17: Why Overproduced Content Doesn't Perform: The Perfectionism Trap

Joe Baron: I've spent years getting paid to make things look here's the thing I never said out loud. In every project, there's a moment where the work is actually done. It's clear. It says what it needs to say. Done. Finish. It's good enough. And yet, I keep going anyway. There's a version eight, version nine, and so on and so on. Ninth version doesn't make it any clearer for you. All it does is just make it safer for me. Polish is overrated. I've been a creative lead on many projects and I understand what that sounds like coming out of my mouth. Hey everybody, welcome back to Market to Me. I'm your host, Joe Barron, Creative Director and Founder of Branded Barron. Now, we've all been there, or I know I have, I've been there where you just keep editing, overthinking, thinking the next version will be better. Add another one. Quick edits you're focused on video. Another design file. Another edit of that logo. Rethinking that marketing strategy over and over. Writing down. new document. well I always felt that you always had to be polished when you're delivering the final result when you're delivering anything as a presentation. Here's the part I keep coming back to. Two people said exactly where you're sitting. I'm here and you're there on your side of the screen. And they told this to my face, months apart, from different industries, same idea, coming at me from two different directions. I nodded, said great point, and published episodes. And then I went back to editing what I was doing, creating another version. It took reading it in someone else's book months later before I actually heard what my own guest or A told me. Before I get to the book, I have to tell you what I was actually doing because I don't think most creatives know they're doing it. I didn't. Here's the trap. If you're in a creative field, you assume polish is the price of admission. Your work is the product. So it has to be perfect. Or people will think you don't know what you're doing. if you're editing the video, you are slicing and splicing and cutting, redoing it over, or maybe just redoing the file, maybe you're changing the text on a graphic. Rewriting the tagline over and over and over. For me, I was creating patterns for apparel in Adobe Illustrator. And I just kept going and going and going when I had a clear sketch, clear concept, maybe I expanded two or three times. I didn't expand anymore. It was like it was like working like I didn't have a deadline. And another example. I was working on video, doing the voiceover, rethinking it, recutting it, redoing it. But when I listened back to it, what was really the difference between the first take or the the fourth take? Not really much. And that's the whole point. honest with me. You've got a file right now sitting in your computer that's been almost ready for a month. You know exactly which one I'm talking about, even before I said that sentence. That's the one. meanwhile, somebody hit record on their phone, talked for about six minutes, posted it, built an audience. While I was still on version six, seven, of the same edit, And redoing the voiceover. Their work wasn't better than mine. It was just the fact that their work was out there. and I couldn't argue myself out of it because every excuse I had sounded like professionalism. It sounded like craft. It took a marketer, somebody working the same side of the street I do, design and marketing, are in the same room, to name what I was actually doing. and he did it in about a page and a half. And it was Seth Godin in his book The Practice. There's a chapter in it, well, more like segments, the way the book is broken up. If you pick it up, you'll see. And then anyway, it's called Polish is overrated. And I read it once, I read twice, read it three times. You get the point. I read it multiple times. His point roughly is, fixing your typos and and your obvious errors is just the cost of being in the game. Gotta do it. It's table stakes. But those last few layers of polish, that's usually perfectionism. That's not a service to your audience. Version nine isn't for them. It's for you. He gives the example of the band Steely Dan, where they were perfectionists. They refused to go on tour for years because they wanted to perfect their sound in the studio, hiring studio musicians, really nailing down their sound. Now they tour, but Back then they were just focused on that. But then Godin also asks, who else is still on the music charts? And they're not polished. You got Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Artists who never won for being polished. What they sold was intimacy. The feeling you were in the room. And honestly, there's been stories I've heard that if you're in Asbury Park at the right time in a certain bar, you might get a little Bruce Springsteen sighting, maybe even a private concert. I don't know. I've just heard things. Anyway. that made sense that they were they were still chart toppers and they didn't have a polished sound. And yet people love them. Now, when I read that, my honest reaction was like, okay, but why? Why would it be if you're more polished, somebody may believe you less? That like that sounds backwards. More effort should mean more trust. Right? Here's what we've got. Polish is the sound of something being made for an audience. and nobody thinks they're an audience. Everybody thinks they're a person, they're an individual. You know? I am I. And we've all been trained. you've known since you were young that the flawless version is the edited version. So when something's perfect, some part of your brain quietly