Quite a few years ago we wrote an ad starring a swearing dog.
We got told that legally we couldn’t make it.
That it would be offensive.
The plan was always that the dog was going to be bleeped out. And as dogs can’t talk, so can’t actual swear, we didn’t see what the problem was.
But after a couple of weeks of suitable ridiculous emails being sent back and forth with legal, they weren’t budging. We got cracking on a new idea.
You win some, you lose some.
The important thing was that we’d pushed the boundaries.
That’s the definition of creativity, to find the new and the different.
Creative work should always be moving things forward.
Trying to build on what’s gone before.
Whatever size or scale of job you’re briefed on you should try to make it something better than last time.
And there’s a real benefit in trying to do this on every job. Even the boring, just need doing ones.
Each time you push forward even a tiny bit, it pushes the boundary further out.
Job by job you’re advancing.
It takes effort to stay switched on but it’s worth it when you look back over time. You should be able to see how far you’ve moved the work, the briefs and the brand.
And if you’re wondering about what happened to that campaign with the foul-mouthed dog.
The next idea went very surreal to get around any legal issues.
That created it’s own problems, to be touched on in a future post.
