Living the Creative Life, an Interview with Keith Lane
OCTOBER 29, 2009
In August I wrote an article about Keith Lane’s visit to CDIA, and recently Keith was gracious enough to give me a phone interview. We talked for several hours, and he came across as a funny, caring human being with a passion for the creative life. What follows are some of the highlights of what I was able to hastily type down.
Q. How do you use social networking like Facebook?
A. Keith Lane: “I used Facebook to discover business opportunities on a global basis for my clients and for myself. Facebook and LinkedIn cover everything I need. LinkedIn is the Taj of social networking, Facebook is the Bates Motel. LinkedIn is primarily about doing business, but you can still be irreverent. I use Facebook as a social outlet and for business as well. If used correctly, it (Facebook) will build content and carve out your personality; your unique personality; your own personal brand. What makes you different. I use Facebook as a sounding board for creative ideas, I don’t play the games. Don’t bore people; don’t tell people what you had for dinner, don’t show shots of your dog 30 times a day. I could care less about Mafia Wars or “What Martini am I?” Be innovative and irreverent. Use it to promote your friends and clients as well. I have a blast on Facebook, but it has also led to a number of new business opportunities. Nobody cares what you had for breakfast, and anybody who cares is as boring as you are.”
Q. In your presentation, you seemed a little anti-Photoshop. What are your real feelings on what it represents for advertising, photography, and creativity in general?
A. Keith: “CS4 is a fantastic tool, but you shouldn’t use it as a crutch. Long before PS, you had to get the shot right in camera. If you screwed up, you had to get die transfers and do airbrushing, which was expensive and very time-consuming. I do love what CS4 can do, it’s an incredible digital canvas to bring your ideas to life. I’m a photoshop moron, but I know exactly what I want, how it should look, what the font should be, how it should be leaded and how it should be kerned. I have the creative vision. I know exactly what the end result should look like, sound like, and feel like. I need to collaborate with great photoshop artists. You can have the most expensive equipment, but if you don’t have a great idea, it’s worthless.”
Q. You talked a lot about the “creative process”. Do you have any habits that foster creativity, like a sketchbook?
A. Keith: “My ideas start on a pad of paper, a napkin or a receipt out of my wallet. Anything I can write on with my free UPS pen. I keep a notebook in my car, by my bed, that’s my canvas. A receipt out of my wallet. I keep lots of cheap crappy pens because they can run out of ink. One time I had to scratch my ideas into the paper with a dead pen, and I couldn’t read what I had scratched! I had to rub over it with a no. 2 pencil later to read it!”
Q. Is there any process you go through when you need to come up with creative new ideas?
A. Keith: “When I’m given an assignment from a client I need to know what makes their product or service unique. They have a lot of competitors whether they know it or not. If you don’t think you have competitors, you’ll be out of business really fast. I do my homework, a lot of research first. Let’s say I get a job from a client, how do I make my product unique? There are a lot of competitors. I research my brains out, about the categories, their competitors. No slogans, I hate that word. It’s not a slogan, it’s your positioning line. Then, I go to the notepad, Then I’ll write 20 lines, 30 lines, to see if it works across all kinds of communication channels, which is absolutely crucial. I carve out a creative strategy using notepad after notepad. Whatever you do digitally has to translate just as effectively in print, broadcast, radio, point of sale and even outdoor. You have to be able to brand seamlessly.”
Q. What is the relationship between photography and advertising? Do you think that it’s still a sound one, or do new purely digital media threaten photography’s place in modern business?
A. Keith: “Any Creative director or art director who knows their stuff knows that a unique concept requires a unique photograph, that works in it’s purest sense.. A good art director will always know art. When the stock market crashed the creative industry received an anal probe. Magazines are much thinner now, and when you’ve got no ads, there’s no revenue. This created a domino effect throughout the industry. We in the industry all got slammed. That effected the photography industry, video editors, audio engineers, broadcasting stations. This has been the worst year any of us have ever experienced. What I’ve seen take place is that corporations know that the industry is sucking wind, and they expect creative directors to work for free, pro bono work. In february I got a call from an unnamed corporation, a CEO, let’s call him Chaz, that offered me a new advertising campaign. It was a freezing cold sleety day. My windshield wiper snapped off. I pulled into the building, the wind was blowing 50mph. The parking lot was filled with european cars. I went into this boardroom. Even the women at this place were named Chaz, everyone had the same gray suit. I was soaking wet, freezing. Chaz, the head of the company said “I’m so glad you could make it. Our sales tumbled due to the horrific economy. We’d like to rent your brain for three months. You develop our entire ad campaign and we’ll gladly reimburse you if the economy turns around.” I then pulled an Alec Baldwin from GlenGary Glen Ross. I said “Put your blackberries down.” It was dead silent. “You are a for-profit corporation. I do a lot of pro bono work. You all garner really nice salaries. If you all took 20% pay cuts, you could afford me. Or you could leave everything and come work for me for three months for free and then maybe I’ll pay you. Want to take me up on that offer?” Dead silence. Corporations who are employing this reptilian strategy need to stop doing this to people in the creative industry because it is disgraceful behavior and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
Q. How do you think the industry has changed since you started out?
A. Keith: “In the 80’s you could do business with a handshake. You could share information with your competitors who were your buddies after hours. With the digital age, things started to change. People started to get paranoid and nervous, and it only got worse after 9/11.”
Q. From the presentation, it sounds like you and Rob have had some fun times to say the least. Do you have any other anecdotes? What’s it like to work with Rob?
A. Keith: “What’s it like to work with Rob? It’s a dream! Its interesting, if you take a look at the great Film directors they always work with the same actors and creative teams. They always surround themselves with great people.Why? Because there’s a comfort level because they know what each other is thinking because they’ve worked together so long. When I did my first job with Rob, we understood where each other was coming from instinctively. We didn’t get in each others way. We collaborated with great immediacy. There are a few photographers I’ve worked with like that. Clint Clemens is one. Take a look at his work. Philip Porcella is another fella to look at. Sometimes as a creative director, a photographer might be better suited for one kind of shot instead of another. Let’s say you need an underwater shot, you’re going to get an underwater photographer. Being able to shoot anything makes a photographer great, What makes Rob great is that he will do anything to get the shot. You gotta get the shot. He hung off a cliff in El Capitan, risking his life to get the shot. He’s fearless, and to be a great photographer you must be fearless. Every assignment I ever worked with Rob, he got the shot. You have to work with a photographer that has the same mindset as you do. You have to take risks and you have to have guts. If you don’t have guts, it’s not going to be magic.”
A few other memorable quotes from the interview: “How do you treat people? it’s real simple. Treat people like human beings with dignity, humanity, and respect. I abhor bullies, especially adult bullies.” and my personal favorite: “When I first met (CDIA’s) Rick Ashley, he looked exactly like Kenny Loggins, he looked liked a creative guy. However, Rick can’t sing.”
Keith Lane currently has a lot of irons in the fire, including a new business talk radio show in the works, a cartoon strip with a former Disney Animator, and a teaching position at CDIA.
by SHAWN READ
