In Hollywood jargon, a logline is a one or two sentence summary of a film or television program. In other words, it’s the elevator pitch of an idea.
For example, you might recognise the movies represented by these loglines:

After a series of grisly shark attacks, a sheriff struggles to protect his small beach community against the bloodthirsty monster, in spite of the greedy chamber of commerce.

When a Roman general is betrayed and his family murdered by an insane and corrupt prince, he comes to Rome as a gladiator to seek revenge.

A psychologist struggles to cure a troubled boy who is haunted by a bizarre affliction – he sees dead people.

Screenwriters put a lot of time and effort into crafting their loglines, because they know it either opens the door to a Hollywood studio or it doesn’t. But the thing is, that’s all the logline does – opens the door. The writer still has to back it up with a synopsis and full script (which usually goes through several rounds of drafts).

Now, ideas are extremely important. Indeed, they are the origin of any action, but by themselves they’re almost worthless. It’s only when lots of hard work is applied in bringing them to life that they become truly valuable.

Many advertising creatives are indoctrinated into an ‘idea is everything’ way of thinking. But outside the agency creative department, it’s a very different story. Most high-value ideas only realise their worth once they’re up and running. The online clothing company across the hall from my office that recently sold for $70 million is a great example. Their idea wasn’t sold on ‘a logline’; it was sold as a functioning machine.

Nick Law of R/GA tells the story of how he presented to some investors in Silicon Valley. In ‘advertising-style’, Nick and his team had beautiful-looking concept boards and a strong idea. However, their audience soon dismissed them when they hadn’t actually built the product yet.

So while ideas are important, it’s worth remembering that they’re only part of the battle. Getting one up and running is where the money lies. That’s even reflected in how ad agencies predominantly make their money (i.e. head hours and studio time, rather than concept fees and licensed I.P.).

P.S. And if you didn’t recognise the movie logline examples, they’re Jaws, Gladiator  and The Sixth Sense.

DUSTIN LANE
Brand Strategy | Advertising Concepts | Copywriting
Visit risinggiants.co or dustinlanecreative.com

Image source: Josh Evnin, http://josh.ev9.org/weblog/archives/category/free-design-idea

Years ago, my art director and I were called into our CD’s office for a chat. We’d recently been thinking about moving to another agency and the CD wanted to know what he could do to stop that from happening. Whilst money wasn’t the driver of our decision, it was going to be a factor. I clearly remember him saying this: ‘Every year employees want more money, and clients want to pay the agency less’.

Nothing has changed, I guess. But the situation is getting to a point that simply isn’t sustainable. The other day I bumped into a headhunter (no, I wasn’t looking for a job). I asked her how business was. She said that she’s relatively busy, but nobody wants to hire senior people anymore. All the briefs are asking for mid-weights. The reason, of course, is that senior people come with senior price tags. And as agencies get squeezed tighter on their margins, they’re looking for ways to cut expenses and protect those margins. But, it’s not a long-term solution and it will ultimately impact on the standard of work.

I’m not saying that junior and mid-weight teams can’t do the job. I’m simply saying that they generally don’t hit the target as consistently, and they take longer to get there. Also, less senior people mean less mentors for junior employees.

Another trend that’s emerging is that human resource is becoming more transient. Freelancers are being used more frequently. Agencies are only pulling in people when required on jobs rather than have them on a retained salary.  But, many are also trying to pay them a pro rata rate of what they would pay a permanent person in that role. If freelancers agree to do this, there is little motivation for the agency to hire anyone full-time. Why would they risk having to ‘carry’ employees through quieter times or pay them for holidays, if they can just pick up the phone and have that resource on call at the same price?

So, in short, tighter margins is leading to people working longer hours because agencies aren’t resourcing appropriately. And experienced people are being managed out of the business because they cost too much.

All this means that creative people will increasingly look for careers outside of advertising and traditional agency structures. This recent study by Deutsch puts the writing on the wall.

And of course, once the talent moves on, the client dollars will probably follow.

DUSTIN LANE
Brand Strategy | Advertising Concepts | Copywriting
Visit risinggiants.co or dustinlanecreative.com

It’s funny how a title can influence the way others perceive you, or how it affects whether they buy into what you have to say. There’s been various articles written about it before.

Sometimes an organisation will offer a job title as a poor substitute for a pay-rise. I’ve never really been one for titles though. Apparently, even one of the richest people in Australia, Lindsay Fox, owner of the logistics company Linfox , simply has ‘Truck Driver’ on his business card. I like that.

My business card never said ‘Junior Copywriter’ when I was a junior, and it never said ‘Senior Copywriter’ years down the track. In fact, it has never even said ‘Copywriter’. In the space for the job title, I used to always have ‘Writer’.

Part of the reason is that nobody knows what a ‘copywriter’ does – just ask my mum, or any of the people who have asked me for advice on patents and trademarks.

People can grasp the word ‘writer’. It gives an indication of what you do. But ‘copy’? Well, it’s only inside the industry that people know ‘copy’ refers to text. Everywhere else, ‘copy’ indicates replication, which doesn’t really fit inside the job description of a ‘copywriter’.

However, it seems the guys across the desk from us have a title that ticks almost all the boxes in ‘Art Director’. It’s pretty self-explanatory in that it’s a person who directs the art. Years ago, a student who was spending a week with us on work experience even asked me if I wanted to ‘work my way up’ to the role of Art Director. Obviously, the word ‘director’ gave him the idea that there was some sort of hierarchy thing going on.

I moved into a new office space about six months ago (pics below), taking up residence amongst other creative industry people such as web designers and start-ups, film producers, casting agents, photographers etc. Even these people weren’t sure what a copywriter does. At first, they thought my job was pretty much a typist (and if you’ve ever seen my two-fingered typing style, you would probably ask how I can possibly make a living out of this).

But the thing is, whether you’re a copywriter or an art director, I think writing or directing the art is only a relatively small part of what you do. That’s just the crafting part. All the heavy grunt work, the stuff that takes the most time and effort is coming up with an actual idea.

So what should we be called? ‘Problem Solvers’? ‘Innovationists’? Ideas People’? Or, like the video below, maybe just ‘Steve’?…

DUSTIN LANE
Brand Strategy | Advertising Concepts | Copywriting
Visit risinggiants.co or dustinlanecreative.com