How To Bring The Magic To Marketing
Jack Westerkamp, Co-Founder
It seems a bit backwards because, SPOILER ALERT, magic is not real. Sorry. So the question remains. How do you bring the magic? I have a few insights I have collected after hearing the best of the best explain how they create magic.
My job consists of listening to the greatest advertising and marketing minds of all time talk about how they create incredible work. After all these interviews and absorbing so much information, you pick up a couple common themes. One of these is around the idea of creating magic with your work. Being a magician. Pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. What does that even mean? To bring the “magic” to marketing?.
It’s really three things: 1) Work your butt off, 2) create an environment where magic can exist, and 3) get uncomfortable.
Work your butt off
The common denominator among every legend of the marketing industry, the magicians if you will, is that they worked their butts off. I have yet to hear a story of someone having a major breakthrough in their career after years of settling for average or not putting in extra effort after hours. This is the only way to master your craft.
It is not normal to be obsessed with mastering your craft and working harder than everyone else. If it were normal, the average person would be doing the long hours, working their butts off, and coming up with a million ideas for each job they were tasked with. So, in a lot of cases, if you want to do something abnormal (like magic), then you need a work ethic that normal people do not have. And check out this video from Nick Saban, legendary football coach, if you’re looking to run through a brick wall anytime soon.
https://youtube.com/shorts/rbrJJD8-YJA?si=2Q-3DcHSVOnXjDpx
So it’s pretty interesting. Magic isn’t a tangible thing, but in the cases of the greatest advertisers of all time, it feels more like the sum of very real, tangible, ideas over the course of years. Only then is it seemingly “effortless” to create a great idea and find that magic.
The 10,000 hour rule says it takes 10,000 hours to master something. So, with that thought process, the faster you get to 10,000 hours, the quicker you master that craft. In this case, 10,000 hours to create magic.
And sure, you can get lucky and find that magical idea every now and again. But I think a major part of finding the magic is having it be sustainable over a long period of time over and over again. Constantly pushing yourself and being better than you were before. That is magic, to me.
The Magical Environment
Well, you can master your craft, but you can’t do it all on your own. You need a team. You need a whole crew of magicians.
That’s another common denominator among the magicians. They had a group of people that were bought in to creating something bigger than what they could create on their own. That is so special. In a lot of situations, these advertising magicians were one half of a creative duo. So, being able to find someone you jam with and being able to work off of one another is a seemingly great way to make magic. But having a whole team? That’s just special. That’s Houdini-type stuff.
Because it is not easy to build a culture and environment where a whole group of people are all seeking success, especially when their names aren’t the ones on the company, or they have no equity stake in the game. The easiest way to build this culture, in my opinion, is to find the people that love working with the people in your organization.
Because it shouldn’t be about finding people that love working for the name. It should always be about the people. Your culture, your environment, your work, your entire organization is a direct reflection of the people.
You are only as good as the sum of the parts that exist in your company.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
So, you gotta work your butt off and you gotta find a group of people that want to all work their butts off because they’re in an environment that fosters that kind of enjoyment and magnetism to the work. If you can get to this point, now is the hard part. It’s time to take some risks. This is another common learning across hundreds of conversations with industry magicians.
The advertising and marketing world becomes saturated with more good ideas every day. The only way to separate and move your brand forward is to continue to push the envelope past the point of comfortability. The reason I believe this is because if the idea feels comfortable, it has already been done and will soon be forgotten.
Oh, and another thing that goes along with this. I’ve heard plenty of times about how you can create incredible ideas and magic with any brief and any client. I thought I should include that because I know there will be the crowd murmuring about budget restraints, or a resistant client. And I just needed to defend myself there.
Anyways.
Push past the point of comfortability and have crazy ideas. That feels magical to me, personally. You can always dial it back, but you can’t make magic from average and comfortable ideas. However, you can take impractical ideas and mold them into something practical, and more importantly, magical. Magically practical. Put that on a t-shirt.
- Jack
