Edit ruthlessly; know which ninety percent to say no to.

principle — attributed to Colin Cowie

Cowie's discipline in an oversaturated world is to know which ninety percent to say no to so the ten percent he uses can tell a compelling story. The reframe matters because most event budgets get spent on the additions rather than on the editing. More flowers, more courses, more performers, more activations. Each addition reduces the coherence of the story. The editor who removes ninety percent of the available options produces events that read as confident. The producer who keeps adding produces events that read as anxious. The principle generalizes to any creative discipline where the constraint of choosing what not to include is the actual work.

For creative directors, event producers, and agency leads thinking about how to keep their work coherent. The principle is most useful when the brief has accumulated additions that have started to compete with each other.

editing, ninety-percent-no, compelling-story, saturation