According to Matt Baxter, bullshit is endemic – and we’re all guilty of it to
some degree. “Bullshit in briefs means the problem isn’t clear, so it can’t be
solved accurately,” he begins. “Bullshit in creative work means the work risks
failing to connect with its intended audience. And bullshit in our everyday
working lives – from emails to meetings – means we don’t communicate our
ideas clearly to one another.”
Alongside his sister, copywriter Kate van der Borgh – president of the
Writing for Design jury at 2019’s D&AD Awards – Baxter gave an insightful
session at D&AD Festival that explored what bullshit means exactly, why it
happens, and most importantly, how to cut it out.
Their conclusion was that bullshit is often pretentious, and designed
to give a certain impression of the speaker, rather than helping to express
what they’re saying. It also lacks any discernible meaning or value: it
doesn’t convey useful information or help you achieve a task. Finally, it isn’t
concerned with showing reality accurately.
With this in mind, the duo explain, classic manifestations of bullshit
include the following: “Using big words to sound clever; talking in the
abstract and refusing to get real; and not caring about reality.”
So exactly how do you beat the bullshit? Simple: just do the opposite.
“Use real everyday language, not artificial business speak. Make big ideas
real, by talking about people and action. And be honest. Really, really
honest,” they conclude.HOW TO BEAT
THE BULLSHITMATT BAXTER AND KATE VAN
DER BORGH REVEAL HOW
TO STRIP OUT UNNECESSARY
EMBELLISHMENT AND EXPRESS
YOUR IDEAS CLEARLYSEPTEMBER 2019
STEVEN
PINKER
with the right director, or illustrator for instance –
but ideas need ownership,” she insists.
“You need a benign dictator to inspire people.
The minute you fragment it, even sometimes
with two creatives, it makes it harder to realise,”
Arnold continues. “The ownership of the idea
needs to rest with one person. Otherwise there
are too many cooks. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
Everybody wants to be creative: you’re not.”
Hoffman disagrees. “I don’t think it works that
way any more,” she counters. “In the olden days the
idea sat with the copywriter and art director. Now
it sits with a lot more people. Although you have to
make sure it’s not too many, and you have to make
sure it’s the right people.”
Sometimes, Hoffman continues, the right
idea comes from a totally different place from the
original challenge. She gives the example of a brief
for Skol beer that came into W+K Sao Paulo, which
on the face of it was about raising awareness of
drink-drinking – but the team decided to take a
different tack.
“They realised that when you get drunk you
make bad decisions, and maybe go home with
the wrong people,” she explains. The result was
a striking, psychedelic animation that turns the
original concept on its head, shifting the focus
from driving to sex, with the tagline: ‘Drink Right,
F*** Right’.
The role of an idea within a project, and
the impact it has on the outcome, can vary
significantly based on the discipline in question.
For Arnold, advertising is the heartland for verbal
ideas – communicating a particular concept by
telling a story in the best way possible. Branding,
on the other hand, is where simple visual ideas cut
through the noise.
To illustrate this, she gives the example of
McDonalds’ 2018 D&AD Wood Pencil-winning
campaign ‘Follow The Arches’ by Canadian agency
Cossette, which used tightly cropped elements of
the iconic Golden Arches logo to represent roads- a beautifully simple way to give directions to the
nearest restaurant.
“That’s an example of fantastic branding: you
know exactly what that brand is and what it’s saying
to you, just using parts of the logo,” she enthuses.
“To me, that’s what you’re trying to do as a brand:
create an iconic image. Advertising is more fluid,
and the message is often more complicated, so it
needs to be about the idea.”
WHAT IT TAKES TO SELL A GREAT IDEA
Once you’ve found a suitably infectious, flexible,
durable and simple idea – no mean feat – then
pitching it to the client should, theoretically at
least, be the easy bit.Using big words
to sound cleverCbuause of
#ll 1 shit^