OK, my IAPIA colleague and chief cheerleader Mary Baum is going to help me sort out this entire subscription foolishness. (She doesn't know that yet, so if you know her, don't let on.) I got a killer question from Elena B, one of the brainiacs in the AdGabber IAPIA Work Group that really made me put on my thinking cap. . This Weeks Question: What kind of creativity is required to be a really good ad person? At first I thought it was a simple question and I could just knock it out, post it and be done. Then she said, "I understand the big picture, but exactly what do you have to know to be to be really good at your job? And then what do you have to do to make your ideas work?" That made a simple question a real head scratcher. But I'll give it my best shot. |
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THE CREATIVE CREATIVE PERSON: As a Creative Director the first thing I ask a perspective hire is this, "Why do you want to work in the creative department?" The best answer I ever got was from Matricia Haigood, when I hired her into my group at Y&RNY as an assistant Art Director to work on Eastern Airlines. Her answer: "So I can wear my jeans to work." Quality number one for the creative, creative person, is to be absolutely fearless. You cannot change the world without a pretty good set of cajones. Self-confidence is at the top of the list for rising up and out of the creative ranks and into a corner office. But self confidence is a double-edged sword. If you come off being too "all that" you are subject to the "Prima Donna" imprint which can be the kiss of death. To my partner Angela, the best creative AD, CD whatever has to take all the info in and still go with their gut, no matter what. There has to be tremendous intuition there. And the courage to use it. But not at the cost of the brief or the strategy. She is a firm believer in doing two versions if you must, but execute one of them from the gut. "I think a good creative is also very passionate about that second version. And you have to do what you have to do with the first, but by God, stay all night and prove them wrong with version #2 if you really believe in it. Don't sabotage #1, and don't give up and go home, either," is how she puts it. We both believe that's what's wrong with young creatives. They either sell out or don't listen. Of course, I don't necessarily agree that the current crop of creatives has the talent or the life experiences to be trusted to "execute from the gut." Somebody with no life experiences who learned everything they know from Coldplay lyrics is not the person to make gut decisions because they think it would be cool. It's like the Olympic campaign for Visa. Chiat Day had a great strategy in "Go World." But the creatives fucked it up with sepia tone and Morgan Freeman so that the idea of Visa, cheering the world on for what the Olympic Spirit represented, was lost in the rush to "Show Biz." Somebody sold out for the chance to work with Morgan Freeman. The other creative quality that separates the "creatives" from the "creative, creatives" is the ability to pay attention to details. Clients love a creative person who isn't in love with the sound of their own voice. Someone who takes the time to read through the research and not just dismiss it as "booorinng!!!" Someone who genuinely makes an effort to get familiar with the product, or better yet, the problem the product was meant to solve, then finds new and exciting ways to communicate that solution to the audience. But the mainstay of a "creative, creative," is the ability to tell an engaging and compelling story. Not just a story about the product or how the competition sucks, or the dinosaur that thawed out in the subway last week and came out and ate 35 people and a Volkswagen Minibus and then walked past a barber shop with a Trane Air Conditioner on its way to devour the cyclone ride at Coney Island. THE CREATIVE ACCOUNT PERSON: I love great account guys and account gals. I've been blessed to work with quite a number of them, so I know they do exist. All of the amazing ones had one thing in common. They all refused to buy into the notion that the client was "their" client and not the client of every person working on the account. The truly exceptional account people I've worked with were not client surrogates, they were audience surrogates. They always wanted to know how I felt the audience would react to the given creative execution, not just the client. That was what made them "creative." They were always in search of a new way to connect with the prospective audience member and gain their interest in what was being said. And they knew how to make you want to do the exact same thing. They were great cheerleaders for the creative process. And the ones I remember most were the ones that never, ever, let the client beat up on, or denigrate the work. One of my best moments came when Jim Lawrence who ran the Ford business at Wells Rich Greene told the client, "You can hate this commercial, but you cannot destroy it by trying to make it your version of better." Angela was quick to point out that creative people hear very different things at client meetings than account people do. She believes that both are essential to solving the problem, but creatives cannot and should not be shackled by having to execute to account management's rendition of a client problem. THE CREATIVE MEDIA PERSON: These days Media has taken center ring in the circus that is advertising. The prevailing wisdom is that if nobody is paying attention because of the clutter factor, then let's find another way to get in their face. Let's put our logo on urinal cakes. And if we can't sneak in from the side then lets just scream louder until they here us. Which, of course just adds to the insanity. The true creativity in media is coming from those rare practitioners who are taking their knowledge and expertise of audiences and using it to invent entire new forms of media like the HBO wall spectacular that projected a film of an apartment building that had been somehow sliced in half so that passers-by could witness a different slice of life being acted out on every floor. To say it was riveting would be an understatement. Brand new ways to engage and intrigue the audience is certainly the cutting edge of the media maven's world as I see it. That and giving enterprising media practitioners a seat at the creative table with the rest of the kids, so they can cross pollinate and have some fun and the "creatives' can get out of their own heads in trying to be cool for people just like them and do something that relates to the rest of the world at large. But after all is said and done, for me, the most creative person in the media department is the one who says "enough is enough." But since that hardly ever happens, I'll just leave it at this. Will the last media person to leave Madison Avenue please turn out the lights.
Keep Thinking.
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