A few years ago I was thinking of setting up a club called “Five Creative Directors Behaving Badly”.
The idea was fairly explanatory in the title.
I think the members were gonna be me, Robert Saville, Trevor Beattie, Dave Droga and Robert Campbell.
But rather than just getting p*ssed, there was another agenda, which was that we’d throw our collective weight around. If we didn’t like the way Cannes was behaving, we’d threaten to boycott it. If we felt that Campaign’s treatment of anyone or anything was unfair, we’d let them know.
But it never took off. Because I was too lazy to make it happen.
And it would be even harder to do it these days.
Because – what’s happened to Creative Directors ?
And is there any chance in hell of any of them behaving badly ?
If you want to know what a creative director’s role should be, you could do a lot worse than look at Alex Bogusky.
Because he’s forged an agency which produces great work at a time when just about everybody else seems to have given up.
When he was asked what he did, he answered – it’s simple, it’s about picking the right idea and making it as good as we can.
And that IS simple to say.
But doing it is another matter.
That’s why pitches are decided on chemistry. Because it’s a lot easier to pick a bunch of people you like than it is to pick a good idea.
That’s why research is king. Because picking the right idea is … f*cking scary, if you’re serious about it
In Hollywood there are people who make decisions about creativity every day, who’ve done it for years, and they sh*t themselves while trying to pick the next one.
Here, we give the decision to a bunch of disinterested people eating Kettle’s crisps in a room with a suspiciously smoky mirror on one wall.
Picking the right idea is what creative directors should do – it’s what Alex Bogusky does brilliantly, it’s what Dave Droga does brilliantly.
But we’ve done away with the concept here in Britain.
Well ok, not quite – Robert and Richard are outstanding.
And just to be perfectly clear, I’m not questioning the rest of the talent here in the UK. We’ve got probably got more creative talent than ever before. I’m questioning the politics of the industry right now.
The attitude of the industry.
A few years ago, a friend of mine was tasked with answering the question as to why WPP won a lot fewer creative awards than Omnicom agencies.
He did a very meticulous analysis, the precise details of which now escape me.
But having compared all the variables, he concluded that there was only ONE significant structural, difference between the two groups.
Omnicom agencies back then were run jointly by people from creative and account management backgrounds.
WPP agencies were run almost exclusively by people just from account management backgrounds.
And these days it’s not just an issue for WPP, it’s an issue for our industry as a whole – the fact that, currently, creative talent is hired not partnered.
The people who set up the legendary old agencies were all, largely, creatives. From David Abbott through to Leo Burnett through to David Ogilvy.
But unless you work in Fallon or Mother, when was the last time your Creative Director made a decision that actually carried any real weight ?
A lot of the big network agencies don’t even seem to have ECDs anymore.
Creative Directors used to be the people who made a difference.
Now they’re just people who can be wheeled out for pitches to make small talk.
I’m surprised they don’t all want to behave really, really badly.
