The Agencies with A Bright Future Have: -insert-

I’ve found that the agencies with the brightest futures have a strong sense of comradery through the aspects of humility, positivity and healthy levels of competition.

What inspired me to think about this was when I was looking back at an old youtube video of the group of Lucky 13 interns, (posted above) that I was fortunate to be a part of, and remembering how we seemed to accomplish the impossible by having a healthy environment set by Campbell Mithun.

One the most important pieces, especially for young creatives, is the aspect of humility. By having the opportunity to work with senior creatives and directors that take the time to give direct feedback and collaborate on solutions creates a great sense of trust and respect. The killer of this at agencies can easily occur with a prima donna. I’ve found the ego quickly kills creativity.

The second most important strength seems to be having a great sense of positivity that doesn’t bleed into nieve. By remaining positive in the face of a client review, a rethinking of a campaign structure or simply staying late to get the work done at a high quality, is such an important piece to finish strong. Those that try to lead with fear often see the best within their ranks leave for a positive work environment in order to produce good work.

Finally, the most important piece (and most difficult to balance) is encouraging the right amount of competition within your ranks. By pitting a new creative against one that has been at an agency for a long period of time can lead to strained relationships and allows for the lack of communication to fester. Yet, to strike the perfect cord of inspiring competition within teams to produce the big ideas; but, allowing for a healthy amount of collaboration, can produce some of the best ideas hoped for.

Yet, the real conundrum seems to be that each individual responds to stimuli differently and what is appropriate for one isn’t necessarily for another. Thus the search for the perfect fit of agency and creative individual continues until the best creative work that one can produce comes to fruition.

The Need to Brand Yourself

Could marketing yourself yield the same results as advertising/branding a major company? Yes.

In fact, one of the strongest lessons they pushed at my college, MCAD, was the necessity to treat and market yourself as a brand. Although this made some students a bit skittish, it is important more than ever to treat and market yourself as a brand.

Many people believe that with the rise of social media outlets such as twitter, that significantly shorten our attention span, as proof that brands are dyeing when it is quite the opposite. When you have 140 characters to push a complex aspect of a product or the sleekness of a brand, the necessity to push the brand to keep it short, sweet and repeatable is impartially important.

Treating one’s self as a brand forces you to consider truly what makes you different and what your true selling points are. It allows you to create your paired down elevator pitch, and with repetition, gives you the chance to attribute those aspects to a recognizable logo.

So it than no longer is a question of to brand or not to brand and it turns into what is unique about your brand?

The Asset of Being You

One of the hardest lessons for me to learn, as a young art director, was that your personality and quirks often can prove to be an asset.

I began my working career at Target and Starbucks. Both are good places to work and both are pretty strict corporations that ask that you leave your personality at the door and put on the brand face. When taught to, on a daily basis, remove your personality when at work, it becomes difficult when asked to express myself regularly at an agency.

Although not every career expressly wants you to be yourself on a daily basis, no one wants to work with someone that is dull or rude. When interviewing for design and art director positions at agencies, I’ve found that the agencies that were always heavily interested in me were the ones in which I was very relaxed and simply being my normal, odd self. By being someone that is naturally happy and spreads humor to others I have an asset outside of my ability to create good work and pitch it well to clients, I have the ability to help create a stronger team through being myself.

Yet, the hardest lesson to learn for those that have radically different or unusual personalities is the necessity to do what I call, “Easing people into your crazy.” By with holding much of your personality initially to gauge others, find your niche and allow for your personality to gradually come out, you become a natural fit. On the other hand, being extremely out there from day one can often create apprehension, unease and the feeling of being ostracized from the group.

So in the end I’ve found the best practice is to show your personality, craziness and all; but, don’t jump the gun (ease people into your oddities).

The 3 Big Lessons of An Ad Agency

The best part about working in the ad industry is the constant need to continue to learn, experiment and grow to be successful.

I spent a lot of the past week looking back at my internship experiences at Campbell Mithun and MRM Worldwide along with my in class experiences at Martin Williams and Zeus Jones. Overall I learned a lot from each of the agencies; but, the three core principles include: keep it simple, collaborate and work pause work.

The biggest thing I learned from my agency experience is that, although the consumer isn’t stupid, they genuinely don’t care about the ads shoved in the middle of their shows. You need to keep it simple to stick.

