Lee Clow’s Beard

You cannot become the person or agency you wish to be by doing the type of work you wished you never had to do.

All brand wounds are self-inflicted, and shifting blame won’t stop the bleeding.

If how you made it is the point, what you made is probably pointless.

Should we think outside the box or stick to the brief? Maybe and maybe.

If your revisions aren’t synonymous with improvements, please have the discipline to reject your own impulses.

You can only make the client look like a hero if you’re willing to stop seeing them as the villain. Regardless of their efforts to the contrary.

Some creatives take things personally. The rest are liars.

You cannot protect the soul of the brand while insulting the mind of its audience.

Perhaps we should focus on clearing the bar before promising clients we can raise it.

Great work always subverts expectations. The first is that it exists at all.

If good writing is great thinking, most advertising proves how little of it survives the process.

People who don’t know what they’re doing insisting people who do know what they’re doing actually don’t know what they’re doing hasn’t done the industry any favors.

The secret to managing client expectations is to detail and defend what’s expected of them.

Backing into the strategy used to be standard operating procedure. So if the work gets there before the brief does, consider it a gift from the past, not an affront to the process.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, how are you going to know if the thing that’s doing it for you is doing it well? Even the fanciest tool can only cloak incompetence for so long.

If you mean simplify, say simplify. If you mean dumb down, stay quiet.

If your messaging matrix needs a tour guide, you’ve actually built a mausoleum.

It doesn’t matter if someone else could say it if no one actually is. It barely matters if everyone is saying it if no one says it well. When you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.

Any brand can make a claim. Few dare to stake a position. The work makes it obvious which is which.

Smart people know when to think twice. The small-minded only think to second-guess others.

The only time “this doesn’t work for me” actually matters is when it’s collectively said by the audience.