I have never actually seen a client lop off anyone's head in a meeting for presenting an idea that was a little different from the usual stuff they see. Nor have I witnessed one storm out of the room in a huff, burst into tears, call us all worthless imbeciles or immediately throw the account into review.*
Yet more than once, I've found myself sitting down to write or concept with a strange sense of anxiety, and I start editing myself before I've even started working. "They'll hate that," I think. "They've never done it that way before." "That's not what we usually do for them." "It'll scare the AEs in the internal presentation." I start talking myself out of great work before I even get started.
The fact is, some of the work I'm happiest with has popped out of my mouth when I'm not self-editing or over-thinking. It's fearless creativity. And we need a lot more of it.
When you're concepting, there is no reason to do anything but go balls-to-the-wall creative. You can pull yourself back later. What's the worst thing that can possibly happen? You come up with something that stinks, is way off-strategy or entirely unfeasible, and you kill it before it sees the light of day. Or, you come up with something brilliant and groundbreaking, win armloads of awards and accolades, earn tons of new business for your agency, become a partner, get a book deal, work in your pajamas and show up a couple of times a week to rally the troops before you fly to Tahiti in your private jet. Score!
I'm sure this anxious feeling haunts more than just the creative department (or more than just the neurotic writer with the obvious personality disorder). I'll bet there are tons of AEs out there, fretting over something scary the creative team has done. A new word choice, maybe, or a deviation from the accepted look, or a change in tonality. Maybe they're thinking the same stuff I am: "They're going to hate the work. They're going to yell at me. They're going to get in bed with another agency—I've seen them flirting. They're going to think we don't understand the brand. I'm going to fail, fail, FAIL."
This, my friends, is fear. And it's for the weak. By all means, kill the work if we're too close and we can't see its many flaws. But if it kind of makes you uncomfortable, if it scares you just a little—maybe that means it's actually more right than any of us know.
*Perhaps this stuff does happen somewhere and we just have really mature, reasonable clients. I don’t know.