I knew exactly which wittism was written by who, and could see individual contributions come to life in the banner—meanwhile in the name of our client, Pringles. Even the most cynical fark readers had some great comments about the piece. Again, at the end of the day, what I see are the personalities of the people that I work with, unabashed, comical, amusing and clever.

It’s interesting to me that so often we seem to lose our personality in our work. We lose ourselves in our work. Even though it’s always for the client, it’s us. It’s our personality they are paying for. Our uniqueness. Our individual viewpoint on the world we live in. It’s not so often when I’m able to see that much of our own personality come to life in the name of the brand and I like it. This banner ad serves as a proud reminder that there can be an intersection of the two.  Congrats to our team at Bridge Worldwide.

follow me on twitter @marty_b
#pringles
#canhands

Comments

[Amy in OHio]

That's good stuff martyb, good stuff.