Survive 2021: Be Brave
There is often more at stake because of the way risks are taken, and the potential pitfalls can be enough to make people, especially customers, shy. And in times of great uncertainty like this one, risk aversion is particularly to be expected.
However, the need for creative work that stands out from the crowd, cuts the wafer and makes us think differently has never been more necessary – and this often requires creatives to be daring and persuasive. We talk to a number of experts about how you can steer your work in a more adventurous direction, why daring doesn't necessarily mean radical and is the key to risk for yourself and your partners.
BE PREPARED
Regardless of whether you want to start a personal project that has a bit of originality, or whether you want to give an unexpected spin to an assignment, for many creative people the starting point for the production of adventurous work lies in research – regardless of whether this relates to a subject area or the work relates that's already out there. Very few things in this world exist in a vacuum, and figuring out what the status quo is like – if you just intentionally deviate from it – can be a good place to start.
"Look at the category and message you're trying to get across as a brand to make sure you're saying this another way. Some of the toughest – you could call it risk taking – work we've done in the past have undermined the genre or category, "says Stephen Ledger-Lomas, Production Manager and Partner at BBH London." It can be the creative idea, the strategy – finding a unique insight – or it can actually be how we carry it out, down to who our director or photographer is. We make sure we try as hard as possible so as not to just keep up with the breaking news. "