7 steps to being a great 'Creative'

In thirty years in the advertising industry I've worked with some creative legends, some legends in their own lunchtime and some who were simply 'out to lunch'. But being an ad agency creative is no cake walk and unless you've experienced the sheer terror of sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper, knowing that you are expected to come up with something brilliant within a tight deadline, it's hard to fully appreciate quite how stressful it can be – especially when you know there's a creative team (art director and copywriter) sitting in the room next door with the same brief and their ideas could well be better than yours!

1. There are no rules. When I first went in to advertising there seemed to be a lot of rules – what you could and couldn't do. You should never reverse white body copy out of black, a coupon should always go in the bottom right hand corner of a press ad, retail sale ads should always be in red – you get the idea. However, as the years went by I came to understand that the best creative talent ignored these rules. Now that's not to say you can do what you like – quite the opposite in fact, as there always will be the strictures and objectives of the brief but a desire to make the creative process a formulaic one only comes from those who possess little ability.

It's hard to imagine quite how much of a stir this poster (and the follow-up's) caused for Araldite Super Glue in the mid-80's. Up until this point posters had largely been thought of as a two-dimensional medium but this idea was a game changer. I heard a tale that the account director came up with a myriad of excuses why it wasn't possible, from health and safety, to simple logistics, to 'that's not the way posters are done'. Apparently when he went on holiday the creative team managed to get the idea in front of the client; he loved it and the rest is history. I knew the account director in question but was always too embarrassed to ask him whether it was true. For months after this campaign appeared every response to a creative brief came back with a 3-dimensional poster idea (see point 3); however, most of them lacked the impact of the Araldite Campaign which so brilliantly and originally met the brief.

2. Be professional. The best creatives I've worked with were also the most professional, whereas some of the worst seemed to think that the creative bit of their job-title gave them leeway to behave badly. I recognise that ideas can come to you in the bath, in your dreams, on the tube, or walking to work but not many come standing outside the Dog and Duck, or at the end of a line of white powder. The more professional you are in your conduct and timekeeping, the more you will be respected and paradoxically the more leeway you will be given.

Hello Tomorrow

Hello Tomorrow

3. Be eclectic. Have you noticed how much creative work seems so samey – from music in tv commercials, to straplines? In many ways advertising mirrors the society we live in, so it's understandable and right that it should pick up on contemporary fashions and trends but on the other hand, 'samey' is not good - your idea needs to stand out from the crowd and be remembered. The best creatives I have worked with always had the most eclectic interests - they recognised that the answers were not to be found in old copies of D&AD Award Annuals and that the narrower their sphere of reference, the more limited their source for ideas.

4. Don't throw chairs out of windows. As a young 'suit' I remember presenting a new ad campaign to Barclays Bank. We had been optimistic it would be approved but the CEO hated it on sight and killed it stone dead. On my return to the agency I went to let the creative team know what had happened – as the messenger of the bad news, I got the full hairdryer treatment and when I tried explaining why it had been rejected they became even more irate. So much so, the art director picked up his chair and lobbed it through the window on to a roof below. Now conflict between 'suits' and 'creatives' is part and parcel of the ad business – there are understandable and natural tensions in a business about ideas and trying to sell them to clients. It's essential there should be vigorous debate and as a creative you need to be capable of articulately defending your work and boxing your corner - but not literally as once happened to me. Keep argument civilized and have a rational debate - it's not personal, be nice!

5. Be prepared to sweat it. Brilliant creative ideas can come in a momentary flashes of inspiration and indeed the award winning creative director of Yellowhammer in the 80's, Jeremy Pemberton, had often handed you a layout before you'd left his office. But nothing is truer of the creative process than, '99% perspiration, 1% inspiration'. The harder you work to understand a client's brand, the more you try to really get under the skin of the target audience, the more background reading you do and research in to the market sector, the more you 'live it', the much better your chance will be of finding that 1%

6. Grab your big idea opportunity. Let's be frank - a lot of the creative work you get to work on will not be earth shattering, mould breaking, or award winning brilliance. If you manage two or three truly big ideas in your career which make it to fruition, you are doing far better than most. Therefore 90% of your work will be about executing your craft; that is using all your skills as an art director and copywriter team to make the creative, whether it be a black & white local press ad, or 60 second cinema commercial, look as good as it possibly can be - despite the fact that the client has mucked around with it and it's not what you originally intended, despite the fact the budget has been cut, or that you couldn't use the original photographer or director you wanted.  So because they are so rare, it's important that you develop a sixth sense for when a big idea opportunity comes along and it does need a sixth sense because it's not simply that a project has a huge budget, or is a superbrand, it's often when the stars align and by that I mean a client who is prepared to take a risk, an account team who have the confidence of the client, a planner who has revealed some true insight and you, inspired creatives, all come together at the same time.

7. Focus on your job. I've worked with several creatives who went on to be successful novelists, screenplay writers and even a Hollywood director or two but do you know they were the ones who kept their ambition well hidden and focussed on the job in hand; they were also some of the nicest, charming and most talented creatives I ever met. But I also met a few who made it very clear that advertising was simply a stepping stone on their path to mega star status outside the industry - strangely enough they weren't the nicest people and I can't ever remember one of them making it.




Also see: 7 steps to being a great 'suit' and 7 steps to being a great client