7-Eleven does a brisk business. If you’re driving along late at night, you can run in, grab something to eat and be on your way in minutes. What 7-Eleven sells is not so much food as convenience, and it’s a very successful formula. It works for 7-Eleven and it works for consumers, that is, unless what you really want is a great meal. It might be less convenient to drive across town to a little bistro and wait while a master chef prepares a culinary delight just for you, but the results may be more satisfying than an irradiated hot dog and a Slurpee.
When it comes to advertising should we be shopping for convenience or taste?
Convenience shopping has become a force in the commercial industry. In order to boost profits, many companies have added new services. Some production companies have gone into off-line editing. Editing companies now offer sound design and mixing. Traditional post houses have branched out into animation and visual effects. Some of these new operations offer excellent talent, but in a lot of cases their main selling point is convenience. Agencies can knock off two, three or four steps in the production process in one spot.
One-stop shopping is convenient, but that convenience may have a high price. An Avid does not an editor make. At a relatively modest cost, you can buy a ProTools system and a sound effects library, but that does not transform an assistant editor into a sound designer.
It takes time, effort and training to develop a craft. One strength the commercial industry has enjoyed in the past is an apprenticeship tradition where an assistant spends years working under a master, developing their skills, talent and taste. They learn the subtleties of their specialty and, if they are really good, develop a passion for the work. Only then do they deserve to call themselves an artist.
The rise of convenience shopping has helped to short-circuit the apprenticeship process. It tempts companies to rush junior staff along and plug them into roles with the benefit of relatively little on the job training. Inevitably, this has an effect on the integrity of the work. You often see spots today where the sound is poor or the cut is sloppy and the reason may be that somewhere along the line someone chose the more "convenient" solution.
Convenience has a lot of appeal. Agency creatives are under tremendous pressure to turn out work quickly. They put in long hours during a production and do not relish spending more hours at a mixing session across town.
Making commercials has never been a matter of convenience. Great work requires great effort. As a sound designer, it may sometimes be convenient to grab a track from a stock library, but if an original sound will work better, I feel compelled to make the extra effort to produce one.
There is nothing wrong with convenience. A smart business person wants to make it as convenient as possible for clients to work with his or her company. But convenience should never be the sole or even the most important factor in choosing one creative collaborator over another. Talent, skill and experience are much more important criteria. Isn’t it worth working with someone who really understands the concept and is passionate about applying the full extent of his or her abilities to making it as good as it can possibly be?
In this business the integrity of the work has to come first. We must never let our commitment to doing our best work be undermined because it is more convenient to settle for less. The extra effort that it sometimes requires to work with the best talent is worth it, if what you end up with is less like a hot dog and more like a gourmet meal.
