CHAPTER 5

HOW TO SELL YOUR WORK

GET REFERENCE

When you come up with an idea, you probably have a picture in your head of what you want the finished piece of work to look like. But to sell it to others—your creative director, the account team, the client—it’s essential that you get “reference”: images or film clips that will help them see it.

Of course, there’s a danger that if you show people reference of something similar to your idea, they’ll conclude that what you’re proposing is not original. For that reason, you should only ever be producing reference for an executional style or technique, never for a strategy or an idea. There’s a big difference, because taking a style from one artform and applying it to a completely different arena can ...

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