Are You Full Of Shit or Just Creative?

This is the second post in an ongoing series on bullshit in the real world. Hope you enjoy it.

My wife, who, for reasons I have never been able to discern, genuinely loves me, and has always believed I am full of shit. She considers it to be an endearing quality that I possess.
I have tried to explain to her on several occasions that professional creative people are all full of shit for one reason or another.
In advertising, you are selling ideas and one of the things you have to be able to do is come up with reasons why people should buy into your ideas.
Some of these reasons are perfectly rational. Others are mostly bullshit, that you generally you make up as you go along, to make people feel good about buying into the concept of what you are selling, or to bolster an argument you have for some detail that someone is nitpicking.
“Why does the model have to have blue eyes?” asks the client.
“Well there was a study done is Sweden just last year that proved unequivocally that blue eyed women are approximately 25% more captivating than brown or hazel eyed women, with both men and other women.”
I have no idea whether that’s true or not. I don’t really care, because nobody’s gonna make me verify it and it scores the point I want to score. No harm no foul. Just another spoiled brat creative guy getting his way.

Full of Shitters Are Everywhere

Don’t just think that being full of shit is an advertising thing. It’s everywhere where people who are selling ideas are selling ideas.
Guys like Tony Robbins are full of shit.
They say stuff that’s mostly useless about motivation, and yet they do it so well and with such conviction that people just light up and feel better about themselves when they hear it.
By the law of averages guys like Tony Robbins will occasionally come up with something profound and, you know, make it the title of their next book or something. But mostly they are full of shit.
That Gary Vaynerchuk guy who shouts at people to get off their asses and try stuff, he’s full of shit too. But it works, because he delivers it with a lot of panache and punch and he talks real fast so people get energized. There are even a lot of people who will admit he’s full of shit but they love him anyway. Now that’s some primo stuff.

Let’s Face It, The World Is Full of Shit

The world has gotten to the point where pretty much everybody who is running things is full of shit. Sometimes you have to back up your shit. But mostly people are seeing it in some sort of controlled medium like a podcast or recorded interview or TV news clip, so there’s no telling what’s real and what’s not.

The Good Old 80/20 Shit

A while ago I created a thing called the 80/20 Rule Of Almost Everything. I have shortened it down to the 80/20 Differential. It’s basically a variation of the Pareto Law, which may or may not have some shit attached to it.

This is a way for me to kind of quantify how full of shit everything is. And it’s handy because if you actually do sit down and think about it, it can genuinely make sense to most people.
Say I tell you that 80% of everything you read, see or hear on the Internet is shit. That will get you thinking, and subconsciously looking hard for the 20% that’s not.
I don’t know if this is a true statement or not. But being good at being full of shit, I can make this stuff sound completely plausible to, you know, 80% of everybody who hears it. Or 20%. It all depends.
Maybe it makes you a little more discerning, and that certainly can’t hurt. Because a lot of shit is really just hiding in plain site.
The bottom line here is that the world is pretty much all full of shit, except for people who actually make important stuff that can kill you if it’s not made right. And even some of those are guilty of some shit or other.

The Hierarchy of Shit

So then the issue becomes who is the best at being full of shit? It’s an interesting question.
I personally think that anybody who is good at doing whatever it is they do is full of shit to one degree or another. You have to be, because a lot of times people just don’t get real brilliance, so you have to throw in some shit to dumb it down for them.
Generally speaking people are not too bright. That doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent. It just means their brains are too cluttered up by whatever the world crams into their heads non-stop, and have trouble getting too deep into most stuff.
So In order to reach people without straining their brains to a dangerous degree, you have to sprinkle in some easy to grasp shit, so their eyes don’t glaze over and you lose them.
And that’s a really good rule to follow as you move forward. Never underestimate how cluttered up the brain of your prospect might be.

Please Don’t Take Offense

Now some of you will choose to be offended by my liberal use of the word shit. And that’s fine.
But it doesn’t really alter the fact that at some point in your careers, however brilliant they may be, you have had to or will have to or usually manage to toss in a little shit here and there.
It’s just reality. Shit happens. Because for one reason or another, we all make it happen.
So if that’s the case, then make sure you’re at least doing it with feeling.

If you want to read more of my shit, you can do that here:

https://www.bebee.com/publisher/@jim-murray

Download my free ebook, Small Business Communications For The Real World, here:

https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/

All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page

All content copyright 2016 Jim Murray.

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