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Mondays nights are my time to watch others squirm on the creative hook. I get to check out my life from an outside perspective and watch someone else wrestle with the creative beastie.
It’s official. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is my favorite new show of the season. It vies for the #1 slot with favorite returning show that has nothing to do with sales writing: Battlestar Galactica the Sci-Fi channel’s deadly serious do-over of the late ’70’s camp classic.
They’re two of the three shows I TiVo and use as rewards for achieving key milestones throughout the week.
But I digress.
Studio 60 resonates because it perfectly nails the creative process. Even though it’s a fictional show, it could easily also be the behind the scenes of any ad agency I’ve worked at or with.
If you want to know what copywriters (and probably any creative) go through when they’re crafting your copy that will send your sales through the roof – here’s the show that’s pretty damn close.
It’s all there. The creative process is chaos actuality in action. The exhilaration and teeth-gnashing frustration of brainstorming, the pressure to be creatively great and make your client’s numbers, the pressure from “the sponsors” (clients in my case) and their shifting priorities — it’s all there.
It’s ugly, messy and it’s only redeeming quality, the only reason to do it again and again (outside of the money) the energizing and addictive rush of finally cracking the code and getting to the heart of a promotion.
And through it all, looms the writer’s ever-present Sword of Damocles — the deadline.
In fact, during the second episode Perry’s character discovers that he’s inherited his predecessor’s office which has a huge countdown clock in that countdowns the days/hours/minutes/seconds to the premiere of the following week’s show.
I was so inspired by that, I ordered my own. And the gains in productivity have been tremendous.
See, what you have been told is wrong — watching TV can produce positive outcomes.
Like what you read? Then click here to buy me a coffee.
By Walter |
Topics: Inside The Mind, It's A Good Thing |
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