Learning By Doing

Well then. Kanye West, Jared Leto, Patrick Stewart and Sarah-Jessica Parker are all at Cannes imparting words of wisdom about creativity and all that.

You know what? I really couldn't give even the tiniest of shits.

Might as well be the Chuckle Brothers, Mr Tumble and Mr Blobby as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not remotely interested in what those celebrity speakers have to say. They represent a starfucking culture which values superficial buzz and hype above craft, expertise and substance.

The whole conference circuit has now turned into an industry in its own right. One that is becoming further and further removed from the reality of what it is like to create and produce great advertising that can help businesses grow.

At the other end of the spectrum we have influential, egg-headed theorists attempting to turn advertising into some kind of pseudo-science with book after book advocating this new trend or that new trend.

The creative gene pool has been polluted with the opinions of nonsense-spouting, bandwagon-jumping, nest-feathering snake oil salesmen.

There's so much poppycock and gobbledygook flying around filling peoples heads with shit by telling them what to think and how to do things, that we've almost forgotten the fine art of thinking for ourselves.

Most importantly of all though, I think we've forgotten that advertising isn't about theory. It's about practice. It's not about hypothesis. It's about doing.

Action not words.

Yes, it's vital to absorb outside influences and a wide range of inspiration like a sponge.

But when it comes down to it, a creative person has to get their thoughts down and put an idea on a piece of a paper.

Attending all the conferences in the world and reading all the Gladwell, Godin and Shirky in the world will never be a substitute for the cold, hard act of sitting down and having an idea yourself.

And it will be mainly by doing that over and over again, practising, practising, crafting, re-writing, crafting again that better ads will emerge.

Not because Kanye West, Sarah-Jessica Parker or some mouthy advertising blog gave you an invaluable nugget of wisdom that made you see the world differently.

As that bloke Aristotle, star of the Greek philosophy conference circuit, once said;

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.