Cross of Iron
Well, this is my first post, so here goes –
There’s a scene in Cross of Iron where James Coburn’s character, Sgt Steiner, is having a final showdown with his weasely commanding officer, Captain Stransky played by Maximmilian Schell.
The film is set on the Eastern Front during the Russian counter offensive in 1943. What has all this got to do with advertising, I hear you ask.
All Captain Stransky wants is an Iron Cross, (Germany’s equivalent of our Victoria Cross), but he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty getting it. In fact, he’ll do pretty much anything to make sure he doesn’t have to face the enemy himself. Including betraying his own men. Steiner, the archetypal hero, who’d do anything for his men and has faced more bullets than a firing squad pole, informs him that you can’t just expect to get a medal for turning up. You have to go out there and do something above and beyond the call of duty.
The same should be said about awards.
At one particular advertising awards that I was honoured to be participating in judging, I couldn’t help but notice that rather a lot of ‘good work’ was getting through to the ‘exhibition’ stage of the competition. My problem with this was – isn’t that what we should be doing as a matter of course – good work?
Surely, producing good, or even very good work is just having a good day at the office.
To warrant getting a medal it needs to be outstanding. To have done something extraordinary. Something that no mere mortal could possible dream of aspiring to. It needs to be valuable. And achieving that is difficult, Very difficult. For everyone. That’s why it takes hard work, determination, diligence and most of all – desire.
This blog is going to be about ideas. Ideas from every conceivable form of creative pursuit. From haiku to haberdashery, it doesn’t matter. So long as it’s inspiring and helps us along that creative minefield to a Cross of Iron.