The End of the Creative Partnership?

After over half a century from its creation, we’re starting to see the art director/copywriter partnership decline.

With the rise of interactive advertising and copywriting being owned by the everyday person (across social media platforms), there has been a greater rise in designers over copywriters in agencies. As a result, copywriting is rapidly becoming an after thought. It’s a role flip from the 50s.

Personally I think this is a huge hit to the level of creativity that has and continues to come from the ad industry as a whole. The biggest hope is the drive to “cut through the clutter” could create a refreshed avante gard movement to obtain great creative copywriters again.

Yet the question that this arises is: Is the decline of copywriting due to our visual obsessed culture, the inability to sell clients on the ad hinging on copy or the lack of groundbreaking copywriting talent that we were flooded with in the 50s?

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.

Agencies That Make Stuff

One of the biggest discussions in the ad world is what the future ad agency will look like.

Will it be media agnostic or specialize in an area, will the creative partnership survive, will it be small & nimble or large & loud? More importantly, will the agency rollercoaster of hiring and firing with each client remain the norm? I think one thing is for sure, as time goes on agencies more and more will make stuff.

Since the inception of the ad agency it had been our culture to not just spread messages but to make things, starting with the creation of the magazine. Agencies more and more are being hailed for their originality when introducing their product lines such as BBH’s line of quick prepare food, Rockfish’s Silver Joe’s & Tidy Tweet and Mother New York’s Target bags and rock concerts.

It’s not just a fad of “look what we can do.” It’s a tangible way to generate extra revenue for the agency and hold onto valuable creatives by absorbing the blow from the loss of a client. I also believe that as agencies are able to take daring steps with their own product lines in the marketplace, they’ll have the chance to directly compete with the big name brands.

The question than becomes, in the future, will we simply shrink away when we lose a new business pitch or simply create a product to directly compete with that brand.

All You Need to Be Successful is a Season of Survivor

Although I’ve never been an avid fan, I’ve always thought that all you need to know to be successful can be observed from watching one season of survivor.

It contains the three essential parts of survival in a corporate structure, an island community or an agency: ability, honesty and understanding those around you. Most people, including myself, would gravitate towards those of ability. Yet a talented individual that is a prima donna, would find it difficult when collaboration is necessary.

The next major factor is honesty. The individuals that are always truthful and direct are often carried far in survivor because they prove to be quite loyal. Yet, if they don’t appropriately voice their opinion they can often be thought of as aloof and could become ostracized from the group.

Lastly, knowing those around you can make or break “the game” for an individual. Knowing how each person will react to praise, honesty or critique should factor into how you communicate the good and the bad with that individual. Those that are more than able, openly honest and understand the politics of a work environment are the ones that seem to consistently succeed.

In the end though, it’s not solely about trying to get to the top; but, more about how to create a team of individuals that can make great things together. That, after all, is the ultimate challenge.

Why Some Content Goes Viral

The concept of what makes a video go viral has been debated within the ad community for quite a while now.

Many have pointed out that it’s the weird factor of a video or simply presenting a piece of entertainment that no one has ever seen before. Yet there have been large production budgets funneled into quite a few youtube videos that have never truly taken off.

In the end, what make a video go viral for me as a user, and seems to be a common thread in successful videos, is happiness. Whether the ad is showcasing a person that is unusually happy, a humorous event that makes the viewer smile or a video that fights for a positive ideal. The connecting piece is the spread of happiness.

At the end of the day, don’t we all just want to smile?

A few examples of this:

JK Wedding Entrance Dance/////40,534,324 views/////Everyday Couple

Charlie the Unicorn/////44,377,154 views/////Everyday Person

Volkswagen: Un-pimp Your Ride 1/////4,648,091 views/////Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Death of Copywriting

Will there be a day when the copywriter is obsolete?

With the rise of digital advertising and social media it seems that copywriting should become increasingly important; however, it appears that the exact opposite is occurring. Due to the everyday person taking on the self ascribed job of spreading their thoughts on blogs, twitter and more, novice writing is becoming the norm.

On top of that, the level of copywriting that was incredibly strong during the 50s and 60s seems to have taken a gradual decline throughout the years as our culture has become dramatically more visually driven.

Yet with the rule of thumb in advertising being to “cut through the clutter” (by doing things differently) will the next big movement be the revival of great copywriting in advertising and design? Or will we become so used to trivial writing that we won’t even recognize it when it returns?

