Deadlines – Time is Money?
To prove to their deadlines setting clients that creativity takes time, Hungarian ad agency Café Creative decided to create a “deadlines” cautionary tale video. They visited some schoolchildren and asked them to perform two tasks: They challenged the children to complete two drawings where the deadlines were 10 seconds and the next 10 minutes. Watch the results of this short video and and if your muse nudges you into a little creative action make a comment or draw a 10 minute clock and post it here. Café Creative landed itself on the 2011 Golden Drum shortlist. The Golden Drum International Festival awards “celebrate and reward the most creative, the bravest and the very best from New Europe” And we will do so with a new, fresh and unique approach to the competition of the festival. Don’t let others take your award away, as there are many to be won this year.” Ironically I had a devil of a time trying to figure out from their website as to exactly it is they’re celebrating – it seem to be creative advertising. I’d love to go but I’ll have to set some deadlines if I’m going to make it.
It reminds me of a deadlines story I heard told about Henry Kissinger and a junior man on his team when he was Secretary of State. The story is told by that man, now retired ambassador Winston Lord.
WL: … Kissinger was a speechwriter. He thought speeches made policy, and he took great care on them. I did more of this later when he was in the State Department, so you’d have to go through about 20 drafts and many insults before you got to the final speech.
INT: Yeah, biographies of Kissinger have him jumping up and down on speeches. Isn’t there an anecdote where… you’d written a speech and he kept having you re-write it and saying, “Can’t you do any better?” and clearly he hadn’t read them?
WL: Well, basically it was, I went in with a draft, and it was actually of a presidential foreign policy report. This is slightly apocryphal and not directly on your subject here, but I would go in with a draft of the speech. He called me in the next day and said, “Is this the best you can do?” I said, “Henry, I thought so, but I’ll try again.” So I go back in a few days, another draft. He called me in the next day and he said, “Are you sure this is the best you can do?” I said, “Well, I really thought so. I’ll try one more time.” Anyway, this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, “Is this the best you can do?” So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he called me in the next day and asked me that same question, I really got exasperated and I said, “Henry, I’ve beaten my brains out – this is the ninth draft. I know it’s the best I can do: I can’t possibly improve one more word.” He then looked at me and said, “In that case, now I’ll read it.”
- The Dog Shouter
