IN WHICH DOREEN ASKS: Anyone going to/through South Carolina?

Lots of travel this week – if you’re not on a deadline, please take a detour to Columbia, SC.  Their state Art Museum was gifted a complete set (ten) of Andy Warhol’s Chairman Mao (look up The Chairman and his Little Red Book).  To celebrate they have a small (fifty pieces) but juicy exhibit of Warhol’s portraits exploring America’s obsession with the World Famous.  

You’ll find many techniques and subject matter Andy first showed us deeply embedded today's popular world culture..

I ran hot and cold on Warhol, but this exhibit (especially a series of Mohammed Ali) greatly raised my esteem of Andy as both artist and print maker.

It’s $12 (probably student discount), parking’s on the street.  Beautiful reviving Main Street with a few fun stores and a place called Mike’s great for food runs alongside .  If you have time, Columbia’s a great little city detour.  Fun little zoo, botanical gardens along the river walk w/zip lines and (if you’re a fan), The original Piggy Park with Maurice’s mustard style bbq.  (Don't bother with the satellite stores all over town - Piggy Park's the deal.)

The Warhol exhibit is the draw – you see so much of his innovation imitated (badly) in consumer work – and some B2B.  As Kleon says, Steal Like an Artist.  Study the original – Get the inspiration to concept your version of Andy, not an imitator of a trend of imitators.  Look closely – the magic is in the details.

How a former student reminded me I often say little things with huge implications.

Yesterday I was asked if I’d seen my “Tribute Poster” hanging in the Creative Circus corridor.  I had to admit I hadn’t, had to ask what a Tribute Poster was, then who did it.

Seems a former student, Ashley Milhoullin (now at Deutsch/LA), started a movement among Circus students when she first posted mine in a group of six.  Each has a quote that means something to her.  Reminders she goes back to in those infamous ad industry moments when we’re blind-sided, put off base, question our worth and ability to do the work.  Here’s the one she did for me, along with a blow- up that completes the quote.

I thought about what I meant, then looked through my files to be sure I had it right.

Here’s some of what I wrote on her grade sheet:

“...remember you get “worse” as a result of aiming higher…take creative risks, play with (concept/copy) style – this creates new problems you haven’t worked (out) yet.  But that’s GOOD – says you’re not sticking to what you know…It’s good how you pull it all up to where it needs to be...you give anything/everything a chance – (the) sign of great writing, learning by taking risks, not keeping it safe.”

The only way to grow is to keep it Kamikaze.  Step outside your personal and creative comfort zone. Challenge yourself to reach for less expected creative strategies, KKFs, solutions and the styles.

Growth can be a learning nightmare.  Just when you think you’ve reached your zenith, you’re hit with a challenge to move in a totally different direction.  One that expands your abilities, makes your work more versatile, freer than before.  One that includes insecurity and failure in its success formula.  

You were good.  Now you’re bad.  Until you finally grok a new solution you’ve not tried before.  As long as you keep it up, there's nothing you can't conquer.

Up and down, up and down.  The only way to find our best is to push ourselves from the safety of what we know into the scary, painful arena of doing what we’ve never done before.  May not work the first time.  Or the second.  Each try, every “failure,” we learn something else about what we’re trying to do, how high we must reach.

Then we get it right.  Boy am I good again.  The rub: too many creatives stop there, with a slightly bigger, better creative comfort zone.  Great creatives risk more, keep trying newer, smarter, less expected trips outside it.

For a while¸ the failures add up and we’re “bad” again.  It’s a continuous cycle of reaching¸ “failing.”  Getting better better better with each try.

That's the thing with ad creative.  You’re only as good as you are willing to risk being bad.  

Poster (c) 2015, Ashley Milhollon

Blog Post (c) 2015, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative(TM)

But Wait! There's more! Perhaps there are a few Prospect Centric wannabe Copywriters out there.

This morning I received an email in response to my last post.  A student who attended one of Kamikaze Creative Strategy workshops a few terms ago.  Asking if I would consider teaching it again so he could further grasp it's intricacies.

One student out of over 700 hits/post isn't much (granted, I just posted yesterday).  But even if I have to tutor just this young man out of class/on my own time, I will.  Anyone else who feels the same, get in touch.  Perhaps there's hope after all.

NOTE:  My ebook on Prospect Centric Kamikaze Creative Strategy is going slowly - am in third edit and keep finding things I left out and worse - things I've repeated too many times.  Will do my best to get it out by fall, will announce when it's available.  D.

PROSPECT CENTRICITY VS. THE FOUR INCH SCREEN: Why I won’t be teaching Kamikaze Creative Strategy™ in my Open Seminar July 10th. Learn the Kamikaze Creative Copy Sins™ instead.

