A little while back I had to drop off some brochures to a few elementary schools for a client.

Walking into an elementary school, with everything that kids are told, about strangers, can be tougher than walking into a production meeting with a client for the first time.

I’ve got two young kids, so I’m a fan of this scrutiny.

A messenger comes within your space, figure out what their intention is before they open their mouth or move any closer.

It’s really how they should treat any message, not just the messenger.

I tell my kids, it’s a crap filter.

And kids have a lot of crap to sift through, so they need to be good at it.

So I buzzed into the building, took a few awkward stares from the children, and made a direct line for the administrative office.

I said my piece, handed over the brochures, smiled, then quickly turned to continue on to my next stop.

On top of the few deliveries that I had to make, I had to meet a client to discuss a script that we had wrote for them, and was hoping to get the sign off to proceed with production.

But before I could grab for the door handle, a young boy pushed the door open and shot a glance at me.
I remember seeing the look on his face and thinking, (shamefully now) ‘oh, this kid must be a treat to work with.’

He wasn’t really portraying his happy face.

But before I could catch the door, he lunged backward to grab it and hold it open for me.

He smiled at me, then apologized (for almost not holding the door open).

My thoughts changed immediately.

What an ass I was to judge him based on one glance.

But that’s what we do isn’t it?

We make judgements every day, on shorter and shorter messages.

In a few seconds we have to evaluate what the message is saying, is it good, can I trust it, etc.…

Do I click to skip, or continue?

This boy gave me a second chance to re-evaluate my initial thoughts.

I thanked him and smiled back. And for the rest of my drive that day, I continued to think what a wonderful kid he must be.

That’s the beauty of human interaction. Whether spoken or not, there is a dialogue.

But in the advertising world it’s a rare instance that our audience will give us that second chance.

So we need to do either one of two things:

Make sure there is only one way to interpret the message, or, allow for that brief instance of evaluation, and take that interpretation on a journey to where we really want it to be.

Whether he knew it or not, that boy did it (the later) marvellously.