Jake & Will: CONTEST WARRIORS

I was at the chiropractor's today getting my neck adjusted. I lay there and stared up at the ceiling.

Through the blades of the fan, I saw a piece of paper taped to the ceiling. It read: "Success is a Series of Well Managed Breakdowns, Failures, and Mistakes".

Motivational quotes are awesome. They always take a grim, negative perspective and turn it completely on its head. I asked the chiropractor about the paper and we got into a conversation about success. She framed it for me in terms of our recent contest loss:
"Sometimes you lose, but you look at what caused that loss and then alter your approach to the next one, and so on and so on."

What's interesting, though, is the total disconnect between that statement and the reality of contest winning: we can make a dozen ads, lose every contest we enter, and have absolutely NO idea what we did wrong.

Take for example the recent Butterfinger contest. We entered under the category of Kung Fu. We designed an ad that incorporated not only the Kung Fu theme, but also the four 25% contest requirements of humor, clever use of a Butterfinger, overall appeal and originality/creativity. But we didn't get picked.

The video that won starred a man named Robochop, who stood stone still, like a London Bobby, whilst people passing flashed him, punched him in the balls and stole his money. But once they touched his Butterfinger, he sprung to life and Karate chopped a guy in the neck. Even after soliciting feedback from the judges, we have absolutely no idea what made this video "better" than all of the other ones. Other people felt the same way, as there was practically a riot after this video was picked.

So on many levels it's a total crap shoot. All we can do is attempt to make ads that we think are good while adhering to basic laws of advertising and marketing. That's it. An element of the saying is missing. But in a weird way that makes it that much more exciting.

-Will