MICHAEL SCHER

CO-CHAIRMAN, CREATIVE
HEY HARRY WORLDWIDE
PORTFOLIO NIGHT 7 TORONTO PARTICIPANT
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What are you hoping to experience at Portfolio Night?

“Fear and loathing.”

What single piece of advice would you give a young creative before he or she sits down with you at PN7?

“Have a point of view. Know who you are and what you do, and how you are going to sell it to me. I am not buying your work, I am buying you. Your work is just an insight into you.”

What was the reaction you got, the advice you received the very first time you showed your own book?

“Steve Hayden (co-creator of Apple’s ‘1984′ spot, then creative director of BBDO and now the Worldwide CCO of Ogilvy) told me that I had some of the best work and some of the worst work he had ever seen in a portfolio, and I should spend some time figuring out which was which.”

Do you prefer to look at work on a laptop or in a physical portfolio?

“The work should be good enough to make that a moot point.”

What the coolest thing somebody has done to get your attention (besides  having an amazing portfolio)?

“My first partner, when I was interviewing him for the job in the absence of my vacationing creative director, invited me to come see him open for the Indigo Girls at the Roxy on Sunset Blvd. His portfolio was good but not great, but his lyrics and stage presence convinced me that this guy had potential, and that he could teach me a thing or two that I would never learn from an awards book.”

What are your biggest pet peeves about the work in most junior portfolios?

“Derivative ideas. This is your chance to be totally original, maybe the last time in your career. Being brave and original is more important than being great or polished or familiar.”

What’s the first thing a junior needs to know about working at your agency?

“Bring ideas to the table, stop complaining and get on with it, and treat each day as an opportunity to dethrone the leadership of the agency.”

How do you feel about non-advertising expressions of creativity in a portfolio? For example, photography or poetry?

“Who cares about advertising? Show me that you can mobilize the masses, that you can create a phenomenon, that you can move the public into creating a community movement around an idea. I don’t care how you do that, but I am sure that it won’t be with a 30-sec gag featuring two people yucking it up in the kitchen.”

In general, how well do you think ad schools are preparing students for the business? What could they be doing better?

“Maybe I’m just nostalgic, but I think that this business was far more interesting before there were any ad schools. When agencies were peopled by misfits and malcontents who knew how to think, and gravitated to the business as a refuge for them to turn their creativity into a modest living with camaraderie, martinis at lunch and other great benefits.”

What would you say to a person with one phenomenal piece in their portfolio, but everything else in his or her book is mediocre or worse?

“Congratulations, that’s one more phenomenal idea than most people in this room. Keep swinging for the fences, and learn to edit.”