WHO’S RESONSIBLE FOR YOUR WORK?

 

 

By now, most people know the story behind the penalty shoot-out in the Women’s European Cup Final.

At the end of full-time the teams were level, even after the end of extra time both teams were still level, so after 120 minutes of playing it all came down to penalties.

All the tension of the entire competition focuses on the goalkeepers at this point, the Spanish and English goalkeepers had to take turns.

One-by-one the other team’s best penalty takers stepped forward and the goalie has to try to stop them, they swapped over after each attempt.

The Spanish goalie, Cata Coll, took a swallow from her water bottle, then replaced it in her towel.

The English goalie, Hannah Hampton, noticed Coll had a list of names taped to her bottle.

She knew what it was of course, it was a list of English players and which side of the goal they tended to kick the ball.

It was something all goalkeepers did: which player was up next and which side of the goal they favoured.

So Hampton took a swig from her own water bottle and, when Coll wasn’t looking, she swapped the bottles over, then she walked away from the goal and tossed the Spanish keeper’s bottle into the crowd.

Next time the Spanish keeper looked at her bottle, to see which way the player would kick, there weren’t any names there.

Did that put the Spanish goalkeeper off?

We can’t know for sure, but we do know England won the penalty shootout.

Now you may think that’s unsporting behaviour, I don’t have a view on that, lots of unsporting things happen and anyway it wasn’t illegal.

But the part I respected was what Hannah Hampton said in an interview afterwards.

They asked her if she kept a list of names taped to her own water bottle.

She said “No, I keep my list taped to my arm where no one can get at it.”

That, for me, is thinking one step further ahead.

Don’t trust anyone, take responsibility for absolutely everything you can, any little detail you overlook is your fault.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s your job or not, anything you choose not to be responsible for can affect the outcome and you end up taking the consequences.

In our case that could be the brief, or the media, or the strategy, or the client, or the layout, or the copy, or anything.

One of my heroes was George Lois, early in my career he said something that always resonated with me:

“Don’t show me your drawerfuls of great roughs, if it don’t run it ain’t advertising”.

In other words, he isn’t interested in ‘coulda-woulda-shoulda’ excuses, this is a business, your salary depends on the amount and quality of work that actually runs.

If any part of that process goes wrong, you and your work suffer.

So if you want a good result, your job is to be responsible for EVERY part of the process.

Don’t sit at your laptop and wait for the perfect brief, then tap out a witty pun on the keyboard, and let someone else take it from there.

If you want great ads, the brief is your job, the strategy is your job, the media is your job, making sure the ad gets sold is your job.

I never accepted a brief I wasn’t happy with, or a strategy I thought was lazy, or media I thought was wrong, or a bad account-man selling my ads.

If I thought they were wrong I’d go back and argue, that’s what all the best people did.

Because if any of those things go wrong we end up with a crappy ad, and that’s what goes in our portfolio, or on our reel, or on our website.

There isn’t a ‘plucky losers’ section at the awards:

‘This Would Have Been Better if it Had Been a Press Ad Instead of a Poster’.

‘The Strategy was Wrong or it Would Have Been a Better Campaign”.

‘You Should Have Seen the Ad Before the Client Changed It”.

Of course, there are lots of reasons why we can’t control everything at our agency.

Just as there are lots of reasons why Hannah Hampton shouldn’t have thrown that water bottle into the crowd.

But, as Werner Erhard said: “You can have either have what you want, or you can have your reasons for not having it.”