The Bridge On the River Craft

Many of you, ok, some of you, will recognize this still shot from the classic, Bridge On the River Kwai.

It, and the Wizard of Oz, are the two of the first movies I remember from my childhood. I watched this 7 hour epic film -- it felt like 7 hours -- while my parents had whooshed me off for the summer to a bungalow colony in the Catskills.

Every Saturday night, the bungalow colony owners arranged some kind of activity in the pavilion/lodge/casino area. Sometimes it was a movie. Sometimes it was Bingo Night. And other times they'd just put out a pot luck dinner so all the mothers and fathers could eat, smoke cigarettes and kvetch about the mosquitos.

I bring up Bridge On the River Kwai because it has a lot to do with the ad industry, circa 2019.

First of all, it was a pure bit of branding genius to embed a musical earworm into the flick. I have no doubt you are whistling that grating tune even as you are reading this post.

More importantly, upon retrospect I find myself more and more in the well worn shoes of Colonel Nicholoson, played by Alec Guiness.

You might recall, this British officer and his men are captured by the Japanese army. They are not only taken prisoner of war, they are forced to build a bridge for their evil captors.

I could probably end the advertising analogy right there and be done with it, but it goes deeper.

You see Colonel Nicholson is a skilled engineer, a man driven by his craft. And so instead of knocking out some half-assed bamboo bridge across this muddy little stream, he sets himself down to build the biggest, best damn bridge his Japanese jungle jailors have ever seen.

And then, because he knows nothing else but to do his best, he rallies his men to give it their all in pursuit of this monument to greatness.

This is where I, and many of my 44 year old creative colleagues, stand in the business. We're given an assignment. And because of our background, our training, our experience, we go about it with way too much ambition as well as way too much zeal.

We go out and try to build a brand when all the client wanted was for us to build a 72X38 banner. Or an Instagram carousel. Or a micro-targeted email blast.

This hasn't happened to me once. This is happening over and over again. Nor is it just me, this is a bitch, a moan, a groan, a gripe, a kvetch I hear far and wide.

Last week I saw a post from an agency seeking a middle weight art director. The ad literally said they were looking for someone "not too conceptual."

What can we do about it? Other than write industry-incriminating posts here at R17, absolutely nothing.

I'm just gonna let it roll off my back, and like Colonel Nicholson in the movie's denouement, fall on the explosive detonating device and say, "ahhh, fuck it."