Leaving creativity to the creatives is a bad way to do business
When you’re not part of the exclusive creative club, getting your ideas heard can be challenging. Former agency suit Sarah Bailey states her case for why creativity shouldn’t end in the creative department.
I didn’t grow up in a creative household. My dad is an old school engineer and my mum is a nurse. Needless to say, everyone in my family was slightly confused when I decided to embark on a career in advertising.
No one we knew had ever worked in this field before, and this was a long time before Gruen and Mad Men. The confusion was two-fold: firstly, what would I actually be doing all day and secondly, why was I going into a creative field when I wasn’t creative?
Adland? Huh?
Now, admittedly I still can’t shed much light in regard to the first question, but once it became clear that my role in the advertising world was to manage client relationships, budgets and timelines, everyone relaxed. It was actually a business role. Not so creative after all. Phew.
So what you’re saying is creatives (which I am one) need to take your half baked idea and try and turn it into something better? They used to have a name for that. Turd. Glitter.
If we want more of a creative workforce, then people in account service and planning who class themselves as ‘creative’ are welcome to enrol into next years award school and discover the creative blessing that comes from generating hundreds of ideas only to have them knocked back again and again. Please. Enrolments open next February.
Maybe if you listened to the account service “half baked ideas” you’d understand that the client is paying us to make a difference to their business – not fund your latest award entry. Sarah is right – creativity is the most powerful force in business….unfortunatley our creative industry has put its own interests in front of its client’s. Now we sit back and watch as consultants destroy what we so carefully crafted over hours of scotch and “creative development”
Jesus Oh Please put that ego back in its cage and relax, its closed minded “creatives” like you that give us all a bad name
Thanks for your comment. I’ve obviously offended you so I apologise for that, though I hardly think that graduating from Award School suddenly deems you creative.
While traditionally a suit, I am now in a role where I am required to be creative in a myriad of ways which was the point I was making. ‘Traditional’ creativity alone doesn’t cut it these days. The best creatives I know have embraced this and are happy sponges for the great thinking that flows around them.
Plus, in my experience an idea getting knocked back is not the creative cross to bear, it is the responsibility of the entire agency team to figure out, no one should feel lonely in advertising, it’s a team sport.
I hope the suits at the agency you work for never let you talk to clients without supervision.
If you worked for me I’d fire you.
Ditto
What a sad old git you are, Oh please! Have a think about the truly creative people. Those who changed the world. Very few wrote ads. They were engineers, quantum physicists, inventors and business people. Get your hand off it this instant. BTW, I’d sack you too.
You should rethink your place as a creative. It’s not an us and them conversation. It’s an us conversation.
I love turning half-baked ideas into something better – and we don’t just make it better, we make it amazing.
We’re a team. Until you see that you’ll always be a suffering creative. I love leading brainstorms with non-creatives, I call everyone in: account, proof, package designers, r&d, admins – you name it.
As the creative, you’re there to lead. Do it. You wouldn’t last long on my team with that complaining attitude.
100% agree Sarah! We shouldn’t just outsource idea generation to the ‘creatives’. Every one of us has the potential, but a lot of people don’t know where to start. It’s exactly why I formed ‘The Ideas Business’. If businesses had more people who were idea generators, it’s a massive competitive advantage.
A good idea doesn’t care where it comes from.
Haha yes. Ideas are cool like that.
This is so true. The best campaigns come from a great mix of creative ideas and realism from clients who understand the business better than anyone and who are brave to stand up to both sides – the creative overlords and naysayers within their own business. Robust conversations on both sides. A good marketer who truly understands their business should be able to identify a great creative solution from whereever it comes from and get it implemented
Sounds like you haven’t worked with the right kinds of creatives. The best will sense when an idea is right, wherever it comes from, and build on it.
By the same token, don’t fall into the trap of falling in love with your idea and so not be able to have it rejected. It may tick every box of your client’s brief, but just be uninteresting, uninspiring … dare I say, boring. It’s your creatives’ and your creative director’s job to ensure that this idea, which will never have a chance to cut through and resonate with your target, doesn’t make it to your client. Especially as, seeing that it ticks those boxes, there’s every chance that the client might buy it and run an ineffective piece of communication.
So true!!! this is how it should work.
A good creative idea has reach on its own. A bad creative concept relies on media to amplify it.
