Like good creative work, a properly executed rocket launch catches attention without indicating how hard it is to do well.
Sometimes it is rocket science.
The biggest reason government media differs from commercial media has to do with a profound difference in motivation. Government wants to play things safe. Commercial media wants you to remember what you saw.
Government wants to make memorable media, too, of course, but the reasons why usually spring from a different source. Where General Motors wants you to buy a car, the Department of Transportation wants you to understand that the government has developed car regulations in your best interest.
Government media wants you to take its messages seriously. A hurricane warning is only as useful as the public that hears it and heads for cover. Government messages that seek to educate and inform need to be produced with high enough levels of polish that people pay attention and remember. Stories about subjects intended for collective wellbeing like fire safety, preventative health strategies, or traffic rules, can easily stupefy. That’s instant media death. No matter how vital the message, dull messaging all but guarantees that a viewer will change what’s playing. Media success is all about forestalling the speedy, stabbing index finger on a glowing screen. Media success means capturing audience attention. For government media, that means balancing info the public may need to know against production design that holds audience attention.
There are invisible tensions when trying to do good government media. Without a profit motive, production budgets are inevitably smaller —much smaller — than commercial work. What’s more, but since government media is typically done in the public interest, there are often more stakeholders and political forces lurking behind works in progress. As everybody knows, creative work done by committee often results in work that’s less than creative. But the biggest tension has to do with the implications of the work in the first place. Marshal McLuan’s dictum “the medium is the message” proves itself through government work. Even the most earnest, well intentioned, cleanest-cut government media is always consorting with rougher trade. Even well intentioned safety messaging can sound like agitprop. This is dangerous stuff. First there’s propaganda; afterwards, it’s a fast slide into The Land of Orwell.
The challenge for creatives who take government gigs is to find a way to be true to the work. Creative work has its own value, much like a miserable, drunken, miscreant lout might still produce a sublime painting. A dude may be repugnant, but a painting speaks for itself. Creative work almost always means more than its provenance, even if the story behind the work has it’s own vitality and velocity. As a case in point, real time stories about NASA’s moon landing were extraordinary in their own right. The back story suggests that they were less about human needs to explore and more about winning an international race for technological prowess and bragging rights.
Commercial media is all about provenance. Laugh at a new insurance commercial, and the product is the thing that sticks in your head. That’s the goal. It’s different, however, when the message springs from government initiatives.
As far as creative professionals are concerned, government and commercial media must always share at least one thing in common. They must always aim at high standards of quality. That’s not because of some sort of Platonic ideal of integrity, or social contract, or even a categorical imperative aimed at not wasting people’s time. Creative work must aim at high standards because anything less means your days as a creative are numbered!