Why do we struggle with other people and ourselves to write a better brief?

Why do we make our lives miserable seeking and discarding insight after insight, strategy after strategy?

Why do we go through the pain of coming up with better and fresher ideas every time?

Is it because we are being paid to do so? Is that why we put up with all these on a daily basis?

Is it because we are dumb? None too smart to know when to give up?

Is it because we are driven by passion? The desire to be the best makes us invincible to pain?

We probably do it for all the above reasons, and there are more reasons if we care to look. And we continue to do so because we are responsible working adults. And if we have had enough of one place, we jump to the next.

I have been in the industry for quite some time now. I once left advertising for filmmaking, and then returned to advertising during the Global Financial Crisis.

I have a different perspective about advertising after I have left it for two years. When I was away, I had the freedom to see the industry as sort-of-an-outsider.

I realized that some of the things I had practiced earlier in my career were without basis. I was following what others have done before me without really thinking about why it was done in the first place.

And while I was working in a production house as a film director, I was exposed to the internal workings of a production house model. Of course, when I was on the other side of the fence, I have had sat in for many pre-production, production and post-production meetings. But it is different when you are truly working on the other side. It is the same difference being a tourist and an expat.

Being away, and being in a production house, changed the way I experience the advertising industry when I came back into it.

So these are the reasons why I do it:

I do it because I am pretty good at it.

I do it because I have invested too much of my life into it.

I do it because, on good days, I like it.

I do it because I understand it better than I did before.

I do it because I need the money.

I do it because I enjoy the creative process.

I do it because of the creative possibilities.

I do it because I learn so much from it.

I do it because I am not so good at other things.

I do it because I like some of the people I work with.

I do it because I have learned to appreciate the business.

I do it because I have learned to love some of the pain.

I do it because I am afraid of being a nobody.

I do it because it has become a part of me.

There are probably other ‘because’ but I shall stop here.

Source: Brands Vietnam