Living clean
A couple weekends ago I was camping with my brother and one of my best friends. My friend was an addict on and off for at least a dozen years and has now been clean for four. He’s one of the funniest, most insightful people I know. Hearing his stories about getting clean are a nice bonus to getting an extended lease on a friendship you weren’t sure would come back.
We were sitting around the campfire as he talked about his experience with a number of different rehab facilities and philosophies — inpatient and out, The Salvation Army and the Army (where he enlisted at 22), Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. Today, unsurprisingly and like me, his church is the ocean and his gospel is singing whatever the wind and swell charts put on his page. The distance from day-to-day treatment probably helps his perspective on what actually works for people like him who had been to rehab more than ten times.
AA, as he described it, is about abstinence from using, telling people not to drink or do drugs. NA’s motto is “Living Clean,” a thing to do.
It reminded me of some feedback I got from my old creative director pal Zaid, on a brief we were working on for Volkswagen. One of my teammates and I had an idea we liked that depicted what the car wasn’t (a temptation for many brands, and especially challengers trying to change how people think about the category). We’d identified a space but hadn’t named and described it. Whether he was genuinely on board or just being a generous friend, Zaid’s feedback was along the lines of “Ok, but tell me what it is.”
Strategy is like advice, good directions, a filter, or a motto — it’s an easy-to-remember shorthand for what to do. Clear directions like “live clean” give a filter that can flex to fit many phases of life. Rather than being a hard and fast rule, it’s a guide each person can internalize. What is “living clean” to me, today?
It makes you think about the outcome rather than the obstacle you want to swerve around, as you go from trying not to use to trying to figure out what this new life is. Working hard and treating your friends and family well are also expressions of clean living. It’s pretty relatable to non-addicts like me, who also want to continually challenge ourselves to be better.
Describing what not to do can be helpful (I’m sure there are plenty of examples from inside advertising and outside), and it definitely seems to be the message a lot of people need to stay away from substances. What works for someone isn’t going to work for everyone; my friend emphasized that in sharing his perspective.
But the point stands for writing briefs. When trying to tell someone where to go, start with directions.
