The fear of failure. A note by Mark Fenske

A student in the Film Storytelling class couldn't bring him or herself to do an assignment. He or she came to my office to tell me this. In my warm, caring and gentle way I said, "Tough. Do it anyway."

Being of a sturdy upright nature the person went away to work on his or her project. I was left wondering, though, what could make a person who came to school to learn to do this not want to do it? What follows is the best reason I thought of and so I wrote it to the person who came to see me. Coz felt I should share it with the rest of you 1st years, feeling some of you may benefit from what little perception it may contain. (The teachers talk together about you guys more than you probably know--however, I didn't and wouldn't let anyone know the name of the he or she who came to see me).

A lot of people are held back from working by fear of failure. They're so afraid to make something that's no good that they don't make anything. But that may be exactly what you need to learn about making ads. There's a lot of failure in creating advertising. There's a lot of looking foolish. It's simply part of the process. You learn to do it. After a while you don't even notice it, it happens so much and is such an integral part of the process.

There's something terrifically good about the right to fail. It means you can try anything. Since there's going to be plenty of failure anyway no matter what you do, try something that's worth the trouble. Instead of sticking so close to what you see others doing, make something that could only occur to you. Something you couldn't describe to someone else without them looking at you funny.

Perhaps you've been trained by life to avoid the feeling you get when you try things like that. It's similar to the feeling you get when you think to yourself, heck, I should just kiss that girl. Most of the time we don't follow through. Some of us are such dorks we wait three more days then ask the girl if we can kiss her, and in that moment damn ourselves as not being men of action.

Doing ads is like this. Don't ask, kiss. The beauty is, here at school and work we don't get slapped. Sure you might feel stupid if we all laugh. But what the hell. Get used to it. We used to laugh mercilessly at the ideas Dan Wieden used to throw out. And you haven't lived till you've heard Rich Silverstein laugh at my stuff. He's kind of short and I think it gives him a greater glee when he gets to laugh at a big guy's stuff. It's nothing. It's paper, not person.

{In fact, it's because failure in front of people is so much a part of the daily routine that there's so much swaggering and intimidation and boorish behavior in advertising creative departments. Insecurity oozes out of every pore in your body, yet you’ve got to keep going and show your work. Most people deal with this by fronting. Acting cool. As if doing the hard job of creating something out of nothing was no sweat. It is, though. But when enough people start acting like it isn't it puts a pressure on those to whom fronting doesn't come naturally--the best people, I think--that makes them feel they're not all they should be if they can't do their work easily with a devil-may-care grin. Dig? It's a trick. One some of you may even now be picking up.

A lot of planners also try to skip the looking foolish part. What happens later though is those planners don't understand how to make ads or what makes a great ad great. What we're trying to do here at AdCenter is help you become the kind of planners who are participants in making great ads, not impediments to the process or bystanders watching but not doing, like many--no, strike that--like most planners are these days.}

Do what you can. There isn't a right or wrong answer. There isn't a level that all work must be at. You are where you are. Wherever you get to is enough.

We're after movement here. If it's a grade you're worrying about, the one thing I can tell you for sure is that doing work that comes from inside, from your instinct, is the only sure way to get an A, and doing work that doesn't come from instinct is the only sure way (besides slugging me in the gut) to get a C.

PS: Did you see this quote I sent around to my 2nd year Campaigns class by any chance?

"To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing. We must learn that we are nothing but fools, a far broader and more important lesson."

It was written by a great French essayist you've probably read quoted before. He had a genuine insight into both education and art, I think. You know that speech I gave last term about all art being happy accidents? I think that's what is at the heart of putting the truth of this quote into action. Nothing we do as humans, no art we create or work we do, is evidence of us being good people. We luck into everything we do. Michelangelo being able to capture the curve of the buttocks of David isn't proof of anything more than a guy with a chisel got it right. But he got it right the same way anybody else gets it right--rarely, and with great exertion, and with loads of failure. Imagine how many half-chipped up rocks got hauled away from Mich's studio in the day.

I wish I could put down as succinctly as Montaigne, the frog I just quoted, what this is all about. But we're dealing with real time and real life here, not just words on a page.
If this is another of my rambles, and it learns you nothing, well, then that's my failure. Big deal. I've failed a bunch. Bound to do it again soon.

Try this:
Do something simple. Do something simple that comes from instinct. Something that touches that I should kiss her button. It's not a big deal at all what you make. But, it's a big deal for you that you do something. Doing changes everything. Dig?

Giving grades

I struggle with giving grades. I put a lot of effort and time into it. It inflicts pain on me to have to give grades. I don't like the objective view of a subjective business they require. What small part of them I believe is helpful is when they give someone a new view of themselves. When a student gets a C who was expecting an A there's usually some education that happens inside the student's head that bears fruit in their work the next term. When someone gets an A who thought they were getting a B an equal amount of energy is generally also released that finds a similar result through different means.

However, there are times when mistakes are made in grading. When a crucial piece of work is overlooked or an important contribution wrongly attributed or an unearned bad impression made that lingers in the mind. If you have received a grade you feel isn't right and it matters to you, I urge you to overcome your desire to stick pins in a voodoo doll of my sorry ass and come see me. I'm easier to talk to than I appear, especially about grades. I will tell you the story of the teacher who taught me what a grade is and we'll talk about your work and we'll see what happens. I don't keep a list of who argues a grade with me. I do award style points though, in everything. Don't you?

I wanted to give everyone an A. In both classes you all deserved it. I've not seen people work harder at difficult tasks. If I give everyone an A, however, I am giving a false reward to those who need to know their work wasn't at the highest level of the class. Further, it erodes the value of the truth told by an A to those whose work was the best in the class.

I am unwilling to cheat anyone out of what little contribution I can make to your education and so I did the best I could. There's another matter at play here. Hard work, while important, isn't trump in advertising. Magic is both the wild card and the indispensable ingredient. Seeing it, recognizing it, doing it, helping it along, that's what high level success is about. Please believe me when I tell you I wish hard work could mean in an art form what it does in accounting or the weight room or trash collection. It doesn't. Oh heck, I've overexplained already.