“a man plugging a book talks to a man plugging a book”

A few months ago I posed ten ques­tions to David Brain, CEO of Edel­man Europe, which he kindly ans­we­red. To mark the launch of my book, IGNORE EVERYBODY, he asked me ten ques­tions back. Here they are:
1. In a nutshell, why should someone read the book?
Like it says in the very begin­ning of the book, “So you want to be more crea­tive, in art, in busi­ness, wha­te­ver. Here are some tips that have wor­ked for me over the years.” I don’t claim to have any spe­cial insight in the nature of crea­ti­vity. Howe­ver, it’s something I put a lot of thought and effort into over the last few deca­des, so I have my opi­nions. I’m just sha­ring what I know, for what it’s worth.
2. You say, “The more ori­gi­nal your idea is, the less good advice other peo­ple will be able to give you”. How do peo­ple who work for orga­ni­sa­tions and com­pa­nies deal with this?
The same way any one else does. Patience, tena­city and good timing.
3. Does the “igno­ring every­body” lead to lone­li­ness?
Yes. It’s the price you WILL pay. Only you can decide if it’s worth it.
4. Is the book your social object?
I con­si­der my car­toons my social object. The book, howe­ver, allo­wed me to pre­sent them to the world in way I found com­pe­lling.
5. By coin­ci­dence, I am rea­ding David Ogilvy’s Con­fes­sions of an Adver­ti­sing Man, and your style is somewhat remi­nis­cent of that book which became a kind of hand­book to run­ning an ad agency. Is Ignore Every­body a hand­book and if so, for who?
I love that book. The intro­duc­tion where he wrote about wor­king in that high-end res­tau­rant in Paris in the 1930s is pro­bably one of my favo­rite pie­ces of wri­ting, ever.
I didn’t have a demo­graphic or a “func­tion” in mind when I wrote the book. But I did think that there were a lot of peo­ple out there who, like me, aspi­red to do something more “crea­tive” with their lives, than what was expec­ted of them. And I thought there’d be no harm in sha­ring with them what I had lear­ned the hard way, over the years. The pre­mise was really no more com­pli­ca­ted than that.
6. What was the motive behind wri­ting the book? I mean I know how little money these things make, but do you want it to help other peo­ple bet­ter their lives or is it just another evil plan?
I cer­tainly didn’t expect to make any real money from it, and how much it would “help” other peo­ple is pretty deba­ta­ble. But some­ti­mes in your life you have these defi­ning moments, where you draw a line in the sand and dec­lare to the world, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what’s impor­tant to me.” I think we all need these moments at some point, to make us bet­ter unders­tand who we really are. Wri­ting a book is a good way to force these moments to the sur­face. That was really the key dri­ver, here.
7. You name some obviously crea­tive peo­ple in the book like Picasso and Bob Dylan but in the hard com­mer­cial world where you spend part of your life, who are the peo­ple who have mana­ged to stay crea­tive that have most impres­sed you?
I’ve always been most ins­pi­red by small busi­nes­ses that could have been a lot big­ger, but the owners deci­ded to say small, because they didn’t want to com­mo­dify something that was very dear and spe­cial to them. Tho­mas Mahon over at English Cut, or Amy’s Ice Cream in Aus­tin. But that’s cer­tainly not my only cri­te­ria. Doing what you love AND get­ting paid for it at the same time is actually a really, really hard trick to pull off. Most peo­ple can’t do it, but if you can, yeah, you will have ear­ned my res­pect.
8. You seem to have a love/hate rela­tionship with adver­ti­sing and adver­ti­sing thin­king (as do I). What’s with that?
The trou­ble with wor­king in adver­ti­sing is that you’re basi­cally paid to per­form mirac­les, by peo­ple who actually don’t believe in mirac­les. And the fact that most of the stuff being pro­du­ced is boring, noisy and obno­xious doesn’t help, either. That being said, when it works, it works REALLY well, and crea­tes a lot of value in a very short period of time. Like all adver­ti­sing and mar­ke­ting folk, I just wish the lat­ter hap­pe­ned more often.
9. Crea­ti­vity and tech­no­logy have in the past been seen as dif­fe­rent worlds but you seem in this and in other work to really enjoy the com­bi­na­tion? Why?
It’s not really about the tech per se, it’s about the peo­ple. Like your­self, I like smart, dri­ven, pas­sio­nate peo­ple. The tech industry seems to be a place where these peo­ple often con­gre­gate. So it’s an rela­ti­vely easy place to hang out in, an easy place to meet inte­res­ting folk with inte­res­ting ideas.
10. So what are your plans for the book and what next?
I’m toying with the idea of wri­ting a second book, albeit with some tre­pi­da­tion. When asked why she never wrote a second book after “To Kill A Moc­king­bird”, Har­per Lee ans­we­red, “Because after that, there was nowhere to go but down”. I can cer­tainly relate!
Being a book author is not impor­tant to me. Neither is being a blog­ger or a mar­ke­ting guy. Dra­wing car­toons is impor­tant to me. I know that if I keep on dra­wing the car­toons, inte­res­ting things will come out of it even­tually, so my plan is to to just keep focu­sing on that.
[P.S. This was cross-posted on David’s blog here.]