My dear fellow Senior Copywriter,
I could have started this message with your first name as I have done many times before. Nevertheless, it gives me a special, maybe a bit odd, pleasure to address my informal lines to someone who quite precisely shares my own choice of career and my own generation (whatever we might think of our walk of business).
I still like to call my own profession with one simple word: ‘A Writer.’
Despite all of those other rôles an experienced advertising professional must have experimented with (and most probably learned to master), such as strategic communication planning, negotiations and pitches with the clients, new business development, multi-platform campaign synchronization and what-have-you, you are still basically a writer as long as your core occupation is based on the written word.
That’s the very reason why I am composing this message.
I write, therefore I am.
Another key word is the number two above: ‘A Colleague.’
You certainly know my general line of hopeful (or just wishful?) reasoning about this phrase and its particular connotation – not always a favorable one as things stand at the present time – within the marketing communication community or advertising industry in our town. I dare to say there is amazingly little true spirit of colleagueship between various members of our profession. Whether the explanation (or excuse) is the harsh competition or too varying educational backgrounds between the creatives, it is nothing less than depressing how little fellowship there is around.
This is the very reason why I take the time (and pleasure) to write this message, just like a few earlier letters of substance. In fact, the choice of words and the tone of voice are not solely dictated by the composer (myself), but very much influenced by the reader (you). In the network of correspondence I care about there are clearly less than five more sophisticated persons representing that caliber of expectations.
In our walk of business one of the most valuable know-hows is the rare ability to detect quality as early as when it is being conceived, in other words at the stage when various alternatives for eventual creative solutions are being compared and discussed within the team. The second key qualification is to be able to sell the detected quality as a further-processed concept to a client – who in many cases lacks the same innate capability to differentiate exemplary from merely good, acceptable or not more than mediocre. These are God-given qualities needed by a true (m)adman preacher.
Very few people are born with this sense for quality in regard to abstract things, such as creative concepts, pictures and words, projected communicative effects. Most exemplary creatives, of which I happen to know a few fine individuals, have cultivated their nose during a long career. That unique maturity possessed by experienced planners is priceless. There is no youthful energy or excitement that can substitute it. Maturity comes first, energy can boost it; never vice versa.
It is regrettable that our field in this country lives in such a fallacy of youth. The same old wheel is discovered over and over again. The same mistakes are made; the same old wine is offered in bottles that may look like new – and everyone is satisfied as long as the vintage can be sold. No wonder there has been so much scornful talk about the state of Finnish advertising…as long as I can remember.
The plain fact is all creative capital consists of painstakingly accumulated know-how (not of any future human resources promised), innumerable past cases, old truths crystallized by trial and error, proven methods distilled by time and money spent, the constant laws of human nature. Every single iconic individual worth my professional appreciation seems to agree on this simple conclusion.
Fondly, I remain as ever your colleague
Martti