The Wrong Room

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

That's what happens when you sell to the wrong audience. You end up tailoring your message to suit them.

I’d been doing it for months without realizing it. Explaining why the 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 just a spreadsheet. Watching my rates fluctuate because the audience I was pitching to didn’t share my sense of what ideas are worth.

That step takes energy. I had stopped noticing it because it had become routine.

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, and 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, and 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 really want

The line that made the biggest impact came from the Swedish creative agency Snask, on stage on the first day.

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

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

Hearing that made me emotional. It’s exactly what I’ve been trying to convince people of for years. And exactly what I’d been suppressing in myself to fit in with the wrong crowd.

Companies measure what they can quantify and dismiss the rest as soft skills. But what they really want is to be loved by customers, trusted by teams, and chosen by the people they hope to hire. None of that shows up on a dashboard.

What ideas are worth

Nils Leonard from the creative studio Uncommon, speaking at the same event, said something else that has really stuck with me. He talked about how ideas are a creative’s most valuable asset and that we should treat them as such.

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

What he meant was: don't apologize for the cost of creative work. 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 feeling like myself again. Three days of being treated like a creative professional instead of a service provider quietly restored my sense of balance.

I'm a creative person. I always have been.

The years I tried to work in fields related to marketing or sales were the years I felt least like myself.

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