By Krista Shepherd

I messed up a portfolio brief.

So I messed up our third portfolio brief. I think the words “total abortion of a work” were used to describe it. Came very close to messing up the fourth as well. Having a bad week in SCA can be due to loads of reasons. However, having 2 bad weeks in a row means that there is something fundamentally wrong in the way I do things. So even though I failed miserably, I have had time to reflect and analyse the mistakes I’ve made. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Wrong partnership. It is way too late in in the course to choose partners based purely on how much fun we might have. We have to start thinking strategically. We need to work with people that have the skillsets we lack. In a copy based team where none of the partners have ever done arts, it is easy to get frustrated and lost.
2. Don’t seek praise, seek criticism. By telling your partner the idea/ execution/ whatever is good, you’re not helping anyone. In fact, you might be jeopardizing your whole career by just trying to be nice. Don’t be nice. Our portfolio is the only thing that matters right now. Being nice won’t build it. Just ask Marc.
3. Having your propositions signed off by mentors is a great feeling.  Which is probably why it is so hard to let go of them. But sometimes we have to. If it just don’t execute, let it go. By sticking to a proposition that sounded good but was of no use to me, I lost all the time I was given and I found myself in the situation I am now.
4. Start from the beginning. This is the hardest thing I learnt. But it might be the most important one. It was thursday evening and we were stuck. We had nothing. The deadline was slowly approaching and we were scared. The exhaustion didn’t help. Yet we went on and on about this idea we’ve had since monday. We just couldn’t let go of it. We were searching for something that just wasn’t there. The smartest thing we could have done was to start from the beginning. Look for a new insight, look for a new proposition, go a different route. But we didn’t. And we messed up.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take the PB3 and put it on my wall. I’m gonna print out this SCAB and put it right next to it. I want it to haunt me. I want to prove that that is not me up there. I wish I could turn back the time and change the mistakes I made. But the best I can do now is just to try and not make the same mistakes all over again.