I've often been irked by ad agency folks -- suits mainly (sorry suits) -- whose critique of creative work amounted to regurgitating a nebulous "best practice" they read somewhere once or a guideline from a brand book, even if those best practices or guidelines didn't really make much sense in the context of the work they were evaluating.
"David Ogilvy said you can never lay out body copy in reverse type. It's hard to read."
"Never use the word 'not' in a headline. It's negative."
"The 20 lines of contest legal must appear on the letter, not online because not everyone has a computer."
"Don't use photos of people. If they don't look like who we're targeting, the audience won't identify with them."
What these folks too often forget is that best practices and guidelines are not the inerrant word of God. They were developed as shorthand to help quickly evaluate work but should just as quickly be jettisoned if they weigh it down unnecessarily, work against another best practice that might add more value to the work or are irrelevant in the context of changes in technology or culture.
For example, through the years I've heard and read repeatedly that people will not follow long copy in reverse type -- or "knocked out." This is nonsense. I regularly read business news at bloomberg.com and with the Bloomberg app on my iPhone. Much of the website and the entire app experience are knocked out and easy to read. In fact, I'd go as far as to say the white on black experience is easier on the eyes than black letters on a bright white screen. The issue, if you stop and think about it, is not really about knocked out copy but about which font is used -- reverse serif types can be hard to read, sans serifs are easier.
Conclusion: Best practice, bite me.
The point is sometimes our experience or education tells us with certainty that we know something when, the truth is, a little less knowing might serve us better.
In Chief Culture Officer, Grant McCracken quotes Boston Consulting Group's David Gray on the tyranny of knowledge:
"Little attention has been paid to ignorance as a precious resource. Unlike knowledge, which is infinitely reusable, ignorance is a one-shot deal: Once it has been displaced by knowledge, it can be hard to get back. And after it's gone, we are more apt to follow well-worn paths to find answers than to exert our sense of what we don't know in order to probe new options. Knowledge can stand in the way of innovation. Solved problems tend to stay solved -- sometimes disastrously so."
Knowledge is wonderful, useful, illuminating. Dogma of any kind -- political, religious, scientific, creative -- is bad, sclerotic, dangerous. So the next time you think you know what you know, step back, pretend you don't and see what you come up with. It might just surprise you.
How do you combat dogmatic points of view in business, politics, life? I'd love to hear your thoughts and strategies.
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