The first Friday of every Circus term, I do an Open Seminar on Prospect Centric Kamikaze Creative Strategy.  Open to All – students of any school (ad, high schools, college/ university, Circus or not), professionals or anyone else with an interest. 

This term’s Open Workshop will be Friday, July 10^th, 9:30 a.m. to noonish (with break).  The subject, however, will not be Prospect Centric Kamikaze Creative Strategy™. 

I’ll be doing an interactive examination of The Kamikaze Creative Copy Sins™ instead.

The Kamikaze Creative Work Plan™ and Prospect Centric Kamikaze Creative Strategy™ are the most important things I teach.  They’ve spread throughout the industry.  I’m still editing their e-book, still represent the Prospect in creative, still use the KCWP™ for Copy/Concept/Content assignments (media regardless), strategic consultations with Start-Ups, businesses huge to small. 

The switch?  I am tired of beating my head against a wall so thick, the only evidence is the pain where I sit. 

Prospect Centricity is the basis of everything we do.  B2B, B2C, Direct, Old, New, Social, Video, Emerging, Apps, e-anything, Promotional, Editorial – what we write must be an honest, intimate, meaningful conversation with the person we’re trying to reach/motivate. 

We must grok our Prospect on every level.  Recognize and understand them by common analytics.  Learn their differences.  Gut the common emotional threads holding together huge, demographically similar groups of people. Prospects so close, at the same time so far apart.  

Blame it on helicopter parenting, on addiction to constant babbling contact, on everyone-gets-a-trophy.  Blame it on a generation’s total focus on self, life lived through the four inch screen.  Whatever it is, I’ve not been able penetrate.

Years ago I had a student – now a famous, internationally recognized ECD (you’d know him if you saw his picture) – live that “you never really know a man until you have walked in his shoes” truism.  I bade him spend a day wearing someone else’s shoes.

Prospect Centricity – empathizing with the Prospect.  Today, he tells me it’s one of his work’s guiding principles.  The shoes did it.

Unless you’re Counselor Troy (ST Next Gen), empathy is something most must grow into.  A few are born with it.  Some learn in church, at home, in books, life, the streets.  Without an empathic connection, the complete Prospect grok, you may be able to manipulate a Prospect (Blog 3/21/15) but Motivate?  Doubtful.

It’s been growing.  The more I get in front of the Me and My Screen generation, the more I fail.  Being able to speak only to each other is no way to succeed in advertising.  Or life.  Yet that’s all most seem to want – or be able – to do.

This past term, I gave students a modified version of the “shoe walk”  my ECD friend found so important.  Handed out an assortment of thrift store finery to wear, take selfies of themselves with people outside their experience they came into contact with.  Study how people’s perceptions changed based upon their dress.

A Hail Mary assignment after a near complete failure of my “Go somewhere you’d never go” assignment.  (It's in the blog, too), I hoped this second excursion outside their comfort zone would spark emphatic beginnings, understanding, caring, realizing theirs was not the only world people live in.

Of all the selfies/photos I got, only one included a stranger, looking.  

The rest, pure selfies, showing their embarrassment at the thrift store items I required they wear.

Enough.  I stopped working on Creative Strategy, only on copy.  I offered outside sessions on the KCWP™ and Prospect Centricity.  One taker.  The same student who took the picture of someone beside himself responding to his glittered plastic-alligator American Gucci handbag.  He was also Number Fourteen on the “A” shirt list.

This coming term, on Friday, July 10^th at 9:30 a.m., I will be holding an Open to All workshop on the Kamikaze Creative Copy Sins™.  I get many letters re: the Kamikaze Creative Copy Sins™ – check my LinkedIn recommendations, you’ll find plenty of support of their continuing relevance, importance. 

I will not stop writing, talking about, practicing Prospect Centric Creative Strategy.  The bedrock of hundreds, possibly thousands of CCOs, ECDs, CDs, shop owners and other creatives who passed through my classrooms.  I’ll just not be teaching it formally, as part of my curriculum.

I cannot fight the narcissism of the four inch screen.  I will restrict my teaching to strictly writing copy.   

So (a Kamikaze Copy Sin, did you know?), please attend the July 10^th Open Kamikaze Creative Copy Sins™ workshop.  9:30 a.m.-noonish, with break.  Handouts end of the session.  Tell the security person at the Creative Circus student entrance you’re there to see me, you’ll be directed to the auditorium.  Attend, I promise you will never write – or read – anything the same way again.

FOR MY CURRENT STUDENTS AND OTHERS:  Bring magazines w/print ads – Motor Trend, House Beautiful, Forbes, Wired, Esquire, Rolling Stone - anything with ads in it.