By Damon Stapleton, co-founder and chief creative officer at The Monkeys Aotearoa
So, if you want to know why the book has a weird title – Keep shooting until you see the f*ckers smoke – you can blame my grandfather. But you will have to read the book to find out why.
However, the idea for this book was born when I was promoted to executive creative director at the tender age of 30. The promotion was a couple of years too early. I didn’t really know what I was doing. It was a very famous agency with an incredible creative pedigree. And it was a very large agency that was going through a very tough time. Clients were not happy and staff were leaving in droves. I was suddenly given the Sheriff’s badge and I was thrown into all sorts of gunslinger situations that were somewhere between scary and terrifying.
I remember thinking at the time that I really needed a mentor or some advice or inspiration. I guess this book and damonsbrain.com is something I wrote for myself to remedy the situation. The great thing I realised by doing it was I discovered most creatives feel the same way. In hindsight, you are never ready to be a creative director. But I digress.
The idea for the book came from some advice I was given by an old timer in the business. He said, “When you get made creative director, they load the bullets into the gun and fire. That’s when you start running. It’s up to you how long you dodge them before you get hit. But,” and he stressed this part, “eventually you will get hit.”
Granted, he was drunk and very angry that somebody so young and inexperienced had been promoted, but his words have stayed with me all these years.
There have been many moments in my career where I had wished I had a bullet or two to fire back. And the reason for that is that creativity is often unproveable and intangible until the work is made. Creativity is supposed to be subjective. That is the bloody point of it. It is about having a point of view.
However, in a world that loves objectivity, this can be a difficult path to navigate. How do you survive when you only have a feeling or a hunch? What do you do when you are the only one who thinks it will work? How do you stick to your guns? How do you sell a car that is invisible?
This book is an attempt to give you a few creative bullets that might help you answer those questions, or just give you a bit of perspective if you are having a shit Tuesday.
I guess you can either use it as a creative paramedic or machine gun, depending on your day.
Being a creative can be a stressful, weird, and lonely business. You can be in a room where everybody thinks creativity is a flouncy nice-to-have and you are not taken seriously. And the following week, you can be in the same room with the exact same people who now believe and desperately need creativity to solve impossible business problems. Creativity goes from being bullshit to an elixir that can fix just about anything. This is just one of the odd things about being a creative. Exact same ideas but different circumstance or different people and you get a different result.
I always laugh at how many books on creativity are written by people that think the business of coming up with ideas is all fun and sunshine and fucking roses. The truth is it isn’t. It can be insane. And often is. It’s at these times you want a little inspiration, a little help, or just feel like somebody is in your corner. I suppose over the years, I have tried to develop beliefs and thoughts that do that.
This book has 44 bullets that are either an idea or a story that I have written down over the last 25 years.
If I am honest, I am not sure you can teach anybody else to be a creative. You kind of have to figure it out for yourself. You must do the work and work out what works for you. Hopefully, there is something in the book that helps you on your journey. All I can say is it helped me.
And hey, if it doesn’t, I will quote the late, great comedian Jackie Mason in my defence.
“It’s like chicken soup for a dead guy. It can’t hurt.”
Enjoy.
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You can buy a copy of Keep shooting until you see the f****ers smoke here