Generally, advertising that is also a utility will have a lot of reach as people find it useful. ‘creatives’ forget that their idea isn’t just for a target market of 1 person, hence a lot of good creative ideas that belong in a conceptual room to admire.
Thanks Sarah. I’ve been a ‘creative’ for a fair amount of time and can’t say I’ve ever rejected or seen another creative reject a good idea. Quite the opposite. I’ve produced ideas ideated by junior suits, planners, my CEO who was an accountant and my mate who is a builder. I’ve also rejected thousands of rubbish ideas that I’ve come up with, my creative colleagues have come up with and a myriad of other people have come up with. The best thing you can wish for in this industry is a brief that has such a great idea already attached to it. It makes all of our jobs so much easier. Cheers
Hi Sarah, 100% agree that everyone in the building is capable of an idea. Everyone. Creativity on the other hand is a ‘process’. If a Creative believes in the idea and if this idea answers the brief and solves a client’s problem, then the Creative would surely be happy to develop it into a resolved solution.
Lionel Hunt was a suit in his early days…..enough said.
Touched a nerve with Oh Please!
Here is another dirty little secret. Sometimes even clients have good ideas!
It’s massively unfair to categorise the creative department as just ‘creatives’ and minimise their role by saying anyone can do it. The fact is most agency creative people have completed all kinds of training and education to get to where they are. Writing degrees, graphic design degrees and AWARDschool are the obvious ones.
And no, not everyone can do it. Just like how not everyone can run a sub 10 second 100 metre sprint. Just like how some people could never be good account service people. And just how only a few people are good at being advertising creatives. It’s a fact of life. People shit at some things and better at other things.
It high time people start valuing what the creative department offers rather than just panning it as island that only day dreaming, award hungry ‘creatives’ can be part of. Because every time the shit hits the fan in agency land, it’s the creatives department who are always left with the responsibility of fixing it.
I think you might have skimmed over some key sections of my post.
Absolutely the craft based skills are learned and cannot just be done by anyone.
My main gripe/area of discussion is the notion that not everyone is invited to think creatively or are told they are ‘not creative’. That just seems to lack imagination in itself.
In my opinion everyone should be encouraged to be more creative and to think laterally. Of course, some will be better than others and the ‘creatives’ are generally still the ones that add the sprinkle of magic. And someone needs to take responsibility for nurturing an idea from conception to campaign/business idea/product.
These days though I feel like there is as much creative thinking coming from outside of the industry as within it and I wonder if that’s not perhaps due to too much time spent justifying what we do and why we’re important as just relaxing a bit and working more collaboratively with all kinds of thinkers.
If creativity is about having ideas and realising them in any number of ways (sketched on a pad, whiteboarded, developed as an app, drawn on a business model canvas, graphic designed etc) then it can be – and should be – open to everyone’s participation.
However if it’s not about core ‘creative’ skills e.g. writing, using design programs, it’s important to create the culture that can enable creativity on a broader, more inclusive scale. In my experience that comes from using insight, being open minded, collaborating with others, using frameworks that force lateral thinking, going beyond the brief etc.
I think it would be helpful to distinguish between ideas – as in the big idea of strategy and creative ideas – as in executional ideas. Certainly any person involved in improving business outcomes should be capable of contributing to the former. As an observation on the divide, one of the things that used to annoy me most about suits and clients was when they loudly proclaim ” I am not creative!”. This was generally offered as an excuse to avoid thinking strategically and passing the buck to the creative team. PS Para 13 – relegated ?
Thanks Gezza – I think you’re right on regulated vs relegated. Duly amended.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” David Ogilvy
A good idea is a good idea and good creatives are always listenting out for them.
BUT
If you’re so creative, prove it.
Go be one.
Make your living generating thousands of ideas a year, to hard deadlines and tight briefs, then present them to sceptical clients and then go make the campaign.
THEN see what the results are.
Did you lift sales? Build brand equity? Hmm?
Everyone thinks they’re a creative – until they try and generate dozens of (new) ideas a day, for weeks, months and years. Ideas which all have to be new. Not just weak copies.
But you don’t want all that tension and discipline. You want the glow of your luke-warm idea being made.
When you’re ignored, consider that full-time creatives make it their job to learn about the hundreds of campaigns launched around the world every year, so will instantly know if your idea won’t work.
