Rolling with Rejection

By: M+M Copywriter Caitlin Sherman

Dave is OOO this week. “OOOh really?” I thought to myself. “I can fill in and write the Weekly Report.” Here we gOOO.

I recently saw someone’s post on LinkedIn showing off several rejection letters they received over a ten-year timespan. The point of the post was to encourage others to push forward – past rejection and the feelings that come along with it. 

Failure is something everyone experiences, but not everyone knows how to deal with it. We’ve all had ideas. Some stick. Some sink. Your one idea may have been chosen for the final concept, but that doesn’t mean the other 20 ideas you had should be labeled as a lost cause. 

There’s something to take away from every aspect of your work – even the not-so-stellar parts. Maybe your messaging missed the mark the first time. Save what you’d normally scrap and see where it can be used later down the line.

Rolling with rejection means seeing the potential where others may not. Hold on to the stack of sticky notes on your desk that houses the doodles, concepts, and contacts that didn’t work out the first time. There are so many stories of rejected ideas that were reworked or reintroduced to markets that took off the second, third, or even tenth time around.

Look at the success story that is Ring. Originally called DoorBot, the product appeared on the hit TV show Shark Tank along with founder Jamie Siminoff. The sharks didn’t bite, but Amazon did in a deal worth more than $1 billion. Now, Ring doorbells are used by more than 10 million people with a number of other home security products under the name. 

The key to facing failure is daring to keep going. No one ever succeeded in giving up. There is, however, success in going forward and showing rejection who is boss. In other words: #BoldBrandsWin