????屋頂酒吧開張前好幾個小時，我們就到了那。但是，考慮到我們剛剛收到的消息，相信沒人會責怪我們的瘋狂。

????我把客戶推向崩潰的邊緣，同時還要爭取他的支持；我鼓勵同事突破創作的邊界，同時還要防止他們因為感覺違心而瘋狂；我在做這一切的同時，我還在召集一個大型的歐洲區域會議。

????奧美（Ogilvy & Mather）歐洲中東及非洲辦事處的區域創意總監保羅?史密斯正在埋頭喝悶酒。巴黎辦事處的克里斯?加布特則來回踱步，這位執行創意總監掩飾不住自己的懊喪和失望。作為他們的頂頭上司，我必須想辦法解決問題。

????維也納這座城市是西方文明史上眾多偉大成就的集大成者，令其它城市汗顏。公司多位創意總監聚集在此，展開為期三天的密集討論和交流。

????管理一只創意團隊就像用水銀造房子：天生地不穩定而且危險。所以我并沒有像搭積木那樣去建設創意，我只是試圖為其營造最佳的孕育環境。當面會談則是為這種環境打造基礎的最佳時機。

????然而就在這樣一個重要的會議上，我們遇到了最嚴重的創意困境。克里斯一如既往地在未知領域勇往直前，他領導的巴黎團隊為某家一線飲料品牌制作了一段精彩的廣告片，試圖展現上流而略帶保守的品牌形象。片子拍攝了三年，每一個子兒都精打細算，但他們還是超支了。項目在失敗的邊緣搖搖欲墜，甚至可能是一場昂貴的災難。全球首席執行官楊明皓和我通過預算運作拉到了額外的8萬美元。我們的努力沒有白費，這樣的片子必將贏得喝彩，更重要的是，它將為客戶帶來盈利。

????客戶也很欣賞這部廣告片，準確的說，欣賞片子的大部分，除了有一幕，他們覺得過了點。一周之前，我和公司的區域主席丹尼爾?希考利飛到客戶的歐洲總部去推銷該片。錢已經不重要了，片子的創意才華橫溢，我們必須說服客戶。從理性的角度來看，也許我們應該讓步，刪去不合適的那一幕。兩秒而已，何況是客戶厭惡的兩秒。何必冒這么大的險？

????我們堅持，是因為那兩秒就是從卓越到絕妙之間的差別。那兩秒里，時鐘停擺，那兩秒展示了原始而炫目的奢華，和周遭的全球性衰退格格不入。那一刻影片臻入化境，那一刻也可能埋藏失敗的禍根。

????We were in the rooftop bar just a few hours before it was strictly decent to be there. But with the news we'd just received, who could blame us?

????I had to push a client to the breaking point while still keeping him on my side, encourage my creative colleagues to keep pushing the boundaries while keeping them from heading off the roof from feeling that their integrity was being compromised, and I had to do it all in the backdrop of a huge European regional meeting we had called.

????Paul Smith, the regional creative director for Ogilvy & Mather's offices in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, sat hunched over his drink. Chris Garbutt, executive creative director for the Paris office, paced back and forth, frustrated and disappointed. As worldwide chief creative officer, I needed to figure out how to solve this problem.

????We had all convened in Vienna, a city that can claim an embarrassingly large share of responsibility for Western culture's great achievements. Dozens of creative directors had come together for three intense days of critique and sharing ideas.

????Managing a creative team is like building with mercury -- structurally unsound and toxic. So instead of trying to construct creativity, as if it were a kind of widget you can build, I try to create the best possible environment for it to grow. Face-to-face meetings are the best occasions for me to lay the groundwork for this kind of environment.

????And here, right in the middle of one of those cherished meetings, dropped a creative problem of the first magnitude. Chris had taken things well into the unknown, just as he ought to. He and his team in Paris had produced an impressive commercial for a major beverage brand with an upscale and slightly conservative image. The film had been in the works for three years. The team scrimped on each expense to pour every cent of the budget into the commercial, and theystill ran out of money. They were teetering on the edge of failure or even outright, expensive disaster. With some budgetary acrobatics, our global CEO Miles Young and I found them another $80,000 to work with, and I'm glad we did. It was the kind of film that wins acclaim -- and more importantly, rings the till.

????The client loved the film, too. Well, most of it. But one scene took things too far for them. The week before, I flew to the client's European headquarters with Ogilvy's regional chairman Daniel Sicouri to sell the commercial. Screw the money. We thought this was brilliant creative, and we had to convince them. Any reasonable person would wonder why we didn't just instantly cave and cut the offending scene. It was just two seconds of footage, and the client hated it. Why stake so much on it?

????We resisted because those few seconds of film took the commercial from being great to beingdangerous. Those seconds seemed longer than they really were since they displayed a scene of visceral and conspicuous extravagance in the midst of a global recession. That moment was where the film went so far out there that it courted failure.