Keep your mind open!
Dave Trott tweeted a great quote from Mary Wells, the famous 1960s advertising executive:
“You can’t just be you. You have to double yourself. You have to read books on subjects you know nothing about. You have to travel to places you never thought of traveling. You have to meet every kind of person and endlessly stretch what you know.”
Some thoughts:
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Wells was the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Why she is not more of a feminist icon is a mystery.
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Wells is known as a creative titan, in the same league as Bernbach or Ogilvy. And here she points out one of the key ingredients to creativity: Curiosity.
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How successful you are is somewhat a direct reflection of how curious you are. Bill Gates was curious about code. Ditto Warren Buffet and stocks. Ditto Richard Feynman and atoms. Miles Davis was curious about music. Marketing people are curious about human behavior. Entrepreneurs are curious about improving the world in their own obscure or not-so-obscure niche. It’s never-ending. This curiosity forms the backbone of our economy and our civilization.
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Advertising creatives generally don’t create that many totally new ideas, but they borrow a ton of them. And to borrow them, first, you have to know about them. So you spend a big part of your life drowning in new stimuli: film, books, TV, theatre, opera, music, culture, politics, economics. This never-ending openness to the world is one of the great appeals of the trade.
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This “always-open self” Wells speaks of, though admirable, doesn’t always guarantee a happy time of things. Often it is exhausting. Often it is heartbreaking. But no worthwhile life ever had it different. Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
