Whatever Dave Trott says about advertising is certainly worth listening to. Trott, who is set to leave his post as chairman of The Gate London, is considered a UK advertising legend, with a D&AD President’s Award to his name. Graduating from the Pratt Institute in New York with a degree in Advertising, Trott began his career in Madison Avenue and then went on to found several agencies of his own. He is also the author of Predatory Thinking: A masterclass in out-thinking the competition and Creative Mischief, which is a compilation of entries on his blog.
Below he shares some tips that can help young creatives in their careers.
6 Tips For Young Creatives
by Dave Trott
1) Find heroes and learn from them.
Find out who does the work you like, then read everything you can about them.
Every ad they’ve ever done, everything they’ve ever written.
You can add to your heroes as you go along.
You shouldn’t try to copy them.
But identifying and studying them will give you an identity and something to hold onto.
So you don’t just get confused by trying to follow the latest trend.
2) Always be interviewing.
Just because you’ve got a job don’t stop having interviews.
You don’t have to take another job, but interviews are useful.
Interviews mean that more people will know you, and you’ll know more people, you’re networking.
Interviews mean people you haven’t met yet will be looking at your work, which is useful feedback.
It also means you’ll find out whether things are better at other agencies or not.
3) Don’t be frightened.
Fear of what might go wrong will stop you doing anything great.
Fear of embarrassment, fear of getting in trouble.
You’ll try to make everything safe and criticism-proof, which means dull, which means invisible, which means you aren’t being creative.
If you’re not scaring yourself, you’re not scaring anyone else.
And that’s a very dull place to be.
That’s not creative.
4) Be frightened.
Learn how to make fear your friend.
Learn how to scare yourself out of laziness and embarrassment.
Learn how to be more scared of wasting your life than of what other people think of you.
Learn how to use fear to make you do what you know you want to do, and need to do, but are either too lazy or too scared to do.
Learn how to use fear to beat fear.
5) Don’t worry about other people’s opinions.
There is no such thing as right and wrong, just different opinions.
Sometimes you have to do a thing a certain way just because your boss says so.
That doesn’t make him right, but he is your boss.
If you want to keep your job do it his way and look for another job.
That boss isn’t wrong, he’s just wrong for you.
6) Learn the difference between idea and execution.
If it works in any media, it’s an idea.
If it doesn’t work in any, and every, media it’s just an execution.
An execution is what you do after you’ve got an idea.
You don’t do an execution instead of an idea.
A typeface, an illustrator, a director, a style of animation, a soundtrack, an editing style, a new technology.
Those aren’t ideas, they’re executions.
Execution is fashion, it will be out of date in a few weeks.
An idea, a real idea, doesn’t go out of fashion.