files it as produced. And produce means somebody's selling me something. So it's not that they catch you in a lie, it's that they can tell it was made for everybody. And a thing made for everybody isn't talking to anybody. you're anything like me you've already been arguing with me you're going Joe that's musicians my work is the product I can't just throw garbage up and call it authentic I hear you I've been making that same argument for years But hold on to that. Don't let it go because it's fair. And I'm going to deal with it head on before this is over. Now, too polished and people will stop believing you. Not because they caught you, because they can hear it was made for everybody. But there's a second thing in the book that I actually think is the bigger idea. Because Godin doesn't just say polish is overrated. He says failure is the foundation of our work. And once I sat down with that, the polish thing stopped being a style question and started being a math question. Godin's argument is that the process demands relive in the frontier. New skills, new audience, finding new magic for the audience you've already got. And the second you've already mastered something, you start over looking for the next thing. And here's the line that got me. The only way to find something new is to be prepared to be wrong on your way to being right. Now look at what polish really is. Polishing is trying to be right the first time. It's trying to skip the wrong part. and you can't. That's not how any of this works. Every creator who's ever done anything has a long, nearly infinite strings of failures behind it. all the ways how not to start novel, all the ways not to invent the light bulb. failure isn't the thing that happens when the practice goes badly. Failure is the practice. You might say, unfortunately. Seth Godin's example is Nintendo. Nintendo started out as a playing card company. When they were found in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan, they were playing cards. Then as they grew, they started expanding and they tried taxis, they tried instant rice, All of it failed. And they kept going until something landed. You know, that's a hundred years of being wrong on their way to be right. And now they found success with Super Mario. That's the mascot. And Nintendo is going strong. and here's my favorite little tidbit about Nintendo. It has nothing to do with anything really. It's just the fact that Nintendo and the Eiffel Tower, they're both the same age. And it is technically it's older than the Coca Cola company, but not really the Coca-Cola recipe. As a soft drink was created three years prior in eighteen eighty six. So you have a plain card company from 1889 spent a hundred years being wrong and nobody remembers the taxis. They remember Mario. so when I'm sitting on version 10, what am I actually doing? I'm trying to be right without being wrong. And that's not craft. That's just being that's just that's taking a long way to never shipping. It's easy to find a nod at the book. You can agree with a paragraph and change nothing. I did for about a week. And what actually made it stick was realizing I'd been told twice by people I invited onto the show. the first guy never said polish once. He was just talking about sandwiches. And that was my guest, Anthony Biggie Bangomo from Delhi Fresh Threads, out in Orlando, Florida. He runs a clothing brand that is sandwich themed. we got into a discussion about what brands should be doing. And a lot of the brands that are out there show the highlight reels. he was arguing that smaller to medium sized brands, they really should be focusing on behind the scenes, showing what's really messy, What it really takes to run a brand. Show that messy desk. Show those orders that you need a pack and you have that they're piling up. Because yeah, you could show the great Instagram angles, high quality images, but that's not what it's like day to day. social media, especially Instagram, used to be, hey, here's a picture of my lunch. And now it's this super perfect performance. We all get caught in it. But show your day to day. You're there. Show what's really happening. It's not polished and like. The messy desk, the actual work, the unhighlight reel. None of that was made for an audience. That's what reads as real. that episode I argued that on that episode I argue the opposite of what I've been saying that I like polished that's what I grew up with on that episode I told her I like polished that's what I grew up with I say when it comes with branding and graphic design I just can't get on camera and go yo what's up with my it like it just doesn't feel natural especially with picking up my phone Biggie had this whole answer and it's worth checking out. It's in episode nine of Market To Me. You can check the link in description. he said one more thing that I took note but then completely ignored. McDonald's can be mediocre and you'll still go back because it's consistent. one bad meal at a small spot and wow, that is bad. Let's hold on to the word consistent because a couple episodes later, I had content marketer, the content queen, Mariah McGuinness, say that same exact word back to me. Right after she agreed with me about Something I've been arguing this whole On an episode, I told her I liked polish. That's what I grew up with. And with comes to branding and graphic design, it just feels awkward and unnatural to just pick up my phone and be yo, what's up, everybody? How you doing? Let's check out the designs. Just feels awkward, doesn't feel natural. I said in marketing, you kind of have to have this glitzing glamour to an extent. And she agreed with