Collaboration was never consciously taught; but, was always inferred at each of the agencies. The creative teams that were successful at each agency were incredibly good at collaboration. They had build an environment where failure is encouraged, that in taking risks you often won’t succeed; but, it’s worth it for the one time you will.

Work Pause Work is a system that many traditional agencies have perfected. The best creatives work like theres no tomorrow when they get a fresh brief absorbing research, throwing out the low hanging fruit and getting their creative juices flowing. They take the time to pause, have fun and let the ideas gestate naturally. Then when the big idea(s) hit, they take off running.

Each of the agencies had dramatically different structures and systems but these were the common three threads I learned.

A big thanks to everyone that helped me get to where I am today:

Nancy Rice/////Formerly Head of MCAD Ad Program, Rice & Rice and Fallon

Kindra Murphy, Jan Jancourt & Natasha Pestich/////MCAD Design & Print Making Professors

Kathy Umland & Julie Kuzinski///// Director of Creative Operations & CD at Martin Williams

Ed Huerta, Andy Anema & Gary Carter///// Creative Manage, CD & ACD at Campbell Mithun

John DuBois & Julie DuBois/////CD & ACD at MRM Worldwide MPLS

Brad Surcey & Adrian Ho/////Design Director & Partner at Zeus Jones

Bruce Edwards///// EVP/CD at FAME

Matt Wilson/////Lead Marketing Consultant at Evantage Consulting

Tim Brunelle/////CEO at Hello Viking

David Schutten/////CD at Bleakly & Schutten Advertising

And all of my close advertising and design class mates that pushed me everyday to be better.

How to Generate New Business

"My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably." -George Bernard Shaw

Can a creative comment on the task of an account manager? A major area of interest to me, as a young creative in the ad world, is the sourcing of new business and the true reason that new clients are won.

At MCAD, I was taught that new clients are won at ad agencies because of a good mixture of great work and excellent pitching schools of the Chief Creative Officer, Executive Account Manager and so on. In the past agencies won clients through well placed compliments and extensive friendships; but, things were thought to have changes with small, new agencies becoming agency of record on large brands.

When working at Campbell Mithun, H&R Block dropped us for DDB Chicago based solely on a strong relationship between the heads of DDB and the newly appointed head of H&R Block. This isn't an isolated event, so are things still the same or is it simply different client to client and agency to agency?

I think it's less black and white than that. It seems strong relationships, developed by the account managers, only get you so far, it's the creatives that have to deliver to finally win over the account. It seems the agencies that are winning are those where there is a strong relationship between the creatives and the account managers.

Great Creatives Are A Dime A Dozen

"It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man (almost rarer) who is great enough to see greatness and say so." - Ayn Rand

I ran across this quote again recently and was surprised with how much it resonates with me now more than ever. My perception has been altered after being fortunate enough to have experience working in three different ad agencies (ranging from traditional to interactive) and having in class experience at two more. From those experiences, no matter what the perception of the agency is to the outside world, I have found brilliant, extremely talented creatives at each of the agencies.

The impetus for agencies that are perceived by the industry to be more creative or cutting edge seems to stem from, not the creatives, but those with the gavel that allow work to pass onto the clients [ie creative directors & account managers]. The creative director is the one that has the chance to see the potential in any given budding idea or stamp it out before it becomes fully formed. The account manager has the power to sell the client into believing in the work and pushing back, when appropriate, to ensure great creative is born for the clients future success.

But the thing I learned the most from my experiences thus far is that when an idea fails or succeeds people pass the blame or clamor for the glory. I do think, to a point, that it is still the creatives fault too. If they can't properly sell their work to their superiors, what right do they have to demand them to buy into it?

The Start to an Interesting Career

Hello, I'm Taylor Snyder. I just graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design into the worst financial crisis since the great depression.

My career of choice, for the last five years, has been to be an Art Director in the Ad World. I graduated with a BFA in Advertising Design from one of the top design schools in the mid-west and was tutored by Nancy Rice (one of the founders of Fallon Worldwide). I am an extremely hard worker having worked full time as a Starbucks Store Manager and Noodles & Co. Assistant Store Manager (avg 60 hrs a week) while going to school full time.

I have worked in two agencies thus far including MRM Worldwide and Campbell Mithun. Both agencies wanted to hire me. Both extended my internship (MRM for over a year). And at the end of this week my extension will be over at Campbell Mithun.

It's most definitely an interesting time and this is for sure a start to an interesting career.