“My shirt is orange!”, I defensively shout to my jesting friend.

“Nah, man that’s definitely pink.”, he mocks, You’re a grown man wearing a pink shirt, just admit it.”

The argument rocks back and forth until a third friend walks in and plops himself down on the couch in front of us. He listens for a minute and decides to offer his unsolicited opinion. He informs us that the shirt is, in fact, salmon. Our little debate had gained a third, entirely new perspective and the rages on. We all have points and counterpoints. We all have lively opinions and we are all certain that ours is correct. But who is actually right?

Well, if you ask the mantis shrimp, none of us are right. The mantis shrimp is a rainbow-colored, prawn-killing crustacean found in the oceans between Hawa’ii and Africa. In addition to being able to throw a punch that moves fast enough to boil the water around it, the mantis shrimp also possesses sixteen different types of photoreceptors in it’s eyes. Humans have only three types of photoreceptors. With just these three cones of vision we can create all the colors we see when we look at the rainbow. With sixteen such receptors, the mantis shrimp has the ability to perceive an exponentially greater number of color combinations.

To the mantis shrimp my shirt isn’t pink or orange or even salmon. Its a completely different color that no human has ever seen or could even imagine. Everything in the mantis shrimp’s world appears as an entirely different entity than it does to you and I.

No matter how right you think you are, the mantis shrimp still thinks you’re wrong

In the creative world, we constantly argue about who is right or wrong. You should have used a different font. That whale shouldn’t have fur. Noone should ever name their child after a character from The Lion King. It’s the same way in politics, in religion, in business, in everything. Even the very soundest of scientific theory is always subject to unknown data or ever changing variables.

Whenever i’m informed of how absolutely and totally wrong I am about something I think about what Tommy Lee Jones says to Will Smith after he enlightens him about the existence of alien life in Men In Black:

“Fifteen-hundred years ago everybody knew that Earth was the center of the universe. Five-hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”

We are all conditioned to hold tightly to the things we know are truths, but everything we’ve ever known or perceived is merely our own interpretation of an electrical pulse sending a message to our brains. Every single one of us, from the mantis shrimp to my Aunt Carol, interprets those pulses differently than the next. Whether we only see a few colors differently or our entire worlds spin in different directions, the point is we are all wrong about everything to someone at some point.

So why are we still so afraid of being wrong?

Galileo was wrong. Columbus was wrong. My friend who said I was wearing a pink shirt was definitely wrong. And guess what, no matter how conservative your opinions and ideas may be, they are absolutely dead wrong to someone.

So don’t hold back. Share ideas. Argue opinions. Make mistakes. Be miserably and terribly off-your-rocker crazy stupid wrong. Be so wrong you’re right – No, be so wrong you’re something totally different and better than right. Be so wrong you’re great.

So what if your boss thinks your ideas are stupid? So what if someone calls you a dumbass on Twitter? So what if the whole world points their collective fingers right in your face and laughs?

Who cares? The shrimp says they’re all wrong anyway.

 

I’ll never forget my first attempt at creating a real piece of digital art. I had spent a fair amount of time photoshopping the faces of my friends onto the bodies of fat people, and I felt like I was finally comfortable enough with the tools to create something beautiful.

 

Being 14 years old, I decided that beautiful piece of art would take the form of a desktop wallpaper featuring all my favorite rappers. I spent hours carefully cutting the backgrounds out of pictures I found on google images and arranging them just right. The rest of my evening was devoted to twisting knobs and clicking buttons until the effects made Lil Jon look like he was about to jump off of my screen, holler and spill liquor on me.

 

It was a masterpiece. I couldn’t wait to show my creation to the entire world! I excitedly pounded the keys as I logged into an internet forum where I had seen countless others post and review their mixtape covers, posters and whatever else they could slap Ja Rule’s face on. I hit submit. Then refresh. Then refresh again, eagerly waiting for the internet’s grand praises to start rolling in.

 

Finally the responses started coming. “Dude, just quit,” said one of the responses, “What the fuck did you do to Lloyd Bank’s head?” added another. The insults began to pile up until I read “There’s ugly, and then theres ugly, and then theres…. that.”

 

I wanted to cry.

 

I felt sick, sad and rejected. I wished I could disappear or time travel back to before I ever knew photoshop existed. I had just invested long hours and genuine emotion just to be informed that I am a talentless, valueless piece of shit. Am I really that bad at this?

