Top ten countries for work/life balance.

On June 7, 2011, In Good reads, By John Ellis

Having worked as a full-time employee, freelance writer and unpublished novelist I’ve always struggled with balance. I still feel guilty about devoting time to art when I should be doing more responsible things. But then the feeling passes and I crank out a short story, add a chapter to my latest novel or doodle dark humour.

This article caught my eye and I think it’s worth sharing. Credit to Daily Brew. You can read the entire article on their blog.

The top ten countries with the best work-life balance:

1. Denmark
2. Norway
3. Netherlands
4. Finland
5. Belgium
6. Switzerland
7. Sweden
8. Germany
9. Portugal
10. France

Canada was ranked 14th.

The Great White North has a high female-employment rate, at 76 per cent, compared to the average of 64 per cent. Seventy-one per cent of mothers return to work once their children begin school. And while Canada performed well in a number of family indicators — fertility rates, gender pay gaps, child poverty and children’s educational achievement — childcare enrolment lags behind OECD standards.

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Good, but painful, read for ad folk.

On March 14, 2011, In Agency life, Book recos, Good reads, By John Ellis

A wonderful first novel by Joshua Ferris.

‘Then We Came to an End’ has been out for a few years but its bullseye wit has not gone out of fashion. Anyone who has spent time in an advertising agency will laugh, cry or both. You’ll love it or hate it.

Here’s a little bit from the New York Times review when the book launched. You can read the entire content here.

It is a brave author who embeds the rationale for writing his novel into the novel itself. But 70 pages into Joshua Ferris’s first novel, set in a white-collar office, we meet Hank Neary, an advertising copywriter writing his first novel, set in a white-collar office. Ferris has the good sense to make Neary’s earnest project seem slightly ridiculous. Neary describes his book as “small and angry.” His co-workers tactfully suggest more appealing topics. He rejects them. “The fact that we spend most of our lives at work, that interests me,” he says. “A small, angry book about work,” his colleagues think. “There was a fun read on the beach.”

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Agency life. Can we admit that multi-tasking is just recklessness?

On January 25, 2011, In Agency life, By John Ellis

I proofread and approve a lot of work created in haste, by people who have to deal with hundreds of emails and IMs as they work. On the light side, it’s job security. Little mistakes are everywhere.

But when people get killed (for reals) it’s time to shake our heads and admit that this shit doesn’t work. There is an article in the New York Times titled, ‘Multitasking In War Has Its Perils‘. A bunch of guys, distracted by monitoring “the drone’s video feeds while participating in dozens of instant-messages and radio exchanges with intelligence analysts and troops on the ground” flew their drone toward a crowd (the wrong crowd apparently) and blew up 23 Afghan civilians.

Multitasking is a myth. Look it up.

I promise the next post will be a happy one.

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Creative briefs that get results.

On January 21, 2011, In Agency life, By John Ellis

Ambiguity is a luxury afforded (and abused) to most professionals in the middle ranks of communication management. But the writer is not welcome at this buffet of non-committal lingo.

The writer cannot reconcile real-world contradictions in a brief that was approved for its balance of retail and brand messaging. The writer can’t simultaneously push the buttons of two people with nothing in common. Nor can the writer achieve a 60/40 split between “security and convenience” messaging.

The greater writer must commit. No sort-ofs. No kinda-likes. No bit-of-this and bit-of-that.

If the ad is ambiguous, there’s a good chance the brief was written to get approved, not to get results.

If it’s results you want, fall back to basics: Find the one thing you want to say. Commit to that one thing. Then ask your writer to find a truly inspirational way to say it.

That’s all there is to that circus.

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Copywriting tip. Fear of alienation may be killing your content.

On November 25, 2010, In Copywriting tips, By John Ellis

Scratch that. Fear of alienation WILL kill your content. Fear of alienating the masses is an emotion that causes a lot of teams to weaken their messages by overruling the copy choices that make content relevant, interesting and persuasive.

