Writing Wednesdays
What I Learned in the Ad Biz, Part Three
By Steven Pressfield | Published: January 25, 2012
Here’s a concept from the world of Mad Men that has served me (and saved me) many times over the years:
The idea of “new business.”
New material can be very empowering
When I worked in the ad biz in New York many moons ago, we had to account for our hours every week on a time sheet. The creative department was divided into ten or twelve groups, each with four or five two-man teams—writer and art director—with a creative director as each group’s boss. A creative group might have four or five clients that it was responsible for. On your time sheet you’d see something like
Chase Manhattan Bank
Purina Dog Chow
U.S. Navy Recruitment
Jeep Wrangler
At the end of each week, you’d write in how many hours you spent on each client. Then there was a final row at the bottom of the sheet. It said
New Business
Almost once a month, the agency pitched some big prospective client. We’d go after Burger King or Seven-Up or Toyota, competing with other agencies who were trying to snag the same account. Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five percent of our time was spent coming up with Big Ideas for clients we were hoping to bring in.
There is great wisdom in this division of one’s working time.
I didn’t appreciate it in the moment, but later, working on my own in Hollywood or writing novels, this 20/80 dynamic became a fundamental component of the way I organized my hours, week to week. (more…)