 

The answer was yes. I was bad at this. I was unfathomably bad at this. I was so bad that if Michael Jackson had seen my work, he would have had to rename his seventh album. But I wasn’t bad enough to stop.

 

There came I time, days later, when I felt strong enough to pop my head out from under my covers and limp back to my computer with my tail between my legs. I kept making stuff and the abuse kept coming. Honestly it never stopped, but neither did I.

 

Now I have a house and car that art direction paid for, but that guy on YouTube still thinks I suck dick. Its a fact that as a creative, if you care about your work, it’s going to hurt. You are going to spend your whole life listening to people who can’t draw a stick figure tell you just how god-awful your drawings look. You’ll be told to kill yourself. Even more often you’ll be told to uninstall photoshop. Every now and then you might even be asked to donate your brain to science so they can use it to test the cure for stupid.

 

But eventually someone will believe in you. If you keep doing what you are passionate about, eventually someone will tell you how much they enjoyed something that you created.

Don’t get me wrong It’s still going to hurt. People will still call your babies ugly.

 

Even if you’re Justin Timberlake, the comment section will remind you what an untalented piece of garbage you are. You’ll still feel like an awful human being every time someone tells you you’re bad at this. But I promise you it’s all worth it.

If it isn’t, then “dude, just quit.”

I was sitting in the backseat of a white Chevy Astro cruising up Interstate five in California when my mom asked if anyone wanted to stop and grab something to drink. My family was on the last legs of a four-day road trip. It was a hot summer day and we were all sweaty, tired and cranky. We pulled into the parking lot of a Chevron station and pulled open the sliding side door of our vehicle. My two younger brothers and I sprinted to the drink section, eager to select a disgustingly sugar-filled beverage off the refrigerated convenience store shelf.

 

I selected a bottle of Fruitopia, which the Coca-Cola company had intentionally dyed a sickening, synthetic shade of blue that only a twelve year-old could possibly find attractive. I giddily took the bottle to the cashier and waited for my mother’s AmEx card to do its magic. Soon the cool blue beverage was mine, and I carried it back to the car and popped the top.

 

Unable to wait any longer, I popped the top and heard the delightful fizz of carbonation escaping the top for the first time. I flipped the lid over and looked at the promotional writing underneath the plastic. It revealed that I was a winner! It was the first time I had ever won anything more than another complimentary soda. The thrill of victory made my twenty ounces of cerulean sludge taste all the more refreshing.

 

I placed the cap in the mail and waited for Fruitopia to send me my prize – a catalog from which I could pick any music CD I wanted. Living in the country, I had rarely been exposed to any music that didn’t involve whiskey soaked memories of lost lovers or dead dogs. I had yet to develop my musical taste, so this decision was an important one. I flipped through the catalog and was disappointed by page after page of old people music and Christmas compilations. Finally I came across on disc that peaked my curiosity – *Nsync. I wasn’t really familiar with their music, but I remembered that the Disney channel had told me they were cool, so I decided to cash in my winnings on their CD.

 

When the disc finally arrived, I dusted off one of my Dad’s old Sony Walkman CD players and popped it in. I must have listened to that CD five hundred times over the next year. As my first and only CD, it influenced No Strings Attached to be my second and Celebrity my third. Despite the years of teasing and bullying it caused me, I remained an *Nsync fan long enough to see the day Justin Timberlake became cool. They were the foundation of my introduction into not just music, but pop culture as a whole. And it all started with a piece of advertising.

 

The Fruitopia promotion that introduced me to music was by no means innovative or award-winning. Hell, it probably didn’t even take effort to create. Until now I never really even thought about it, and it certainly didn’t make me want to drink Fruitopia. But it affected me. Maybe even changed the course of my life.

 

Advertising has that power. We have been given a platform to reach out and connect with people, and that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s easy to get caught up in the glamour of lights and cameras, celebrity endorsements and award shows, and unfortunately it sometimes feels like that’s what its all about. How many times have you been asked to come up with a “Gold Lion” idea? How many times has that been your focus?

Now, I’m not saying go make shitty twist off cap promos. Certainly don’t do that. But if something so thoughtless, recycled and mass produced has such power, imagine what we can do if we really try to interact and create real experiences for people. Let’s not forget that every project you have the opportunity to work on is more than a shot at money, success and awards. It’s a real chance to connect with your audience.