If Kanye West can be Creative Director, does it mean anybody can?
The skills sets required to be creative director are unorthodox and subjective to say the least. 2/2
[This story was originally written in 2014. Things have changed. People have moved on. Keep that in mind as you read this story today>
A while back, I wrote a story about skewed expectations many junior designers seem to have regarding the upward path to Creative Director positions, and what additional traits those individuals should acquire over time in order to elevate themselves through the ranks of creative departments. The story received a tremendous amount of interest and positive feedback, which I am extremely thankful for. Many thanks to all who have reached out to me to share their personal experiences, and asked for more advice. I am glad it was helpful to so many.
But there is still a lot of confusion out there on the basics of what a Creative Director is, what he/she does, and how to become one, since there really aren’t any Creative Direction schools per say. And admittedly, just like all roads lead to Rome, it seems that there is a wide variety of paths to the CD positions, sometimes puzzling enough. With self-appointed Creative Directors popping up just about every day (Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Gwen Stefani, Lady Gaga… and of course the always insightful Kanye West) there has been justifiably growing confusion on what a CD does and what basic skills sets are required to blossom into a “good” Creative Director.
Here’s how the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) defines it: “The Creative Director is responsible for all creative operations for a specific group of brands to include staff supervision and work production. Directs the activities of subordinates to maintain the company’s standards of creative excellence, timeliness, and profitability, while achieving the brands’ goals. Resolves functional conflicts through consultation with internal function heads.” Pretty clean description.
“The Creative Director is responsible for all creative operations for a specific brand, or group of brands, to include staff supervision and work production.”
Although very much centered onto the advertising agency realm, this basic definition can quite easily be extrapolated onto other industries such as fashion or gaming, as our good friends at Wikipedia add: “A Creative Director is a position found within the graphic design, film, music, fashion, advertising, media, entertainment industries, web and software development firms.”
4As describes a lengthy list of various responsibilities attached to a Creative Director, the most pertinent to us today are:
• Insures the timely development and execution of plan, campaigns, and projects to assure brand goals are achieved.
• Provides leadership, motivation and conveys the vision and values of the company or agency to staff.
• Oversees creative consultations with brand teams to assure appropriate creative strategies, adequacy/accuracy of input, schedules, budgets, production support, necessary reviews, and project presentations.
• Trains and supervises assigned staff of writers, artists, production and traffic personnel; oversees their execution of all creative efforts to insure they are on strategy, on budget, and on schedule.
• Keeps the account/brand team leaders aware of the use of outside services and materials to assure timely billing and to minimize write-offs.
• Recommends and evaluates staffing and talent acquisition for creative groups.
• Assures the staff adheres to established company/agency policies and procedures.
• Maintains external professional relationships to assure the ongoing availability of specialized expertise, freelancers, studios/producers when their services are required.
• Participates in the new business efforts as directed.
• Executes duties and assignments as directed in compliance with corporate guidelines and objectives.
• Facilitates and promotes corporate initiatives and values throughout the function.
This is indeed a very precise and accurate list of responsibilities, but many people have reached out wondering what BASIC skill sets are best matched to deliver on those specific duties.
Several design students have specifically enquired about a very comprehensive set of skills, so I decided to consult with a few friends of mine in similar creative leadership positions in agencies and brands to better answer their question. We wanted to provide a very objective and empirical answer, and not being solely based on subjective personal experiences. We collectively came up with four core skills sets that we believe separate good Creative Directors from bad Creative Dictators… or worse, Kanye West.
Those traits are in no specific orders, and are not meant to be a rigid check list. Some of us are incredibly strong in some areas while admittedly weaker in some others, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some Creative Directors will actually specifically hire Associate Creative Directors to help them strengthen those areas, like staff development for example. Some others have very little responsibilities in the financial duties referred above due to strong account/brand management elsewhere in the agency. One of the Creative Directors whom I consulted with to write this story, never presents concepts, nor pitches new business for her new biz team is so strong in those areas.
There are no right or wrong answers here, please take this nomenclature with a grain of salt. This list of personal assets is meant to give entry-level designers a better idea of what it will take to eventually become Creative Director, and to give them a better idea of what characteristics they should be aiming for in order to further their future professional progression. If you feel that you are not currently equipped to address those duties, fear not. There is a reason why ALL Creative directors need to have as little as five to as much as 10 years of experience in their respective fields. Email me immediately if you landed a CD position right out of college.
“We highlighted four core groups deemed required for
creative leadership positions: Individual Assets, Leadership Abilities, Work Ethics and Business Intelligence.
