few things start off good, fewer are great, and nothing begins perfectly...

I had this conversation with myself as I finished a couple of projects at home and work the last couple days. The nature of what I do is to obsess over the tiniest minutia through scores of ads or copy and promos so that nothing interrupts the connection between the message and its audience. The idea being that if you noticed my work I have failed. If I have done a good job then my work and the work of my compatriots goes unnoticed. If we mess up then we get customer service complaints. All of this and a couple of really late nights stressing over individual frames of video (there are 24 frames in one second) led me to the larger idea:

My favorite part of the recent hit Juno was when the movies namesake declares her true feelings to the jilted lover/father Bleeker. In rapid fire razor sharp eloquence Juno describes all the things she loves about him (plays guitar, runs cross country, funny, has good breath) and how cool Bleeker is without really trying. To this he mutters nearly under his breath, "I actually try really hard."

Very few things start off good; probably fruit is one of the only products in the world that starts off pretty good and cannot really be made better. Other than that we have our work cut out for us. When we start a magazine ad it starts off like a rejected preschoolers tempra painting and ends up as a finished piece that only looks effortless and simple. Only after much collaboration, confrontation, and revision does a product leave our offices looking good. It was fought for, scrapped, rehashed, and finally approved and nobody outside our doors cares, nor should they. It is MY job to make things good. The only job the customer has is to know; to know whether they do or do not like our product, to know whether it works for them, and to know if they had a positive or negative experience. If I interrupt that process by allowing stale and sub par representations and messages about our company escape then regardless of the merit of my company's product I have failed.

The good news, however, is that as long as things don't start off too well and need to be made better I will have pretty tight job security.

PS- If you are wondering about the levels of great and perfect as indicated in the title, let me finish up with the good level first and then I will get back to you.