Account Manager's Portfolio

I once read an article that proposed account managers should be required to use a portfolio of work when interviewing. I agree.

Being a young creative in the industry, I see how frusturating it can be to work with an account manager that poorly interprets a clients feedback consistently or simply says yes to everything a client wants. Often the reason for this seems to be that the account manager is judged on how much new business they can get from a client and if they simply do exactly everything the client says they should, hypothetically, be rolling in the dough.

However, if they consistently give the client what they want instead of bringing the agencies expertise to the table to enhance their clients work (involving push back) the work can become stale, sales can plateau and eventually that client will find a different agency they can refresh their brand. The best campaigns out there takes a brilliant creative; but, an even smarter account manager that can sell the work and help the client understand why this move is the best for them.

If an account manager is required to show a portfolio of work they sold through to the client, an agency can quickly see if the account manager is simply a yes man or worth their weight.

Account Managers I want to work with sold these ads through:

Levi’s O’Pioneers///W+K

Nike +/// R\GA

Target’s Sign of the Times///PMH

HBO Vouyer///Big Spaceship

Skittles Pinata///TBWA

Starbust Berries & Cream///TBWA

Sprites Lymon///Crispin + Porter

Creatives Breaking Into the Industry

One of my biggest concerns with the ad industry is the increasing difficulty for young, talented creatives to break in.

I was told by a creative recruiter, that I highly respect and admire, that he feels a college education should be a requirement or a high level consideration. Speaking as one that has an expensive college education from a private design school, I totally disagree with this analysis.

I also believed that one of the best things about the ad industry is some of the best creatives had absolutely no intention of doing advertising in the first place and have no formal education in it. I think it should, as it has for so long, come down to only the work. No matter if the creative spent four years putting his or her book together or a weekend, the only determining factor should be how good their book is.

Yet, no matter what, the monetary and time investment in trying to break into the industry for networking, developing concepts, putting together a book, making revisions, publishing a website, interviewing, following up, etc. is rapidly rising and may hold back some extremely talented creatives in the future.

Traditional Vs. Interactive Agency

Will the traditional or interactive advertising agency win the battle for dominance in the future?

This debate has raged in the ad community for quite some time now and many ardently believe that interactive agencies will reign victorious. The reasoning stems back to a mixture of interactive agencies beginning to win “agency of record” posts mixed with the decline of traditional media consumption. Yet the down side being many interactive shops are relatively small agencies that sometimes can’t handle the sheer amount of work from larger brands and bigger concepts.

On the flip side, the traditional rooted agency has structure on it’s side. It already knows how to create big picture, original creative work in a timely fashion and take on the volume of the big brand. Yet the same structure can often cripple it in response to quick fire needs such as negative publicity on social media feeds such as twitter or blogs.

Ultimately my money is on the idea agencies. At the end of the day it’s great to be able to spread the word across the globe or respond quickly to negative twitter backlash; but, if there is no great creative concept that will cut through the clutter there is no point in getting started in the first place. Today the “idea agencies” tend to be rooted in traditional; yet, interactive shops are rapidly catching up to speed.

New Challenge

Although it’s late for resolutions, I thought I’d pose a challenge to myself. Last time I did that on my blog it nearly got me sued, gave my website over 300 unique hits in a day and landed me a job, so I think its worth a shot.

An Ad A Month. I’m going to produce a new campaign each month (outside of my work) to add to my book.

48 Hour Blog. Post a blog every other day on advertising, design, my work, etc.

Brand It. Redefine my personal branding and website.

Easy enough on paper. It should be interesting to see how this pans out. Check out some resolutions on this nicely designed site.

A Life Lesson

“It doesn’t matter how talented they are, no one wants to work with an asshole.” -Anonymous

I use to believe it was unfair that creatives are judged for their personality when being considered for hiring. I always ardently believed that the only thing that should matter is their ability.

Yet, in the creative world collaboration, more now than ever, is truly key. And the creative community is known for their hefty share of prima donnas.

With the experience I have working in four different agencies and on a number of different creative teams (some that worked and some that didn’t). It has become more apparent that what I had overheard an ad man once say to another MCAD student, “It doesn’t matter how talented they are, no one wants to work with an asshole" is pretty true.