me. Mariah likes polished too. She mentions how she created a docuseries for a business that's been around for twenty plus years and it amassed 200,000 views across all the channels. It was polished and it worked. But then she also lists the example of Louis Vuitton on like TikTok. you have some model pick up the bag, show it, model leaves, or create this whole story, it just doesn't really resonate. It feels fake. It feels like the too polished look just didn't land. And and she she roughly said, like it's not so much how it looks, it's what you share. and then she gave me the exact words that I'd been reaching for. she told me a client asked her why everybody suddenly just talked to the camera instead of doing a polished video. And her answer was, because what connects now is that it feels like you just FaceTimed me. Like we're just talking. You and I, not anyone else. That's it. The whole thing. Polish is broadcast. FaceTime is conversation. She said that to me a while ago. I've been trying to reverse engineer it ever since. And she just said it in one sentence while I sat there. Just listening and nodding. And I even brought up Seth Coden on that episode as well. I asked her about his take that people say that they want authenticity, but what they actually want is consistency. And she agreed with him. She mentions a story about working with a freelancer and they were, trying to get something done and there was a delay, and he was being authentic, like, hey, I had an actual problem, personal problem, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She was like, Okay. and it kept happening. Honesty stops reading as authentic and it starts reading as Like, what are doing? Do you know what you're doing? we have projects to get done. So, her point was that you want to be authentic to a degree, but consistency is the real trust engine. you want to show up reliably, and then that's when the real moments land. Do this with me. Think of a brand that you actually trust. Not admire. Trust. The one you defend to anybody. I'm sure that it isn't because they're polished is why you follow them. They're probably the ones that just keep showing up. So it was never really about polished versus raw. Mariah likes polish. I like polish. Seth Godin wants consistency. Biggie wants that messy desk. All four of us are saying the same thing, except it's through different doors. Does it feel like it was made for a person? And are you gonna be there again next week? Perfect is a one-time performance. Consistent is a relationship. which brings me back to your objection. Remember the one that I told you to haul on to? The one where my work is the product. I just can't post garbage. And you're right. You can't. I've spent minutes telling you that polish is overrated and then told you that a polished docuseries did 200,000 views. And those two things have to reconcile, or I'm just wasting your time. So here's the actual line: I like polished work and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I've said it and I meant it. I still mean it. Polish isn't the enemy. It has a job. It clarifies. That's the job. We're gonna fix the typos, fix the edits. That's just showing some respect between you, the viewer, and myself. Not to waste any time. It's non-negotiable. How do you decide where to stop? Well, you just have to trust your gut, trust your instinct. you have to draw the line. You have to polish it where you kill the typos, clean the edits. For this video, I'm gonna take out the ums and the pause breaks. You know, it's about showing respect to the viewer and myself. You gotta draw the line somewhere. You gotta polish until the audience sees it cleanly. problem is really just the versions after that. Like you gotta give yourself your own rule of thumb. how do you decide where to stop? You really have to trust your instinct on that one. So nothing about my taste has changed. What changed is what I'm measuring. I used to count versions. Now I just ask one question. Does it feel like it was made for a person? Or does it feel like it's made for an audience? because the second polish starts hiding you. It starts sanding off the specific weird human thing, ticks, all that, and makes it yours. It's stopped being craft. I don't care about it because it's a nice idea. I care about it for what it does for a brand. That's my actual job. So let me put that hat on for a second. and here's what a brand actually is. It's not the finish on the actual work. It's what people feel when you're not in the room. and nobody ever felt close to a company because the drop shadow was perfect. They felt close because it was clear, because it felt like it was made for them. And because it showed up again and again and again. So show the setup, show the real thing. Show the take where you fumbled the line and kept going. Here we go, let's try one last So show the setup. Show the real thing. Show the take where you fumbled the actual line and just kept going. That's not unprofessional. That's FaceTime. so when you go back to the file that you've been working on, look at the version. Are you on version two? Fine. Are you in version 10? Man, you're not making it any better. you're probably making yourself comfortable. And that file that was done earlier, just ship it. It's probably fine. And I'm sure the client will approve. Because there's no need to be overthinking your work. and if you want a brand that feels like a person and not like a press release, let's talk. You can reach me at brandband.com. And next week, I got a guest that I really think you're gonna like our conversation. Until next time, I appreciate you for listening. Stay creative.