NORTHERN PLANNER

It’s OK to be different.

Of course it is.

More than OK, actually. Difference matters. Different experiences, different brains, different ways of looking at the world all matter if you want great ideas that land. 

But here’s the bit we seem to have forgotten.

It’s OK to be normal too.

Great don’t arrive like lightning bolts in the minds of a genius, even if seems that way. That 10,000 house of practice Gladwell was on about is just the lap lap after 10 million hours of collective input. That came before.  

Take evolution.

We love the ideas of Darwin’s flash of insight the Galagapos Islands. Except Alfred Russell Wallace had the same insight too.  

That doesn’t diminish Darwin. It makes the story more interesting.

They were both working at the end of an massive chain of ideas. Geologists, naturalists, breeders, explorers, philosophers and countless others had moved the ball steadily up the pitch.

Darwin put it in the back of the net. But a lot of other people got the ball somewhere near the box.

That’s how ideas tend to work.

What looks like genius from a distance is usually a huge number of tiny advances compressed into one neat story.

And the more different people you allow into that process, the richer the possibilities become.

Which should be a sobering thought for an industry that really enjoys genius.

We love the rockstar creative (or even rockstar strategist). 

We seem to let a couple of people dominate the industry conversation. You know who.

Now some folks are really, talented. Genius is special.

Just perhaps not quite as special as genius likes to think it is.

Which brings me to creative agencies.

For an industry supposedly obsessed with difference, we can be remarkably similar.

I don’t just mean diversity in terms of gender, race, class, education or background. There is a huge conversation still to be had about cognitive diversity too — about who gets heard, which personalities thrive and how many potentially brilliant people never make it through the door because they don’t perform brilliance in quite the right way.

I mean something even more everyday than that.

Spend enough time in agencies and you notice the uniforms.

They change with the decades, but they are there.

The right trainers.

The right glasses.

The right restaurants.

The right references.

A particular way of talking.

A particular way of presenting.

A particular kind of confidence.

Even a particular way of appearing unconventional.

We spend so much time celebrating people who don’t fit in that we’ve somehow created a very specific way you’re supposed to not fit in.

And underneath all of it sits one of advertising’s deepest beliefs:

You must be interesting.

Normal is not enough.

Average is practically an insult.

Ordinary is something to escape.

Agencies worship at the altar of special.

Yet the people whose behaviour we are trying to influence mostly spend their lives doing astonishingly normal things.

Taking the kids to school.

Working.

Arguing about what to have for tea.

Watching television.

Checking their bank balance.

Walking the dog.

Wondering whether they remembered to put the washing on.

Trying to get through Wednesday.

There is drama in that.

There is humour in it.

There is tension, love, embarrassment, anxiety, joy and meaning.

Real life is absolutely full of creative material.

Yet we’re often so desperate to transcend the ordinary that we stop looking at it properly.

We want brands to change culture.

Start movements.

Create conversations.

Have a purpose.

Disrupt categories.

Become icons.

Meanwhile, most people would barely notice if most brands disappeared tomorrow.

Perhaps one reason is that we’re trying so hard to make brands extraordinary that we forget to make them recognisable.

There is enormous creative power in someone seeing a piece of work and thinking:

That’s me.

Not the person I want people on Instagram to think I am.

Not the person a brand strategist has decided I aspire to become.

Me.

The boring, contradictory, slightly ridiculous person who exists when nobody is watching.

Great creative people understand this.

They don’t look down on normal life.

They hoover it up.

They notice what people say.

What they don’t say.

What they keep in the kitchen drawer.

What they argue about in the car.

What makes them laugh.

What embarrasses them.

What they secretly care about.

They know that observation is often more valuable than imagination.

Perhaps agencies should apply some of that curiosity to themselves.

Because our obsession with being special creates another problem.

Think about the talent we must miss.

The person with an extraordinary mind who doesn’t wear the right trainers.

The brilliant strategist who has a stammer.

The deeply original thinker who doesn’t enjoy standing in front of twenty people performing an inspiring little monologue.

The person who isn’t cool.

The person who isn’t loud.

The person who doesn’t know how to look creative.

How many genuinely different thinkers have agencies rejected because they didn’t look sufficiently like our idea of someone who thinks differently?

There’s another cost too.

Trying to be special all the time is exhausting.

Constantly constructing a version of yourself that matches the person you think you’re supposed to be takes energy.

Eventually you can spend so much time performing yourself that you forget to actually be yourself.

And that can get in the way of work.

Friendships.

Relationships.

Life.

So yes, this is absolutely a rallying cry for being different.

For bringing outsiders in.

For making room for different brains, personalities, experiences and perspectives.

For taking ideas away from the handful of people who have traditionally been allowed to own them.

But it’s also a rallying cry for something that might feel considerably less fashionable.

Being ordinary.

Being uncool.

Being average at some things.

Enjoying things everyone else enjoys.

Not having a personal brand.

Not always having something clever to say.

Not needing every opinion, outfit, holiday, restaurant, cultural reference or piece of work to prove you’re interesting.

Because you don’t actually need to try that hard to be different.

There has never been another person with precisely your combination of experiences, memories, relationships, mistakes, tastes, anxieties, abilities and ridiculous little habits.

And there never will be.

You’re already different.

Which means you can probably stop trying so hard.

It’s OK to be different.

It’s OK to be normal.

Just be yourself.

You are enough.