3) As far as creative lives go, the advertising life is a strange one. In other creative endeavors, continued success and advancement is strictly a function of continuing to do great work. To rise ever higher on the literary ladder, Kurt Vonnegut simply wrote more amazing books. (Not so simple, actually.) But our profession mandates that we change and evolve our roles if we want to advance. This can soon result in a writer or art director not doing as much writing or art directing as they once did. If they’re not fans of mentoring, curating and spending time with clients they may find this new creative life deeply unsatisfying.
I know some CCOs (some very good CCOs) who are very executional. They’ll sit in edit suites non-stop and review hundreds of cuts. They’ll pour over wire frames for hours one day and review dozens of voice-over options the next– giving finely tuned executional feedback on each one. In some ways, this is completely understandable as a way to hang on to the craft of advertising, which is the reason what many of us got in the business in the first place.
I’m lucky I guess, because I’m a better coach than I was a player. And I enjoy it more. At this point, I try not to get so executional. Instead, I seek to hire people who I trust implicitly to execute well. That’s not to say I never need to come onto a shoot or post production and give granular feedback. I do. But I tend to look at those instances more as triage than as optimal. My creative product is the agency I’m building. That’s my role now and I absolutely love it.
4) A lesson I learned the hard way is to give creative teams who work for me the opportunity to find their own solutions to creative problems. This is often a tough lesson for new creative directors. They’re so used to doing the work themselves that they’ll frequently step in and grab the steering wheel, because they know exactly how they want something done. I was guilty of this early on. I had very specific ideas about how I wanted things to turn out. But teams find this approach demotivating. It’s akin to a vote of no-confidence from their boss. It also robs them of one of the greatest joys of the job – the ability to persevere and solve a difficult problem.
I try to give guidance in terms of what’s missing communication-wise and help them focus in on what they got right. I also give broad suggestions of different ways to look at the problem that can lead to a solution. In my mind I always know how I would solve it, but I try not to impose my solution – barring a deadline emergency. I’ve found this approach works incredibly well. Often the teams come back with better ideas than I could have ever conceived.
6) My New Year’s resolution is to keep finding ways to surprise people in terms of what to expect from DDB and work coming out of Chicago. A wise advertising sage once said, “If you want to change an agency, change the clients.” Well, we absolutely love our current clients but we also recognize that in order to grow in different ways we’ve got to add new ones. That’s why I’m so excited about the past 18 months and the AOR wins we’ve had on Kohler, American Cancer Society, LifeLock and Alfa Romeo. We already had an enviable client roster and these new wins add some important new dimensions to the agency. My goal in 2016 is to keep this momentum going. I want to continue to grow our reputation as an agency that does many different things well.
