Posted on: November 10th, 2009 by Reuben Turner

Honestly, it’s worse than you think. It’s worse than cocaine, Soho strip clubs or fiddling expenses. The dirtiest secret harboured by the creative industry is that a lot of the best-looking work, doesn’t work. And the work you’re ashamed to show your friends, does.

The beautiful, boundary-pushing, noise-generating work often passes the public by. In creative terms, it’s amazing (darling). In response terms, mediocre.

Yet the obvious, dirty-looking, rather sad work does wonders. It’s why confused.com is hated by creative agencies and loved by consumers. It’s why you still get horrible-looking direct mail from credit card companies, and survey packs, diaries and stickers from charities.

It’s also why creative agencies continue to participate in the merry-go-round of scam work and shiny awards. The whisper goes round every table at every awards show… ‘absolutely bombed, I heard… only went to 100 people anyway… client fired them afterwards…’. Only a few awards, like the DMA, are honest enough to actually insist on good results as a criterion for even being shortlisted.

Once in a while, though, you hit the sweet spot. Creative work you’re proud of because, and also despite, the fact that it pulls.

We added a creative idea to the technique-led advertising for Centrepoint’s room sponsorship programme. And it worked. It beat the banker and the reversed a slow decline in results. That’s why we’re proud of it. Incidentally, it’s been shortlisted for the DMA’s too. We’ve got our fingers crossed.

And if we win, we promise we won’t keep it a secret.