BECOMING KAMIKAZE: HOW MANY BABIES HAVE YOU KILLED TODAY? Wherein Doreen starts explaining to all Kamikaze Copywriters, Art Directions, Designers of all Ilk why the idea you love so much fell flatter than (your favorite cliché here).

I’ve been admittedly lax about critiquing concepts behind student work.  I hold a high creative standard, focus on pushing the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (KCWP) for smarter, more original concepts.  But writing copy – and teaching it – gets pretty myopic.  Sweating segues, commas, lazy verbs, Kamikaze Copy Sins, other minutiae, structure, trying to explain which grammar rules to ignore, which to push, which you can’t budge.  Detailed nonsense. 

It has to stop.  I’m going to have to start critiquing concept along with the KCWP and copy.  A good friend/former pupil reminds me students have a hard time telling what’s good, what’s not.  What’s a keeper, what’ll lead you to something else (better), what to jettison.  Certainly what to consider when work you thought would get into your book gets the axe by fellow students, instructors, potential employers instead.

How do you tell if work is good enough?  If it’s Kamikaze?

As with everything else, it starts with the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (KCWP).  Look at your Kamikaze Key Fact (KKF) – the mysterious piece of what’s going on in the prospect’s world you can push pull squeeze massage blow up into The Big Idea. 

Before you fall in love with the mediocre, dismiss the KKF (or entire KCWP) as unnecessary unwieldy more trouble than it’s worth, ask yourself:

1.  Is your Key Fact Kamikaze?  Original?  Insightful?  Unexpected?  Uniquely YOU?  Prospect Centered?  Or is it something anyone could come up with.  A “first” thought meant only to get you to the next one?  So ubiquitous it’s boring? 

Answer “Yes” to any but the first six questions, you probably need a new one.  Push your KF until it’s simpler, yet less familiar.  Kamikaze.

 

Everyone knows Veterans’ Benefits are being cut.  If your Prospect’s the Military Family, Iraq War Vet or actively concerned/highly politicized citizen, this may make sense as a Key Fact.  But it’s far from Kamikaze.  So blandly topical anyone could – and probably has – tried it.

What if we push “Veterans’ Benefits are being cut?”  Twist turn push it into “Killing Obamacare may murder as many vets as the Taliban?” 

Same root thought (vets are being screwed), but the second has a new spin.  The second Key Fact is Kamikaze – not the expected, safe way most people think.  You’ve taken the original KF from Stage One/How Everyone Sees It to Stage Five/A totally unexpected way of seeing it.  You’re Kamikaze.

Karl Rove is an absolute genius at this.  Pushes ideas until they scare the bejesus out of his Prospect until sane, rational beings think “How could anyone believe that?”  Yet they do!  (Have you read Sway yet?)  Consider my example.  Yeah, everyone would agree Veterans’ Benefits are being cut.  But “Killing Obamacare may kill as many vets as the Taliban?”  Outrageous!  But for the right Prospect, it has a twisted logic that makes sense.  Is outrageously unforgettable.  Outrageously believable.  Outrageously Kamikaze.

 

2. If you can’t push pull twist your KKF into original yet identifiable thought.  If you’ve tried, your partner’s tried and it’s not going anywhere.  Can you let it go?  Move on to something else? 

I’m not asking if you can’t think of a great line should you move on.  I’m asking about the strategic components carrying you to concept.

Kamikaze Creative Strategy – especially the KKF – is the first step to greatness.  It’s also the best place to go to complete the Creative Process (blog post 3/27/13, Conquering the Creative Process) with its final step – Verification.

Unlike the Advertising/Marketing strategies we get from Account Execs, Planners, even Clients, the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan is part of the Creative Process itself.  Your KCWP is Step One:  Defining the Problem.  To quote the post “How many solutions we come up with is directly related to how we define the problem.”  The Problem the Creative Process is working on isn’t just the KCWP section called “Problem the Kamikaze Creative Must Solve.”  It’s the entire KCWP.

Re-read the third paragraph under Step 1 in the post.  Starting “…Expanding the problem…”  Re-read it again.  A Kamikaze Key Fact expands the creative process, doesn’t limit it.

 

What does all this have to do with killing unworthy ideas?  All an unworthy Key Fact can inspire is a fluke or an unworthy concept.  Reviewing the KKF is always the first step before you present an idea, no matter how sure you are it’s genius.  Flat KF?  Don’t embarrass yourself presenting unless you think someone in the room can help fix it.

Part of becoming a professional Kamikaze Creative is being able to recognize when you should kill it.  And being willing to slit your baby’s throat if it doesn’t deliver. 

