by Kevin Browne

Created on: December 15, 2006   Last Updated: April 13, 2007

After all of the late nights concepting, all of the arguing with your Art Director and your Associate Creative Directors, your Creative Directors and all of the account people and the media people and the head of the agency, and the fellas who vacuum the conference rooms late at night, the great news is you sold a television commercial!

The bad news is... it reeks. And you know it.

But chin up...because while you may have sold a piece of you know what...you don't have to deliver it that way...at least not without a fight.

Listen, clients could care less about creative integrity...if the commercial gets the phones to ring and the cash registers to open...that's the way it is.

And yet your job and your entire career hinge on whether or not your work is judged to be creatively 'good.' In effect, as an ad agency creative, you have to serve the clients, AND your agency. (No one said this would be easy. And it's not.)

It's a delicate act. And you'll have to know who has to be pleased MORE when the time comes. But for now, start packing, you've got a lemon to shoot.

The best advice I ever got when I knew that I was headed to Los Angeles to produce 'drek' (agency slang for crap) was to SWIM AGAINST THE CURRENT the entire rest of the way.

That meant fighting the rest of the way through all of the rest of the process literally FIGHTING for anything and everything that could HELP make the spot incrementally better. The right wardrobe, the right actors, the right set designs etc, the right director of photography.

You can lose the 'battle' but still win the 'war.'

It's true. At every step of the way through the entire rest of the process, you will have the ability to MAKE the spot BOOK WORTHY. And while every day will be a grind (it will if you want to emerge with a good spot) it WILL be worth all of your time and effort to do it.

Don't forget the biggest opportunity of all. As a copywriter, you KNOW that you'll have EXTRA lines ready to be 'fed' to the actors while you're filming. These are the lines that the client killed. These are the lines that you know make the spot tolerable...even funny. YOU MUST HAVE EXTRA LINES WITH YOU.

Knowing how to produce an average tv commercial AFTER you've sold a poor one is VERY doable. And when you become a copywriter of great importance, knowing how to do it will become second nature.

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