Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

Back in the days when I used to pro­duce a lot of tele­vi­sion spots, I sat through hun­dreds and hun­dreds of the most awk­ward audi­tions. Some were more like an Amer­i­can Idol out­takes show than you’d like to believe. Why? Because actors are will­ing to take huge risks to get an oppor­tu­nity to do some­thing great. Even if it means utter and shame­ful embarrassment.

That’s some­thing adver­tis­ing peo­ple are not too will­ing to do these days. Maybe because the job mar­ket is so tight that peo­ple aren’t will­ing to stick there neck out. Sure, we may be a media rev­o­lu­tion these days, but we’re cer­tainly not a cre­ative one.

This lack of risk tak­ing is in stark con­trast to the hun­dreds of actors will­ing to make com­plete asses of them­selves just to work on a tele­vi­sion cam­paign. Stand­ing out in that crowd is dif­fi­cult to say the least. Actors seri­ously have to put it on the line every day if they’re going to do more than starve or wait tables. So it’s not only hum­bling to watch them do it, it’s very edu­ca­tional see­ing other cre­ative peo­ple tak­ing risks that big.

We adver­tis­ing peo­ple think we’re so cre­ative but just how often do we put our­selves on the line in the same way. And I don’t mean by doing an edgy ad – that’s not risky, that’s expected. I mean doing some­thing truly risky. Some­thing that will get you called into the bosses office or called out by a client. Or worse, some­thing that you could be embar­rassed by suggesting.

So what’s truly risky? Using tech­nol­ogy in a com­pletely new way. Apply­ing real cre­ativ­ity to a new media instead of let­ting con­cepts spin out of the print ads or TV spots — (remem­ber the land­scape has changed). What about not even pre­sent­ing an ad at all. Or how about killing the big idea and pre­sent­ing lots of lit­tle ones.

Are you will­ing to embar­rass your­self by try­ing some­thing risky?