for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
As an ad creative, you have to learn pretty early on that a lot of your favorite, most creative ideas will get shot down, passed over, or reworked to a point beyond recognition. It’s a sad but inevitable part of being a creative.
Jeff Scardino, a New York ad creative, knows this all too well, and that’s why he created “Killing Cool,” a site that rewards creatives for their killed ideas. The way the site works is that creatives are meant to pull it up in a meeting and discreetly tally when either an account manager or clients kill one of their ideas. Then the counters on the website record all the killed ideas. When certain milestones of killed ideas are hit, giveaways are unlocked and up for grabs. Participants just have to email in for a chance to win the prizes one they are unlocked.
“One day I was in a briefing for what was suppose to be a great project, a book piece, and the account guy in the room began briefing us and said, ‘So I convinced the client to take the budget for this project and put it all into emails–but cool ones,’” explained Scardino. “While I was holding back from strangling him I thought to myself, you are killing the meaning of the word cool. Boom, the idea for the project.”
The site only launched two days ago, but it’s already become popular among creatives. The site’s server crashed yesterday, so that’s a pretty good indication that KillingCool is something creatives can get into.
“There’s more satisfaction when you can finally sell through a good idea after rounds and rounds of murder. As the box you have to fit your idea into gets smaller, you really have to get creative to sell a good idea that can fit. And there’s always alcohol,” said Scardino.
Image via Shutterstock
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