Coors

A positive project would probably be I worked on Mexicali Beer. That's a brand of Coors, a few years ago. The reason it clicked so well is that it was fairly low budget as far as on the radar because it was Coors brand but it didn't get a whole lot of backing. What made the project click was the least amount of opinions went into it. [3275],[3276]
We didn't have to run it up every single pole to get everybody's thought on it. Frankly, in my opinion of this whole business, that is the biggest killer of all creative is too many people in a room with too many opinions. That's probably the best one that I've had in my career, just because we had ideas, they were really funny, we got it through, we went and shot it, and they got on air without somebody going, "Hey, wait, wait, wait. I should not be doing this or this." [3293],[3291],[3292],[3278],[3277],[3279]
One main guy and that was the key, too. [3280]
Really, only one, which was our Group Creative Director. Then we showed people down the road after it was produced at the higher levels and everybody liked it. Really, only one. [3281]
Not very risky at all. At all. It was a struggle to get it sold, so we had to really push it in the meeting, but once it was sold everybody was on board. It was a leap for them in the sense that they didn't know how well it was going to work. [3282]
As a matter of fact, let me go back on this. Where the idea came from was that the brief was so frickin' extensive and we had to say so many things that actually sparked the idea of what we did, which was spoofing these Mexican soap operas and having subtitles. The reason we had to have subtitles was because they wanted to say so many things that we couldn't get it all in the spot. It worked in the sense that they couldn't say it wasn't on strategy because every point that they had in their brief was subtitled. [3283],[3294]
However, those time constraints usually help creatively a lot, because people don't have time to sit, and ponder, and "Well, I was looking at it with my husband and my kids over the weekend and they all thought ... ". Quote-unquote, you know? You don't get that. Time can usually be better for creative. [3284],[3297],[3295],[3296]
On that brand? They're very good. They're still there and everybody's still pretty happy. They've been part of the agency for, I don't even know, 20 years. So, it's good. [3285]
Good in the sense that they kind of listen to us and respect what the agency has to say. It isn't like, "No, no, this isn't what we were thinking, so go back and do it again." "Oh, we never thought of it that way, so we'll try it." You know what I mean? [3300],[3287],[3298],[3299],[3286]
There was some trust in there, yeah. More so than most clients. [3288]
It was great. I was working with the Art Director I work with now and we're good friends. That's always better when you're working with somebody you get along with. [3289],[3290]
Reference Tags
[3275] Decisive leadership,[3276] Promote autonomy & sense of ownership,[3293] Believes one has high agency,[3291] Decisive leadership,[3292] Organizing effectively,[3278] Decisive leadership,[3277] Humor effect,[3279] Promote autonomy & sense of ownership,[3280] Decisive leadership,[3281] Organizational encouragement,[3282] Win-win conflict about ideas,[3283] Believes one has a hopeful path,[3294] Creative Confidence,[3284] Balanced workload pressure,[3297] Believes one has a hopeful path,[3295] Creative Confidence,[3296] Optimism,[3285] Trust,[3300] Believes one has a hopeful path,[3287] Great example - Productive innovation norms,[3298] Listening disposition,[3299] Optimism,[3286] Trust,[3288] Trust,[3289] Organizational encouragement,[3290] Trust