Fail louder
The advertising world has lost one of its heroes.
On September 30, Dan Wieden died at home, with his wife by his side. Countless beautiful, poignant, and funny remembrances popped up all weekend long. It’s wonderful to see how many people’s lives he touched.
One of my favorite Wieden quotes is “You’re not useful to me until you’ve made three momentous mistakes.”
It captures so much. The awareness that failure is one of our best teachers. The magnitude of “momentous.” Of not just one, but three mistakes. He’s not giving you permission to screw up, he’s setting an expectation.
That expectation of fallibility is crucial to the act of creation. Big creative ideas need a little friction. If you sand off all the possible edges of an idea in an attempt to make it completely palatable for the target audience, then what’s left to catch them in the first place? If you don’t ever go over the line, how do you know where the line truly is? If you only focus on what people like, then you may not get something that actually works.
To put it a different way, you can’t marry success without first courting disaster.
As you might imagine, taking big creative risks isn’t always met with open arms, whether we’re talking about a client with a kajillion dollars on the line, an agency hellbent on receiving client affirmation, or Creatives worried about looking bad in front of their peers. Let’s face it. Making mistakes means showing you’re vulnerable. And not many people are comfortable with that.
Which means sometimes you have to be the unpopular one. The one repeatedly nudging others outside of their comfort zones. The one refusing to prioritize “safe” options. The one pointing out that a beautiful image without a provocative idea is just fear wearing a pretty costume.
There are many benefits that can come from embracing risk. Here are just a few of them.
Risk is good for the creative soul
Creatives want growth. Growth of their conceptual playing field. Growth of their portfolios. Growth of opportunity. If they never cross any boundaries, nothing around them will ever expand. They’ll get frustrated and won’t understand why their career is stalling out.
Risk is good for team chemistry
The best way to encourage bravery across a multidisciplinary team is to white-knuckle a risky ride together. When we make a mistake as a team, and the world doesn’t end, we begin to see risk for what it really is — a false demon that has less power over us than we think. And that makes us stronger as a unit.
Risk is good for building client trust
If you never provoke your clients, they’ll never believe you can provoke their customers into a behavior change. Set the expectation early. You’re not here to play it safe. Nor should they be. They’ll appreciate your candor.
Risk is good for awards
If you care about awards, then you better get used to taking chances. “We need to win more awards” isn’t worth the breath you spend on it if you’re not willing to put your money where your mouth is.
Risk is good for business
Not every dollar of revenue holds the same value. You can make bank churning out effective tactics, or you can do so taking huge creative swings that sometimes whiff. Only one of those routes is going to make you famous.
These are lessons I’ve learned over the last twenty or so years. I’m basically at the hump day of my career. There are mistakes in my past. There are mistakes in my future. And that means I’m still in the middle of an intensely educational journey. That’s why I’ll always try to set fear aside. To provoke a reaction. To fail louder.
Or as Dan Wieden said better than I ever could, to make a momentous mistake.
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