This topic is very relevant to me right now as I am currently in the last week of study at the Uni of Newy of a unit that looked into explaining the current scientific understanding of Creative Thinking. A key ingredient of creativity is having an openness of mind. Unfortunately, one thing our Western cultural model and educational model fails to do is promote divergent thinking, which is another ingredient of creativity. Changes are needed here if we want to foster creativity. Creativity requires consideration of many elements, but the most important it seems the science concludes creativity requires an interdisciplinary approach- which supports Sarah’s point of view.
Sounds more a problem with the Agencies Sarah has worked with. Successful modern agencies encourage a culture of involvement. Tight suit versus creative lines belong to management who have followed an old structure that leaves clients bewildered instead of flourishing in a fluid market. New media requires creativity across the board. Sarah might enjoy finding a more enlightened agency instead of trying to square peg.
All this is why the vocational term “a creative” is dumb. I agree with “oh please is right”. You need to crack brief after brief, day in day out until you can claim that you’re “a creative”. It’s very easy to claim you’re creative (you, me, my mum.. all true). But until it’s your responsibility to come up with the ideas, until you don’t get to go home, until you get fired unless you don’t.. then you’re messing around the edges. I’m not in the Creative Department, I can come up with ideas, but I won’t get fired if I don’t. That’s a huge difference.
Leaving engineering to the engineers is a bad idea.
Leaving accounting to the accountants is a bad idea.
Leaving plumbing to the plumbers is a bad idea.
It’s called division of labour. You wanna be a jack of all trades? Go for it, and enjoy your time being mediocre at everything.
On point Bails
Having worked alongside you in the trenches and seen these issues manifest first hand, I think you’d have to be pretty foolish not to agree with your sentiments.
Few thoughts for those having a sook:
1) Educational Psychologist Benjamin Bloom created a great taxonomy on learning that peaks with creativity (i.e. solving problems and creating new insight through assembling other units of knowledge). Every person within an agency has the potential to be creative, no matter what their craft (data analyst, financial analyst, developer, copywriter, receptionist) – and it may not be simply helping create a client solution, but it may be streamlining operations etc to keep people in the building employed in an industry that is going through immense flux.
This makes the whole ‘creative’ title thing seem a bit redundant to me – I know Big Spaceship tried to remove ‘creative’ from titles at a certain point, but hey, residual industry norms continue to prevail (as they do in so many other facets of adland), so they still have a CCO.
2) For those having a little cry (such as comment #1), perhaps there needs to be a rethink on the hierarchy of the way creativity is expressed. In agencies, you’re not employed to be creative, achieve self actualization and express yourself … you’re hired to creatively solve problems and contribute to a business’ functionality. If your ego is so fragile that you need to have ‘creative’ in your title to get external validation and justify the outrageous hours you probably toil away to produce a fucking tuna commercial, maybe time for a bit of a paradigm shift. Perhaps try to learn an instrument, or write a book (something Bails did a damn fine job with). It should make you far chirpier if you have deeper creative pursuits that aren’t hinged around selling more shit.
Happy weekend
Sarah is right about two things. 1. Every area of every business should be approached creatively. 2. Roles need to be be defined.
Sure, an off-the-cuff comms idea from outside the creative dept. may fly occasionally. But that’s rare, because they’re not spending all day thinking about comms ideas. Good thinking needs time and discipline, as noted. Time that others are usually spending on other things, relevant to their role and skillset. If that didn’t happen, nothing would get done.
So if you want to be creative, be creative in your own discipline. For a suit, for example:
Approach the brief creatively.
Approach presentations creatively.
Approach client remuneration creatively.
Approach partnerships creatively.
Etc.
Then everybody can be ‘creative’ and the output will too.
Exactly. I think we need to be more creative with how we view creativity. I think that everyone in an agency can approach their role creatively (and strategically for that matter). It might not mean that they contribute to the latest tuna campaign headline but it might mean that the agency runs better/is a better place to work/wins new business etc.
Exactly. I think we need to be more creative with how we view creativity. I think that everyone in an agency can approach their role creatively (and strategically for that matter). It might not mean that they contribute to the latest tuna campaign headline but it might mean that the agency runs better/is a better place to work/wins new business etc
You nearly had me, but then you added a reply. And so you lost me at “… and the ‘creatives’ are generally the ones that add the sprinkle of magic.” On par with the nightmare remark thrown at the creative serfs when #haven’tgotaclue says:- “just do your magic on it guys.” Up there with “just stick it on Social Media” and “ask one of the millenniums.”
