Drake Cooper brought the film Art & Copy to town this week. The theater was quite full and all proceeds went to TRICA, a local organization that supports art for youth. Dylan made it happen and Cale created the artwork. All in all, if you love the business see this film. Perhaps it's showing near you soon.
Watching industry icons like Wieden and Goodby and Riney and Wells talk about advertising and creativity highlighted many things such as the importance of courage and strong clients. I also found myself thinking back to the first days DDB and how a creative revolution happened by bringing the copywriter and art director together and how these days it seems we're ripping out the art component once again and just writing stuff. Perhaps that's not happening but when I see creative agency sites turn into this and this as apposed to this and this, I wonder.
Anyway, during the film we learn that Nike's "Just Do It" was derived from a newspaper headline of a death penalty execution where the convicted said, "Let's Do It!" But I also was told once that the line surfaced during a last minute creative meeting when someone's assistant was told to order pizza and when there was confusion with the order the boss quickly quipped, "Just do it!"
During the film we also learn that "got milk?" surfaced because it was the title of a board of work for a client meeting. But I also read once that Jeff just came into a planning meeting with the line scrawled on a piece of paper and said, "I'm not quite sure what to do with this but..."
So which stories are true?
I bet each of them are true.
Consider the great Wells Rich Greene campaign for Braniff.
The "End of the Plain Plane" was revisited every day by the creative team during concepting only to end up crumpled in the trash can each afternoon. It took Mary Wells herself to pull it out of the trash one day and ask about it. "Too obvious" the team said but we "just keep going back to it."
Truly great ideas take time to fully understand and embrace. And during that time lots of stuff can happen. Wieden probably did see the news clipping. The short-fused boss probably did exclaim the line. In fact, "Just Do It" was probably batted around for awhile until everyone understood the power and potential of the idea.
Great ideas are different than good ideas. Good ideas we understand immediately because they are less complex and carry less risk. But great ideas take much longer to come to grips with.
And if ideas like "Just Do It" and "got milk?" weren't recognized immediately by talent the caliber of Dan and Jeff, then it will take the rest of us even longer to recognize our own great ideas when they arrive.
