Playing to lose?

Tempers flaring over at Scamp, with a lot of people taking exception to the latest of his excellent Tuesday Tips.

In essence, what he seems to be saying is, "Don't put forward crap work, even when that's what the client wants".

I'm in no position to judge if he's correct that it's a good move career-wise.

But in terms of job satisfaction, he can't be wrong.

ADs and copywriters spend their working lives learning how to craft creative, engaging, persuasive solutions to communication problems.

In suspending your professional judgement and presenting something you think a client will buy instead of something you think will do the best job, you're letting that knowledge go to waste.

Ultimately, you're doing the client a disservice by denying them the full benefit of your expertise. But more importantly, you're doing yourself a disservice by denying yourself the pleasure of engaging fully in the creative and intellectual challenges of the job.

I don't know about you, but those challenges are the reason I'm here. Without them, all you're left with is an industry with poor job security, little community respect and fairly average pay.

You don't become a prize fighter just so you can take a dive.