Mark Denton: no more quiet life

I was on a pre-production call with an agency art director when we had a little design disagreement. No biggie, just a very small difference of opinion.

What happened next took us both by surprise. I turned into a spluttering, red-faced ranting loony. It was totally disproportionate and totally unacceptable.

I’ve thought about it a bit since and the problem, as I see it, is that I’d been holding it all in for too long. Maybe even for the best part of this century.

You see, for quite a few years it hasn’t been the done thing to argue, dispute or disagree. I’ve even heard a tale recently of a top 10 agency boss who sent out an all staff email that forbade anyone to say ‘no’ to a client. Do as you’re told, it’s a mandate (have you noticed how popular that word is nowadays?)

Anyway, I felt seriously guilty after my outburst so (after apologizing profusely) I put out a social media post admitting as much.

At the same time I asked the question, ‘why isn’t OK to argue anymore?’ Not for arguments sake of course, but out of a genuine desire to make the work better.

I also went on to describe some of the ‘goings on’ that I witnessed during my formative years in the business (I got my first proper job at Leo Burnett back in the late 70s BTW).

I fondly reminisced about a famous animator screaming at me ‘But you’re a talentless wanker!’ and a director who suggested that we settle a creative difference with a fist fight.

There was another time when a top director started crying just before he went on to kick props around the set.

There were at least three other occasions I can recall that had me squaring up with someone on a shoot… and I was one of the easy-going ones.

I don’t think it did me any long-term psychological damage and, if anything, it made the business feel a little more exciting.

On reflection it seems that most of the ‘challenging’ encounters in my career have resulted in the work that I’m most proud of and surprisingly they’ve also supplied some of my most enduring friendships.

The response to the post was overwhelming with hundreds of ‘likes’ and almost as many comments.

It seems that I’m not the only one who misses a bit of the friction of yesteryear.

The Drum’s boss Gordon Young posted that I’d asked a timely question given they were producing this issue and he proffered up a sneak preview of a work in progress cover.

I answered (in a non-provocative way) “I’ll do you a better cover than that!”

I’m really pleased with the end result, so I suppose in a way it’s physical proof that you can get a positive creative result from a punch-up.

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, the photoshoot that I had the original falling-out over was a big success too.

Dave Trott added a clip to my post from ‘The Third Man’ where Orson Welles delivers one of his most famous monologues…

‘For 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love and in 500 years of democracy and peace what did they produce? The Cuckoo clock.’

I definitely couldn’t have put it any better myself.

Nowadays it seems that a lot of agencies and clients have traded great work for a quieter life.

I know that it’s easy for me to say but if I was a client I’d like to think that I’d want a team working on my business who had a bit of fire in their belly. In fact, I’d make it a mandate.

Mark Denton is executive creative director at Coy Communications.

This piece was first published in The Drum's Anger issue in November 2017.