If you’re not going to say anything original in a creative review, fuck off out of it

Ok, so I’m trying not to go into full Jeremy Kyle turbo rant here but I have a serious disposition to creative reviews filled with people who don’t say anything. I go to endless presentations filled with clients, junior clients, account people, junior account people, senior account people, planners, heads of planning, two creative directors and me and my partner. And you know what? Half the room speaks and only a quarter says something new.

Let me put this to you bluntly:

If you’re in a review and you need to wait for your boss’s opinion to then give yours, it’s worthless.

And if you’re in a review to say nothing and make it look like you have a job, you’re worthless.

Why the fuck do we pay good people for their opinions, when half of the advertising world seems to get away with simply turning up, nodding, eating a Prett sandwhich and occasionally out rightly declaring that their boss is without doubt the arbiter of all things great in advertising? Ok, so maybe they’re good at spreadsheets, or client calls or budget wrangling but at the end of the day if they aren’t going to ad to the creative process, shouldn’t they be removed from it?

These fucking pow wow, gang bang, lets all form a prayer circle and reiterate what the three most powerful people in the room are saying sessions are why advertising is so plagued with compromise.

The only thing more destructive to an idea in a meeting than a series of conflicting opinions, is the same opinion covered in a veneer of buzzwords. After that, you’re not addressing feedback, you’re addressing bullshit.