Don’t Do Good Work

Something hit me, recently. It was right after we dropped our ad for Corley for Commissioner that addresses his support for local first responders.

In our last post about whether you should take a job, Jacob discussed a good matrix for helping make the decision. For Jason’s ad, we hit two point solidly:

1. Feel – who doesn’t get all emotional when talking about first responders. Plus, our vision for the project had us excited
2. Reel – boy howdy! Did we ever strike gold with the shots we got.

What’s the point? Fair question. Since this was such a last minute job, we could have done a simple talking-head setup, and just got Jason saying his lines. In and out in a couple of hours and edited in a couple more. It would have been easy and it would have been good.

But, there’s a problem. We don’t want to do good work.

There. I said it. Secret’s out. We don’t want to do good work. (Please, keep reading)

Why don’t we want to do good work? Because, it’s not hard; it’s not challenging; and it’s not fulfilling.

We want to do GREAT work. I know, the title and all feels a little click-bait-ish, but, it holds true to us.

When we heard that this commercial was going to address support for our local first responders, I knew in my bones that we couldn’t go simple.

One of our core values, at Hamil Bros Studios, is to do the work that scares the hell out of us. In other words, take on jobs that stretch what we think we can do and make it happen. This doesn’t mean that we make promises that we can’t keep, it just means that we make promises that are going to require some intense problem-solving to make them happen. This has led us to deliver the best work we can deliver. We also believe that this is one of the main things that separates us from the rest of the pack.
In the case of this particular project. We took a volunteer fire station that really wasn’t much to look at and turned it into a visual masterpiece (by our standards). We also took volunteer firefighters (not actors), and made them look like superheroes.
When we saw the location, I wasn’t sure how we were going to make it happen, but, we problem solved and turned it into one of our best ads ever.

So, here’s what I want you to take away from this: don’t do good work. Do great work and it will pay off.