This is a valid point. I don’t know why I wrote that. It’s a lame phrase and I don’t even like the word magic.
This is a valid point. I don’t know why I wrote that – it is a lame phrase and I don’t even like the word magic.
Quite a lot of anger there my friend. Very worked up. And right off point. We are discussing advertising, not writing books. We do get paid to spend days trying to make our client’s tuna sound the most appealing. And being good at that is a skill. It doesn’t men we think we’re more creative at other things. I can’t play an instrument, paint, sing or sculpt. But I can produce great tuna scripts. That’ll do me fine. And if I’m lucky enough to work with a mail room guy or CEO who comes up with a better tuna script than me, I’ll give them a hug and get it in front of the client asap. I’m pretty sure that’s what this article was about. XXOO.
Haha, not that angry … just having a bit of a laugh at one of the more precious posts I’ve seen up front in comments.
First thing for you to think about re your comment, is that we’re not simply discussing advertising … we’re discussing creative agencies. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will understand that many shops are now offering a suite of services to solve business problems from traditional ATL through to service design.
Now the challenge that a lot of agencies have – namely the traditional ones that had advertising as their core as they diversified – is that a number of creatives who are great at writing/art directing ads, are getting a little bit insecure with other people in their organizations (especially somebody without a creative title) offering a business improvement solution that doesn’t involve copy or art direction. Not everything needs to be solved with communications.
On the book front – not sure how you’ve interpreted the comment and believe my words to have misinterpreted the piece – it was a comment to show that the author is not only a class act at her craft in marketing, but also a gifted creative writer (which illustrates she has a great creative outlet and I believe is a reason she doesn’t need to be precious about setting up territorial boundaries in an office and having to be recognised as a ‘creative’ by her peers.
I’m glad that you’re clearly open to collaborating with other stakeholders in the business (and some ‘creatives’ are excellent at doing this), but I do fear that your reading skills aren’t particularly great given the way you’ve misinterpreted the above.
Also happy you’re satisfied with your work and no doubt have other interests and pursuits, but maybe if you read a bit more than the billboard ads you see on the way to the office and online commentary, you’d be even better. xx
It’s very easy to read the anger in your posts. Sorry if I misinterpreted the other things. Your billboard comment at the end shows I clearly didn’t misinterpret the pent up anger. Sorry I upset you. It wasn’t the intent.
What I love is that Sarah has (creatively) found a way to promote her business with this article (and the lawn mower one a week or so ago).
Well played, Bailey.
Cheers Steve!
(How good is lateral creativity?)
Agree 100% Sara, great article!
Another problem is that Australian creatives simply aren’t creative. They have learned a certain kind of “creativity” at award school and spend their careers copying great ideas from overseas or making in-jokes aimed at their fellow hipster creatives. It’s one big echo chamber of clishes. Creativity is about being ingenious, finding actual solutions to problems and lateral thinking, all of which is sorely missing from the Australian industry.
And judging from the knee jerk response from the creatives in this thread, deep down they know I’m right.
i have an idea. Stop trolling, and start making some work in stead of talking about it. The issue in our industry is not a matter of where idea’s come from, its the amount of posturing and wanking and not enough working!
Tim,
Why not get some ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ buttons for the comments, like they have on YouTube clips?
Cheers,
Mmmm
Why i this a thing?
I’m a creative and i’ve done my fair amount of suiting and strategy. Like, nearly every day. We all just get on with it don’t we?
I think there is a distinction here between thought starters and fully fleshed out creative ideas. I my experience practically everyone within the agencies I’ve worked at have been encouraged to participate in creative thinking, workshops etc where possible. What usually results is thought starters at best that require a lot of work to be fully fledged ideas (or sophisticated campaign with many moving parts). This is the difference. You don’t simply present “what about a talking hamburger” to your client in response to a 250K brief. The very nature of creative thinking also involves a lot of time and consideration. In the years I worked as a CD, I grew tired of trying to extract thinking from various departments and people from all over the agency because they were not prepared to put the time in.
When too many people from outside the creative department get involved in the concept it becomes “death by committee.” And yes, my dentist says he’s creative as well.