PREPARATION
Before any
fight you train, you study your opponent, watch videos of his fights,
jog in
the early hours of the morning,
take on sparring partner after sparring
partner,
stay on a strict diet to make the weight for the fight,
and never lose focus, training far from human contact, far from a social life.
Just you,
your mind and your body.
You see the
famous Rocky training montages,
that is a perfect example of a fighter
preparing,
the different methods, training routines.
Specially the
catching the chicken scene, Micky, an old-fashioned trainer,
setting Rocky an
old-fashioned task to work on his pace.
Tony once
said to me, that a fit body makes for a fit mind,
he would tell our class to
stay away from the pub,
not to drink during the working week, not to indulge in
food too much,
being hungover or simply having food baby would defiantly affect
us coming up with ideas.
It would
explain why Tony jogged, kept active, ate healthy,
it would simply keep his
mind going to come up with ideas for scripts,
or just to keep at the pace of
the class helping with ideas etc.
But
preparation isn’t just about warming up the mind, keeping it fit,
it is also
preparing for a certain client,
understanding a brand,
so when you have
to answer the brief you will have a great insight/truth,
an attack plan to
deliver a great idea to win the client over, and get some live work out.
In boxing,
you train a certain way for a fight/fighter,
whether it be to increase your
pace to counter a fast opponent,
or your power to take the wind out of a
defensive type, so they open for a clean shot.
Anthony Joshua had four sparring partners,
each one did 4 rounds and then they swapped.
So, Joshua was sparring for 15/16 rounds in prep for a 12-round fight with Wladimir Klitschko.
Because most of Klitschko’s fights had went the distance,
with his
clever boxing ability, to slowly pick off opponents with his jab.
Joshua won
the fight by knockout in the later rounds.
POWER
Mike Tyson
was feared for his knockout power.
Joshua is now carrying the torch with 19 win
by way of knockout.
Power, knockouts is what people pay to see in a fight,
it’s
what makes it exciting,
whether fighter runs out of steam and is finally silenced
by TKO (technical knockout).
But it’s those flash knockouts that really make
you stand up.
Tony told a
team on this year’s course to be more Mike Tyson, was it to be bolder,
or
simply have more impact in their execution?
I feel
power in advertising is summed up by the feeling of “I wish I came up with that”,
that jealous feeling you have when you see a real great idea.
That feeling is
the knockout.
Great ideas are powerful, they make an impression, you remember
them,
you talk about them to friends.
John Hegarty remembers when Ross Cramer and Charles Saatchi came up with the 'pregnant man'.
Hegarty thought he had won the
brief for the Health Education Council,
with idea involving a pregnant school girl smoking a cigarette,
but along
came Ross & Saatchi with the pregnant man,
and Hegarty felt completely
disarmed, it was a knockout.
One great
idea can be remembered for a lifetime,
but some creatives strive to beat it
with an even better idea,
in fear that they are summed up by that idea for the
rest of their life, like a one hit wonder.
Lennox Lewis had a series of great fights from beating Frank Bruno in a big British
clash,
to destroying the beast Mike Tyson in Vegas,
he didn’t have one great
fight, he had series of them at the top.
That’s why these sort of people are remembered,
they made an impact, they made a statement,
they entertained, they excited, they took your breath away.
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