I know it’s your dah-ling.  If your classmates, partner, instructor, CD, etc. all say let it go – do it.

I'm not discounting the smart support of creative dissidents whose contrarian ideas always fly high.  If they love it, thinks you can push it to something great, ignore the masses.  Keep working it, even if you have to do it yourself.  Just don't present until it's nailed.  

People – clients, AEs, fellow creatives – will kill an idea for all sorts of reasons, many having nothing to do with whether or not it’s on strategy, is good creative.  If your idea isn’t working with the group, you can’t give them excuses to kill it.  They’ll use typos, weak presentation, weak Creative Strategies, layouts, structure, etc.  Those are minor and/or subjective and can be overcome with a smart Creative Strategy everyone can agree to.

If the KKF just lays there, the idea – unless it’s a major fluke – does too.  Don’t look back.  Cut that baby loose.  

You say you didn’t write a KCWP?  As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead meat.  You deserve everything they fling at you.  You’re just blowing out lines, not concepting like a professional.  Lines that – unless they’re flukes or you got awfully lucky – will deserve all the blank stares silence and/or unkind remarks they inspire.

3.  Is it on Prospect?  Make sure the KKF – the idea line whatever – speaks directly to the  Prospect at hand, not your classmates, contemporaries, etc. 

This is a big problem for student/junior CWs.  Writing for themselves.  If what you work from – the KCWP and especially, the KKF, Promise, etc. – isn’t Prospect Centric all you’re doing is Creative Masturbation – pleasing yourself.  I know it’s accepted student books hold many good ideas conceived off-strategy, but so popular, the strategy is changed (if there ever was one) to match the idea.  Definitely not for Professionals.

Everything we do hangs on the Prospect’s action/motivation.  If it’s not conceived for them, written and designed for them, it won’t do the job.  No matter how wonderfully creative it is.

This problem is why I hold Open Creative Strategy Seminars at the beginning of every term.  I’ve seen so much student work that is conceived by and for the creatives themselves, it won’t work in real world terms.  

E your book, post it online, the CD(s) checking it out don’t know what the strategy is – or was supposed to be.  You may get away with it at first.  If you can’t create for your assigned (by client, by AE, etc.) Prospect on the job, you won’t last.

 

If your work isn’t for the original Prospect – you only think it’s good.  File it away.  Maybe someday you’ll be working on a Prospect/Product/Creative Strategy it fits.  Keep those chap books (idea journals) handy.  You never know when it may work in the future.  The point is it doesn’t work now.  Kill that baby!

4.  Be Ruthless.  Look at everything you do w/a skeptic’s eye.  It’s not enough you love it.  It must be prospect centered, strategic, original.

There’s one more key here.  It’s a doozie.  It’s about how we fall in love with something, even though it sucks (read Sway yet?).

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It happens to all of us at one time or another.  I still cringe at a line I pushed pulled defended to my almost death.  It was stupid.  The line.  My attachment to it.  My biggest – and I hope last – foray into the realms of everyone else must be crazy.  Remember the contrarian creatives I mentioned?  I'm one.  This time I blew it, too.

I still remember the line, a knock-off on Superman’s original TV intro.  Oh how I loved that line.

When my AD said “maybe we should run a few more” instead of “great, but it needs a tweak.”  When my Copy Chief said “are you too close to this?” instead of “push the line some more.”  When the CD said, “not up to your usual” instead of “hmmm…maybe that’ll work.”  I fought on.

Wasn’t until the AE (the best editor my copy’s ever had) said, “Doreen, this is terrible.  Are you (insert your favorite vice here)?” could I take a step back.  Next morning I woke up mortified.  Considered calling in sick.  Anything but face all those people who were right about a line I was so caught up in I couldn’t see it.

Could I have prevented it?  Not at the time.  That horrible line was the beginning of my starting to listen to others in aggregate.  As I developed professionally, I learned to trust others about my ideas, even when they were on Prospect.  On Creative Strategy.  That Greek Chorus of “Nays” became my big clue to sleep on it, then take another look.

Sometimes, they're right.  Sometimes they're wrong.  But putting it away, moving on to something else – anything else (Third Step to the Creative Process, Incubation), I couldn’t see it objectively enough to determine if there was a problem with the line – structure, vocabulary, unfinished idea, strategic value, etc. – or if it truly sucked.

 

Time and space are the great objectivity gods.  When you look at it cold, you just may find they’re right.  Or find the part of the line/idea that’s throwing the rest of a good one off track.  Experience can be your greatest teacher.  So can your teammates.  Listen, but don’t cave. 

Let the Creative Process do its job in your own head.  Best way I know to avoid those mortifying loyalties to unworthy work.