Louise McQuat’s LIA Diary #2: Keeping the good bit alive
Louise McQuat, Global ECD, Akcelo, is representing Australia on the Digital and Creators & Social Platforms jury at LIA in Vegas. Here, McQuat, along with most of the other Australian and New Zealand jurors, reports exclusively for CB.
Somewhere inside my over-stimulated Vegas bubble, on four hours’ sleep, two days of looking at great work reminded me how easy it is to make mediocre work. And how good we are at explaining why.
“Great, considering” is a very useful phrase in advertising.
Considering the budget. Considering the feedback. Considering what we originally sold.
Spending today pulling ideas and case studies apart, debating them and questioning them, made me appreciate the work that held up without the qualifier. You start to imagine all the people who must have pushed it, questioned it and protected it before it ever reached this room.
Having a great idea is one thing. Keeping it great through all the decisions that follow is the harder job. Protecting the bit that makes it surprising. Sweating the craft. Knowing which changes make it better and which ones quietly take the life out of it.
You see the finished work and think: they kept it alive. All the way through.
As a creative leader, you know how hard your team has worked. You can be proud of how far something has come and still see how much better it could be. These few days have reminded me how important it is to hold onto great ideas, and to sweat and scrutinise them, especially when it gets hard.
I’m going home with a renewed appetite for that part.
Sorry, team. I imagine you’d have preferred something from the gift shop.
Read Louise’s first diary here
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