Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
It's way more important than talent.
A couple of years into john st. we had grown to about 30 people or so.
Not a runaway success or anything, but we were no longer wondering whether we were going to make payroll at the end of each month. We were getting bigger every year and we thought it would be a good idea to write down some of the things that we believed made for great work, great client relationships and most importantly, the kind of people we wanted at john st.
We called it "The Book of John".
'Book' was a stretch. It was maybe twenty pages (with pictures) but "The Pamphlet of John" just didn't have the same ring to it.
Our agency mantra - "Be unignorable" - came out of it. So did "People hate advertising. But love ideas." Both were thoughts that guided us for 20 years. They were part of every new business pitch and came up in almost every conversation with our clients about the work we thought would best answer the brief.
But the best thing we ever put down in writing was the one quality we looked for in every single potential john st.'er: Grrrrr.
'Grrrrr' was our shorthand for the desire to do great work - by whatever means necessary. It was that thing that got you out of bed in the morning, had you thinking about your ideas well after you got home and perhaps kept you up, staring at the ceiling wondering whether that headline, script, stunt or idea could be made sharper, smarter, and more unignorable.
'Grrrrr' is not what any wellness professional would call 'balanced'.
It was, in many ways, 'unbalanced'. Which is what we loved so much about it. 'Grrrrr' evoked that image of a little terrier mutt grabbing one end of a towel and refusing to let go even as its owner swung it around like a helicopter. We wanted to be that terrier.
Because making great advertising, or making great anything, requires an almost unbalanced degree of tenacity, hope, unfounded optimism, and marginally obsessive stubborn-ness.
My old boss said to me very early in my career, "it's the easiest thing in the world to kill an idea." Which means it's the hardest thing in the world to keep an idea alive.
To come up with the idea in the first place. To distill it, and hone it, and edit and re-edit it. To sell it in the first meeting (and the next one and next one and next one.) To craft it. To defend it. All of that requires passion. And passion, be that for a child or a partner or an idea, is a fundamentally unbalanced thing.
Maybe that's why they call it falling in love. It's a complete loss of balance.
'Grrrrr' doesn't understand the term work/life balance because it can't separate them into these neat and tidy boxes, where work ends at 5 and only starts up again at 9am the next day.
When you fall in love with an idea, the idea of leaving it there to just sit because the clock strikes 5pm on a weekday is almost non-sensical.
I have never met legends like Colleen DeCourcy or David Droga or Lee Clow but I would bet every dollar I have that their advertising brains don't turn off when the clock strikes 5pm. I would venture that 5pm has as much importance to them as the weight of their left leg. It's a number but it's an irrelevant one.
'Grrrrr' doesn't care what time it is. 'Grrrrr' just wants to get the thing made, and will do everything and anything to do it.
I've worked with some incredibly talented and successful people in my career. And every single one of them's 'Grrrrr" dwarfed their talent. When these people dug their teeth into an idea they loved, it was not even a question that it would get made. They wouldn't let it not get made.
Was this approach healthy?
By conventional definitions of work/life balance, probably not. But maybe there's something wrong with the question.
Because bringing a great idea to life is tiring, demanding, frustrating, stressful and filled with uncertainty. But on the other side of the coin, it's exhilarating, scary, wide-eyed and fun. And you end up with something that you're proud of and very likely propels you and your career forward.
I'll take that over calm, predictable and measured all day, every day.
And speaking of Grrrrr, here's a classic from Honda from the early 2000's called - wait for it - "Grrr". It was for Honda's launch of their cleaner diesel engine.
I'm betting they called it "Grrr" because that's exactly what it took to make it.