This is the 6th installment of a series of ruminations on radio copywriting that Dick Orkin and I began…uh, five installments ago.
"In Happier Times" — Dick Orkin & Dan O'Day
Advertising, Passion and Creativity
by Dick Orkin
So, you read my piece entitled “Dreaming In Commercials,” and your response is, “ENOUGH! WHERE’S THE NUTS-AND-BOLTS STUFF?”
A reasonable question growing out of some very common false assumptions.
So, here’s my reasonable answer growing out of who I am and what I have experienced:
People who want to solve creative problems — their craft or life problems — with nuts-and-bolts formulas are, in my opinion, damn boring people and should be avoided at all cost…unless you also crave boredom in your life.
These nuts and bolts seekers usually lack the essential ingredient that will open the door to genuine, successful creative problem-solving of any kind.
They are, for the most part, people who have great difficulty in openly expressing or using passion in a creative manner.
In case you missed that class in cognitive psychology in college, Passion is an experience or perception of an activity that involves as much feeling as thinking.
A passionate individual is one who channels the energy of instinctual drives into higher, more creative, and less objectionable forms. Some philosophers believed that such “sublimation” of energy is far more valuable than the suppression of the instincts urged by many western religions.
Passion can take many forms. For many, it can occur when they visit the Grand Canyon for the first time, or make love human to human, or root for their basketball team and the the team wins the tournament.
For others, it’s to be present for the birth of a newborn.
For others, it’s finding the postage stamp that completes part of a collection or driving the Porsche they dreamed of owning.
But let’s talk about passion closer to work.
Passion is what effective radio sales people experience when they call on a radio resistant client, get their signature on an agreement, and make “quota” back at the station.
Or it’s what the GM and radio staff experience when they bust their humps to attract and build audience — and the new ratings book puts them significantly ahead of the previous rating period.
Without the presence of passion, great literature would not have been written. Ditto for opera, popular music, dance, painting, architecture, theatre, novels or the fantastic home run that won countless World Series games.
And we say ditto for Great Advertising.
If it’s not inspired by passion, it can’t be great.
All the rest is “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And rarely gets heard passionately.
Only passionately conceived and executed advertising can evoke in the consumer intense interest, unusual excitement and powerful memorability.
