beginner cco

Preschool - Kindergarden: Saigon, Vietnam

Kindergarten - 1st grade: Iowa City, IA

1st grade - 1.5 grade: Orange County, CA

1.5 grade - 2nd grade: somewhere else Orange County, CA

2nd grade - 2.5 grade: New Orleans, LA

2.5 grade - 3.5 grade: somewhere else New Orleans, LA

3.5 grade - 4th grade: Chicago, IL

5th grade - 6th grade: Perrysburg, NY

6th grade - 7.5 grade: Mt. Vernon, NY

7.5 grade - 9th grade: Buffalo, NY

Due to my father's vocation, which I still think has something to do with the witness relocation program, we moved around a lot through my wonder years. In doing so, I learned most people aren't hard to understand. Regardless of where we're from, we're more alike than different. At our core, I kinda believe we're all squeshy, smelly, flawed, lonely, hopeful, desperate, insecure and very, very good.

Since we're the same on this gut level, we share similar insights. For example, if a classroom of 1st graders colored a smurf, 19 out of 20 kids would come back with a small & blue picture. This is true no matter what part of the country you're from. If advertising creatives are inherently similar and 20 of us from around the country were given a creative brief for "Smurfs," how many of us would come back with small & blue ideas? Maybe not 19, but a lot of us. Then if our audience is the same as us, how many of these small & blue ideas would break through the clutter if they watched 10 similar ideas? Not many.

Talent finds new ways to look at the same little things.

As a creative problem solver, the one rule you should keep in mind is the rule of 20. Whatever idea you come up with, ask yourself if it's hitting your target in the gut. If so, you're halfway there. But if you've gotten halfway there, a lot of your peers probably have too. So then ask yourself how many other creatives in your class of 20 would come up with the same solution. If your answer is zero, then you've got a place in this dog eat dog ad world.