For the past seven days we have been trying something a little different. Instead of talking about new forms of advertising, we've been running new forms of advertising. A new way to sell credit cards to be exact. We employed every strategy from Consumer Responsibility, to Identity Theft, To Financial management, to Income Continuity. This week we are back to editorial coverage and we will be looking into some of the changes taking place in the definition of best practices in our industry as they apply to the way we approach new ways of thinking. This week we will look at the small agency point of view. Next week we will examine the big agency point of view. Darin Beaman is Executive Creative Director of OIC, a small but rapidly growing creative resource organization in Pasadena California. We had lunch the other day and the topic of discussion was the changing role of the Chief Creative Officer in an ever changing world. OIC is emblematic of the new breed of non-agency that is giving traditional agencies a run for their money these days. Agile, quick-witted, able to turn on a dime and perform the random miracle in extremely short order, OIC rocks. They have a-list clients like Sun Microsystems, Disney, Nestle, Intel and AT&T yet they still feel, according to Darin that, "Scrappiness makes us creative." For the new Lean Advertising Network White Paper |
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Although Darin comes out of a traditional brand design background, he has been forced to expand his frame of reference to accommodate his company's impressive rate of growth. "You have to raise your expectations on flexibility," he states when questioned about the organic changes that have come about as a result of his company's growth in the marketplace. Darin believes that OIC, or any company in this day and age, owes their success to the fact that "a few people who know how to play their instruments well" and the truth is, " all it takes to make a band." This unique point of view has lead the culture of OIC to become one in which everybody is equally invested, according to Darin. It is obvious that he sees himself more as the glue that holds his band together in harmony, rather than the band leader who sets the tempo of each tune. All of this only serves to underscore the growing importance of creative managers to the role that integrated marketing and brand communications agencies are beginning to play in the ever expanding client arsenal. "We see ourselves as cheerleaders for the brand," is how Darin expresses OIC's role among its client organizations. But even so, Darin is the first one to realize of clients that, "They don't need to see all of the process that goes into making the sausage," This line of conversation lead us to the changes that Darin has seen in his job over the past few years. "Now I spend much less time in execution and much more time developing my own network of experts." He related his increasing reliance on work share and collaboration software like BaseCamp and his ability to both seek experts and be an expert to those in his network. All and all it was a great two hour lunch. But for me the best came last when I asked Darin what he would call the position of Creative Director were that terminology stricken from the ad business lexicon. He thought for a moment and then offered up, "Fund Raiser." The person responsible for raising the money that his creative team needed to constantly improve on their work product. I couldn't agree more, I only wish I had thought of it first. Stay Tuned.
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