It is quite amazing how easy your job is. Just ask someone who doesn’t do it.
At the same time, from your point of view, their job is amazingly easy.
We get this every day in advertising because with digital tools it is not that challenging to make something that looks like an ad. But as I have pointed out in previous blogs, something that looks like a fish isn’t necessarily a fish.
Clients are prone to asking us to do something almost impossible with no time available, and, well most of the time, we make it happen. They think no time is required to accomplish the impossible. Why? Because our job is easy.
So we get questions like, “Can you take this low resolution image and convert it to high resolution?”
Equally, I can make yourjob also sound simple with my almost complete lack of understanding of what you have to do to get results…
Can you just do this… it should be easy because all you have to do is probably punch a button on your computer…. how hard can that be? Since I don’t know anything about your job, to me it has to be easy. I mean, let`s face it, it’s not rocket surgery. How tough can it be?
My job is hard because I know all the complications and all the things that could go wrong.
But after achieving my 10,000 hours of learning how to do my job, I have to admit it: My job is easy.
After the first few hundreds of print ads and radio and television commercials, it is not that hard to knock off something. I bet if you gave Paul McCartney a few lines and some chords he could craft a song out of it. So actually doing the work isn’t too hard.
Making sure what you have done is a good one takes more than just being able to knock off something.
And that’s what separates excellence from maudlin. The ability to not only create the work but know when it is any good or not. Now that can be hard.
People with less experience fall in love with their own advertising ideas. I guess because they don’t have that many and coming up with something is novel. Sometimes, many times, this is to their own detriment.
But, again, for the advertising professional, coming up with ideas is relatively easy.
The really hard parts, in addition to making sure you select the best of many ideas, is getting approval through layers of clients and lawyers.
Oh, and by the way, make me one of the machines in the graphic. It can`t be too hard. After all, they drew it for you.