The old adage is still true: People read what interests them.

The editors of great publications (online and in print) such as The Atlantic, Wired Magazine, Harper’s Magazine and Harvard Business Review, to name a few, stick to their guns. They respect the knowledge level and sophistication of their audiences. They use big words and complicated terminology because they know their audience can keep up.

Interested readers don’t fear or reject words and concepts that exceed their level. They expect good content to challenge their thinking and introduce new ideas. If they have to look up a word or dive deeper into a subject, you’ve done your job. You’ve engaged them. They’ll thank you for not treating them like idiots.

Here are the tell-tale signs that your winning campaign is being ambushed by fear of alienation.

It’s funny but customers wont’ get it.

We understand it but customers won’t.

People do not understand the big words.

This is ridiculous.

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The no-assembly-required, batteries-included brief.

On November 22, 2010, In Agency life, Great sites, By John Ellis

I came across the expression “no-assembly-required, batteries included idea” in Tom Wolfe‘s latest novel, ‘A Man in Full’. Now, I’m obsessed with the idea and plan to revisit it on Ellisism, often.

Here’s my first attempt to put this into practice: Creative teams love a brief that they can use straight away. They open the box and begin to play. They don’t want to “see the website” or go to a server for more information. And they don’t want to summarize the research spread across a half dozen conflicting reports. They expect that work to be done by account managers and planners. And that’s fair.

The no-assembly-required brief comes ready to use. Ideas have already been connected. The logic already works. Someone has taken the time to figure out what has to be said. All that remains is figuring out the best way to say it.That’s what creative teams do best.

The opposite of the no-assembly-required brief is the Swedish-furniture model. This approach dumps a pile of crap and an allen key on people who didn’t train to be nimble-fingered assembly workers.

If you want your teams to do their best work, give them something they can work with. Give them a short, tight brief with everything they need to create relevant, engaging creative. Don’t send them to the store for batteries. They might not come back.

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Stress or excitement. It’s up to you

On November 7, 2010, In Agency life, By John Ellis

It's up to you.

If you’re a client banging out a last-minute brief or a writer on the receiving end of a super-rush ASAP, “lots of eyeballs on this one” project, you’ve opened Word and stared down the blank page. Is it stressful or exciting? The answer is, it’s up to you.

Stress and excitement are cousins. If you were on a game show and could win $1,000,000 by writing a brief, or cranking out a web banner in one hour, it might seem exciting. It might even be fun. If I had a million bucks for all the published work I’ve created in minutes instead of hours I’d be writing this from someone a hell of a lot warmer.

The difference between stress and excitement is just a matter of perspective. Great clients and star creatives usually love what they do. They come to work thinking, “This awesome. I get to do this.” Not, “This sucks ass. I have to do this.”

As creative thinkers and content creators we are fortunate to make our livings with our minds, at a time when the potential for revolutionary thinking is so great.

Making the shift from “I have to”, to “I get to” is not always easy but it’s a choice we can make, not just for our sanity but also for the sake of our craft. Stress is proven to suppress the creative process and excitement is proven to accelerate it. Stress or excitement. It’s up to you.

Confession time: This doesn’t always work for me. When I have bad days, they’re really bad. But when I’m working with a smart team on cool stuff, and I know how hard some people have it, I think, “This is pretty cool. I get to do this.” I’m probably up to 4 days out of 5 but I’m working on it.

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If you’re stressed out, stop building coconut radios

On October 24, 2010, In Agency life, By John Ellis
Some of us grew up watching Gilligan’s Island, wondering why the professor wasted his time building radios out of coconuts when he should have spent every waking minute trying to fix the boat.
According to Gilligan’s Island.com, he had a B.A. from the University of Southern California, a B.S. from the University of California at Los Angeles, an M.A. from Southern Methodist University, and a PhD from Texas Christian University. His specialty is dull metals and he was at work on two books. The first book was entitled: “Rust: The Real Red Menace, ” and his second book (the reason he took the “three-hour island tour”) is entitled: “Fun With Ferns” (He is also particularly interested in island areas: the sand and soil, the vegetation, local natives and their customs, etc. That is the reason for his trip to that locality, and the real reason he happened to be aboard the S.S. Minnow.

