my postcard copy struck a gravitic mine

I went into the client presentation today, on a small job that I'd done the writing for, thinking that I'd nailed it, but also knowing it was the kind of project that gets... well, complicated.

It's a new program for which the messaging is still getting worked out. Even as I was approving the brief, I could feel the thinking get, not muddy, but nuanced. Which is my fault of course; with those thoughts in mind it's dumb of me to approve to a brief. And yet time was short; only a few days until final files are required. If I'd pushed back on the brief I would have eaten up all the time for actually doing the work, and the client would likely have taken the work in house.

Now, I'm pretty passionate about good briefs. I'll yammer on about them repeatedly in this blog. But I'm also, I'd like to think, somewhat practical. I've seen too many creatives, even good ones, stand on principle for entirely sound but utterly futile reasons; job-ending reasons, client-switching-agencies reasons. 

So I consciously entered into this job, knowing that part of the first presentation of the work would be to talk about the target audience's needs, the messaging, and the real benefit that the client was offering. It had to happen eventually, but under the circumstances today the creative was a necessary part of the client understanding the implications of their choices.

Yes, the copy got sacrificed. But I knew it would. I wasn't defensive about, and we had a really good discussion with the clients about the real messaging. We'll make our final file date.

To me, principle only takes you so far because reality never aligns with it. I don't know that it's a test of character exactly, but at some point a Kobayashi Maru blunders into your client's neutral zone and it reveals your character. Because you simply deal with it.