The Metrics of a Creative

A few months ago I launched my first creative project in a good bit: “Goody Good” a crowdsourced music video where I found 32 people around the world and had them each submit something crazy, weird or fun. Then I teamed up with my music partner Paperclip Jaye to edit / mash up the video and pushed it out.

We made it in an effort to accomplish a few things:

-execute on an idea on my head
-explore what it takes to “send a song to market” (the song is on Spotify, iTunes and others)
-expose new ears to a song i’m extremely proud of (for real it’s catchy)

The project took months to flesh out.

And I knew the song had viral potential. I deemed 5,000 Youtube views a “success”. But it didn’t come close. I’m fighting for 1K views at this point.

Based on that metric, this effort was “unsuccessful”.

But there were qualitative / “feel good” metrics I never factored in.

Numerous friends, colleagues etc. were exposed to a talent I don’t often share and were all impressed. They watched the video, downloaded the song and shared it.

A good friend called me to tell me how much he loved the song and that he planned to play it on his party barge all summer.

Another friend says she dances to the song every morning to get the day started.

A community group I’m a part of used the song/video as the end of year video montage.

Based on those results, I’m humbled. And proud.

As creatives, shooting for KPIs (key performance indicators) to indicate success just isn’t a part of what we do. Yes we’d all love to get compensated for our efforts, but sometimes releasing something for the sake of learning the process and sharing the joys of your work with others is the only reward we need.