On my birthday I slipped into a pair of bad client shoes when I gave a bad brief to my hairdresser. Unfortunately this meant that the result wasn't just some half-hearted scamps, but an unforgiving 'Jackie O' bob and a big dent in my wallet.
I thought I was being the dream client. Giving the 'creative' (in my case, an expensive hairdresser) the freedom to do whatever he wanted. I gave him no direction. I let him take the lead.
I sat in the reclining chair, staring at the lush velvet wallpaper feeling really smug, whilst a lovely girl washed my hair. I thought I was the answer to his prayers, the blank canvas he'd always dreamt of.
My hairdresser, looking back, did try to gain some direction from me. He asked leading questions and about how I felt about lengths and styles I'd had in the past. Unfortunately for me, I didn't register his intent at the time, and so my responses still gave him nothing to work with.
My experience reminded me of Damien O'Malley's analogy on the brief Michelangelo could have received when asked to paint the Sistine Chapel, and the importance of expressing a clear proposition in a way to inspire a creative, in the hope of propelling them towards a solution.
As Damien said "Words are little bombs. The right ones can explode inside us demanding an original and exciting solution, instead of a mediocre pedestrian one."
With hindsight, the brief to my hairdresser would be something like this:
Please could you magically transform my hair into a delicious mix of sophistication, elegance and style.
And the result would be something like this:
And less like this:
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