Being a CD has never been easy. The role is part manager, mentor, talent scout, peacemaker, whip-cracker, boss and buddy. But the last fi ve years have added Twitter guru, Facebook fanatic, mobile master, media innovator and accountant to the pile. If they’re lucky, “artist” still fi ts in there somewhere, too. The role is vastly different than the one most trained for and the lightening-fast change has scattered the country’s best talents as they struggle to cope.
The list of creatives who have left top-level jobs at major multinational agencies is long. If they were lucky enough to leave of their own volition, they walked away from national clients and the country’s largest creative departments to try something different, something smaller or something outside the industry altogether. Those who were pushed are forced to look at CVs that may have skills long out of date. Yes, some of this turnover was driven by opportunities for new businesses models found in the recession’s wake. But whether it’s optimism or resignation driving the exodus, no one can deny that the creative director’s role is in tremendous fl ux. Many are hard pressed to articulate the anxiety, but one look at them white-knuckling the arms of their chairs tells all.
“There are different pressures now,” says Shawn King, creative director at Extreme in Halifax. “When it was [traditional] ‘advertising,’ a lot of us felt like we knew what we were doing. We could confi dently execute something and know what impact it would have. Now nobody knows. In many cases, we’re learning about stuff at the same pace the client is, but they’re looking to you to be the expert and know what to do with it… It’s defi nitely a new time.” Ron Tite decided he needed to step away from day-to-day client work to fi nd answers to this dilemma. Leaving Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG’s creative director’s chair behind, he is now consulting with various industry members in search of the best way to create relevant messages in the infi nite-channel universe.
“Everyone has this idea that every creative director is like Don Draper, that you breeze into a room every two months and say ‘Hey, haven’t seen you in a while. I’ve got the magic bullet to solve all your problems.’” The CD’s role used to be about objectivity, applying business smarts and creativity to move product and solve problems, he says. “But we’ve lost it because we’re obligated to be in every client meeting. We’ve lost the ability to add value because the process to get [an idea to go] live is so long with eight rounds of research and strategies and different [partner] agencies.”
In such an environment, there is no time to explore the new media frontier and consumer reaction to it. Agency-client relationships, he says, have long resembled an assembly line—brief to strategy to creative pitch to testing to media to market—“which produces some fantastic results. But there are so many opportunities outside the assembly line, that you have to remove yourself from it to pursue them. “Look at branded content. If you want to pitch something, you’ve got to loop-in the media agency for the client, and the next thing you know you’re back in the assembly line. Want to try something in promotion?
Here’s the promotional agency. You end up just doing what you’ve always done.” Most would agree that there are better efficiencies to embrace, but Tite worries that fear will maintain the status quo rather than drive innovation. Call it the “halfway house” theory. “Most people in society see the benefit of halfway houses in the rehabilitation process for criminals, but 99% of the people will say ‘Just don’t put it next to my house.’ A lot of people in advertising totally understand the client-agency model has to change, but say ‘Just don’t touch my job.’”
