Part 3: The difference between a great creative person and a great Creative Director

The ability of an art director or copywriter to produce big ideas is not an automatic credential for becoming a Creative Director. 

The fact is, there are many great art directors and copywriters out there who can produce work of the highest standard. Campaign ideas that, if implemented, would make the client’s sales soar. But I have seen these very same people find it impossible to get great work through, either to the client or internally to their own people.

This is because they are quite often deficient in the skills required to navigate around the many obstacles that block the way of great work.

I know a writer who has won every award under the sun. He is one of the best copywriters around. In his career, he has held the Creative Director position in three different agencies. Each time he got fired. To this day, he firmly believes that the management was wrong - that each time, he was the victim of an agency that had a brutal and uncaring culture.

The fact is, the man actually needed to be carefully managed himself and couldn’t possibly have coped with the responsibility of managing others. He was always going to be a disaster in the Creative Director role.

Too often, as I’ve mentioned earlier in the book, agencies thrust these people into the Creative Director position as recognition of their creative contribution. This is the fastest way to lose them. They will fail because they are not rounded enough for the role.

The Creative Director has to be a multi-faceted manager. He has to deal with everything from work flow, timings and man management, to creative delivery, client relationships and crisis management.

If we go back to our story about the emperor, the physician acts as a very good analogy for the creative person who lacks the management skills of a Creative Director. Just like the physician, he will be put under pressure by the client and will eventually concede. And if he stands his ground, he is doomed to lose his head just as the physician was.

So how would a ‘creative manager’ approach the dilemma that the physician faced with his emperor?

In this case, perhaps he would have used some dye to turn the pink medicine green. It would be the same concoction, but it would have been presented to the client in a way that was acceptable to him.

Other stuff by the author:

Man from Zork

Compulsive Liar

A crash course in surviving the future of advertising