why would I ask for a feedbag?

When you get past the experience, the bags under the eyes and the drinking problem, there's another difference between a junior creative and a senior one.

There are a surprising number of juniors who want to hide their work until it's absolutely perfect, before they reluctantly get feedback.

Most the senior creatives I've worked with, and all the good ones I can think of, at a fairly early point in the execution process want feedback on what they're doing. They'll drop by or grab me and talk through the direction they're going, they'll take me through what they have, and where they think it's working or not. They know there's value in getting feedback earlier rather than later, before you've gone down too many blind alleys. Because at an agency, the creative is a process. With clients, account people and production, nothing is finished until it's in the consumer's hands.

Juniors seem to have wait until what they're doing is perfect before they can open up to accept "judgement." (Not that that's what feedback is, I'm just trying to guess at the psychology.) If you're new in a job, I can see how you don't want your boss seeing potential vulnerability. You don't want to be seen as asking for his ideas. You want to come to him with outstanding ideas fully formed, ready to wow clients. And I suppose there's also the tendency not to want to "bother" the creative director with, say, creative. All I can say is bother away. Even when I don't have time, I should make the time. It's my job after all.

I'm not saying you should seek input before you have an idea of where you want to go. I need to see something after all. I just don't want juniors wasting a lot of time on polishing and refining before they know it's the right direction.

Anyway, this impulse to hold things back is not a useful trait, and it's one that we try to discourage by encouraging not formal checkpoints, but informal drop-ins.

I understand the impulse. When I'm writing, I don't want anyone standing over my back, I don't anyone questioning the process I need to go through to get the necessary end result. But once I get the work to a place where my point is clear – and that point is well before I consider it polished, let alone finished – then I do want those other eyeballs. In fact I'll actively bother people until they've given me some sort of feedback, anything so I have a sense that my work is doing what I want it to do.

Comments

[MDS]

Well said!