We were lucky to catch up with Christopher Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.
Christopher, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?
The best advice I ever got about advertising was from a trombone player. The summer after 9th grade, I was taking a jazz improvisation workshop at the university near my hometown in upstate New York (I was an avid trumpet player all the way through college). On the first day one of the instructors, a fantastic trombone player named Doug Sertl, asked me what kind of music I listened to in my spare time. I admitted that I was mostly a metalhead and didn’t listen to much jazz at all. He looked me in the eye and said, matter-of-factly but not unkindly, that I would never be a great jazz player, period. If you want to be great, he said, you have to study the greats. It’s just that simple. It applies to advertising or any creative pursuit: You have to steep yourself in it, study the best work and try to recognize what makes it great, and try to emulate that kind of thinking. You have to become a hobbyist, a historian, an insufferable fanboy (or fangirl) of your chosen discipline. If you don’t know what came before, how can you do what’s next?
Oh, and I’m still a metalhead. But I do listen to a lot of jazz, too (mostly while cooking).
Christopher, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I went to Penn State as a journalism major because I wanted to write things. I switched to advertising so I could write things that I made up without violating a professional code of ethics. Penn State didn’t have a portfolio program or creative track, and I couldn’t afford two years of a portfolio school so, despite graduating with two degrees and all kinds of flying colors, I was unemployable in my chosen profession. Eventually, after six months of waiting tables at my hometown Olive Garden while scraping a portfolio together and papering the industry with cover letters, a small agency in Dallas called MBRK decided to give me a shot at writing copy. Now, 28 years later, I’m still doing it. My title has just gotten a little longer.
I helped launch Plot Twist Creativity in January of 2021 with my partner Dave Kroencke and a close-knit team of a dozen folks we’d worked with at The Richards Group (now TRG) during my more than two (in Dave’s case, three) decades there. There’s a much longer story about how that came about, but suffice it to say that starting an agency wasn’t really in the plan (hence our agency name, Plot Twist). But it’s given us all the opportunity to create our own culture, go after projects that interest us, and make our own rules. Or, in many cases, do away with them. We’re a full-service agency with a ton of retail experience, a large portion of which was for our two foundational clients, H-E-B and Central Market, but our Keynote slide of experience has a whole lot of other logos on it (and I’m grateful to say we keep adding new ones). I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done. But I’d say I’m most proud of the long relationships I’ve managed to maintain in an industry where so many people are moving around so much. We’re now getting calls from people we worked with years or even decades ago, hoping to work with us again. And a group of people who have worked together this long (and want to keep working together) is pretty rare, too. It’s just unbelievably gratifying. We’re already growing, and we’ve had to hire four or five more people to handle the work.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice.
My view on NFTs is that I have no fungible idea what all the hype is about. There are artistic/creative/IP movements within the digital space that are much more interesting and less scammy. I’m far more excited about digital technology that expands the possibilities and pushes the boundaries of creativity instead of just commodifying it. But NFTs seem to be the Pet Rock of the moment so we have to at least be conversant with them. Mostly they seem to be a way to extend the worst tendencies of the crypto movement into art, music, and other media. Just what we needed, right?
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
When I was starting out in the business, I wanted what most young creatives want: Awards, notoriety, going on cool shoots. What that really translates to is an overwhelming need to be taken seriously by people you respect and who you regard with awe in some respects. Some creatives see things like awards as the ticket to their next big job. But I was already at the agency I wanted to work for and moving around wasn’t really in the plan. Then it became about credibility within the agency, which everybody wants and, if they’re honest, is what really motivates them.
Once I got my own creative group, the goal shifted, and I became more focused on helping everyone be successful and do their best work. Part of that is selfish: People who are happy working for you will keep working for you. Part of it was my desire to be the antidote to the asshole creative director stereotype who thinks it’s their mission to make life as difficult for young creatives as it was for them.Those were blessedly rare at TRG, but the industry at large is full of them.Senior creatives and group heads were expected to contribute work (rather than just supervise or manage), so on big jump-ball projects you had the odd dynamic of occasionally pitching against your own employees (or your own boss). So you had to find a balance between wanting to sell your own work and cheerleading the work of others. Starting Plot Twist has given me the chance to be the cheerleader and guide way more often. I’m still writing spots and headlines and TikToks, but that’s just because we’re small and the workload requires it. So my mission now is to make everyone who works for us (and every client that hires us) feel like they can do their best work here, in an environment that recognizes and rewards them for it. It’d still be cool to get our name on a Cannes Lion, though.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://plottwist.com
- Instagram: @christopher1864
- Facebook: @plottwistcreativity
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-smith-wordsmith/
- Twitter: @WeArePlotTwist
- Other: Agency Instagram: @plottwistcreativity
Image Credits
Kevin Reid, Kim Alexander