Check out the photo. The boat wasn’t totalled. It had a hole in its ass. As viewers, we laughed at the stupidity and the drama. As artists with families and mortgages we don’t see the entertainment value when we find ourselves focused on the wrong this or too many things at once.

If overload is stressing you out, maybe it’s time to think about fixing the boat and seeing if that makes some of the other problems go away. Focus on a few key objectives (cutting down trees, making planks, nailing them to the boat, planning your escape from the island, real strategic planning) and make progress against a handful of money- and brand-building activities.

There will always be daily maintenance (fixing the hammocks, fighting the natives, watching for Russian subs in the harbour, updating the site) but when it becomes an overwhelming obsession you’ll stress out and remain on the island forever.

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Agency life. The brief and the briefing. Not the same thing

On October 21, 2010, In Agency life, By John Ellis

The best motivators in the marketing business know that a great creative brief is not complete without a great briefing. To illustrate the difference, imagine this scene from your favourite war movie.

The commander stomps into the hangar. Young pilots sit on metal chairs, their helmets in hand. Their wingmen at their wing. The commander wastes no time. She tells them that they’ll be flying out of the morning sun to rain down hell on some tax payers in another country. He talks about patriotism, duty, Jesus, country, mom and dad. He gets the team fired up. By the time he’s finished they are rushing to their fighter jets yelling shit like, “go, go, go” and “whoahhh”.

The commander may have lots of background information and detailed intelligence justifying the campaign but she does not present this by reading aloud every word of a 20-page PowerPoint deck. This would bore the troops and possibly alert them to gaps in logic. They would grow tired and send text messages to their wing-friends. “Christ, is she going to read every word?” “Dudette, we know where Absurdistan is. We’ve got GPS on the dash : ).”

See the difference? A motivational briefing makes the team want to work on your project. It moves up the pile. They become invested in the work because you’ve made them excited. If the brief is well-written and organized, they’ll find the information they need, when they need it.

Instead of reading the brief, consider:

Telling a story. Drawing picture. Going offsite. Brief on location if people need to see the product or process. Role play. Do anything but read aloud. A good briefing, like a good story, is something that we can repeat off the top of our head. When you’ve done a good job, we know exactly what we’re trying to achieve.

The brief is…

A document

Precise

A contract

Rational

 The briefing is…

An activity

Flexible

A canvas

Emotional

It’s not easy to conduct an emotional briefing but the rewards can be worth the effort. Pick your moments and when you need people to buy into your project, put on a great show and give them a reason to get excited.

See also: Fightin’ Words, a trivial look at the language we inherited from military terminology, mostly cribbed from the books of Jack Trout.

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Good read. Social networking at work can work.

On October 19, 2010, In Agency life, Good reads, By John Ellis

This requires about five minutes of your time but it may be worth it if you:

  1. Get pissed off when you find a co-worker goofing off on social networks instead of getting the work done.
  2. Work in a collaborative space and wonder if there’s a better way to share information and progress.
  3. Really, really hate it when people use email to have conversations.
  4. Get into big brother conspiracy debates.
  5. Just need a five-minute break.

This is the story of a social network called Salesforce Chatter. According to a BBC story titled, ‘Can your social networking profile get you a pay raise, “Chatter is largely an imitation of Facebook and many of the same principles apply. Employees build personal profiles, form groups, send status updates, and share information openly. ”

As we all look for better ways to collaborate, systems like this one will continue to improve. One day, we may even simulate the effectiveness of two smart people going for a pint and figuring shit out.

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