The wrong room

A few weeks ago, I caught myself rewriting an email three times to a lead who didn't really get what I do. Softer. Cheaper-sounding. Smaller. By the third draft I wasn't selling anymore. I was apologising.

That's what selling in the wrong room does. You shrink to fit the listener.

I'd been doing it for months without noticing. Explaining why story matters before I could explain why I'm the one to tell it. Defending the value of creative work to people who think marketing is a spreadsheet. Watching my pricing wobble because the room I was selling in didn't share a sense of what ideas are worth.

That step costs energy. I'd stopped noticing it because it had become normal.

The right room

Then I spent three days at OFFF in Barcelona, one of the most influential creative conferences in the world. Designers and creative directors from New York, Stockholm, Tokyo, Sydney. By the end of day one, I'd had three conversations where nobody asked me what brand storytelling was. They asked how I work, what I charge, who I work with. One person, halfway through a sentence, said the word "narrative" the way you say a word everyone in the room already knows.

That was the difference. The room was already filled with like-minded people. We could just talk.

What brands actually want

The line that landed hardest came from Swedish creative agency Snask, on stage day one.

"Data is built on numbers. Emotions are not built on numbers. Brands are built on emotions."

Followed by: "Brands want to be loved. How do you measure love? You can't."

I felt emotional hearing that. It's exactly what I've been trying to convince people of for years. And exactly what I'd been censoring out of myself to fit the wrong rooms.

Companies measure what they can touch and file the rest under soft skill. But what they actually want is to be loved by customers, trusted by teams, chosen by the people they hope to hire. None of that lives in a dashboard.

What ideas are worth

Nils Leonard from creative studio Uncommon, same stage, said something else I haven't been able to shake. He talked about ideas being a creative’s most valuable currency and that we should treat them as such.

“How do you put a price on an idea? Well, it is worth whatever the fuck you say it is.”

He meant: don't apologise for what creative work costs. The discount you give a client because you're afraid they'll leave is the same discount you give yourself when you quietly decide your work isn't valuable enough.

Coming home

I came home with the volume back where it should be. Three days of being treated like a creative instead of a service provider recalibrated something quiet.

I'm a creative. I always have been.

The years I tried to be marketing-adjacent or sales-adjacent were the years I felt least like myself.

The room you walk into shapes who you become inside it. You don't notice it until you walk into a different one.