Hire Today with Tomorrow in Mind
Personally when I hire a creative, I am hiring with the next position in mind. All my hires have a clear path of progression outlined for them from day one. When I hire a Jr. Graphic Designer, I start training him/her to become a Sr. Designer immediately, and they are made aware of it on their first day.
The following traits are personal characteristics I immediately look for when I hire a Sr. Art Director, for that person will unmistakably become ACD, then eventually CD, either in my groups or elsewhere, either within two years or five depending on the individual’s progression. I personally see no point in hiring somebody today knowing that that person will be immediately limited in his/her progression for lack of potential key traits. I feel this is incredibly short-sighted as a creative leader. But that’s just me.
We were surprisingly able to quickly isolate 4 core groups we all look for when hiring creatives destined for leadership positions: Individual Assets, Leadership Abilities, Work Ethics and Business Intelligence.
Individual Assets
If you do not know anything about advertising or design, or if you have no idea if Africa is a country or a continent, or if you think DaVinci is that cute little pizzeria around the corner, then I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to be a long uphill battle. You don’t have to be the quintessential well of wisdom and knowledge, but general culture is going to be a key asset that will allow you to relate to your staff, clients, products, markets, demographics…
• Broad Range of Experience: I have individuals on my staff who are far more competent than me in various specific crafts. And I have no problem with that. I hired them for that specific reason. (Insert over-used Giants/Shoulders Ogilvism here.) Some Creative Directors were outstanding award-winning copywriters, who now have to weigh in on UI/UX designs for a client micro-site, then jump to evaluate experiential design for a clothing pop-up store in SoHo and finally finish the day with a meeting about legal concerns over typographic issues on a new laundry detergent packaging. There are no schools nor diplomas that can prepare you for a day like that. I learn something new every day and rely heavily on my staff to keep me abreast of current trends and upcoming technologies. Still, a Creative Director will need to have a broad range of experience covering a wide range of crafts to be able to weigh in on any given issues.
• General Culture: You simply have no idea what your agency’s next account will be. You simply have no idea if your next project will lead you to shoot a commercial on Easter Island for Boeing, or direct a photo shoot in London for an ad campaign promoting Les Miserables. I wish I could tell you to read, read, read but with your luck your next assignment will be for Netflix or HBO and the last movie you saw in a theater had Hugh Grant in it… And remember, as the Creative Director you have very little choice over account assignments. They are ALL yours. Turning down a Shampoo account because you don’t know anything about hair care is not really in the cards. Use your deep knowledge of your staff and assign the most competent team on that account and start catching up. Remember that even Hello Kitty has an ad agency. Yep, that could be yours one day...
• Listening and Patience: I cannot stress enough how crucial being a good listener is in order to develop into a great CD. In order to absorb a stupefying amount of information you will need to listen to countless creative briefs and competitive assessments from brand managers. You will need to listen to your clients’ needs, your staff’s requests, your executives’ demands. Nothing can possibly prepare you for the next challenge walking through your door. You will have to ask a thousand questions in order to start computing and solving your client and staff problems. You will need to keep a pulse on the agency life, your staff’s challenges and your projects’ issues. Listen, pay attention and show a tremendous amount of patience. People will look for your calm in the storm.
Leadership Abilities
— Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park.
As seen previously in the list of job responsibilities, a Creative Director is first and foremost a leader and manager. You will have clients, you will have brand managers, you will have a staff, you will have vendors. If you are uncomfortable around people, you better be extremely talented in other areas, because sooner or later somebody on your staff will have a problem and you’ll have to deal with it, and they won’t care if you haven’t had your Venti quad half-soy half-hazel undertow with double foam yet.
• Feedback: Give too much feedback and you’ll be labeled as a self-centered egotistic maniac. Give too little feedback and you’ll be tagged as someone who has no idea what he/she wants. I know this is going to be a recurring theme here, but find a balance that works for you and your teams. Ultimately you want your teams to grow and improve, even through the painful but necessary stages of unavoidable failures. But you obviously don’t want them to be discouraged and have no clue what to do next. Some art directors on your teams will require very little input. They will get it. A few words and comments and they’ll know exactly what you mean and will run back to their desk knowing exactly what to do next. I have one of those on my staff right now and I can’t stress enough how valuable team chemistry is. Some others will look at you with a blank stare in their eyes totally clueless about that 80's reference you just made. “What’s a Top Gun? and who is this Maverick guy?” True story.
• Empower Selflessly: Admittedly, this was my personal cross for several years. Delegating, stepping back and watching. I’m not going to lie to you, I lost many sleepless nights wondering what would be presented to me the next morning. Watching a Jr. Designer spend three times as long to produce an average brochure is something that is very difficult for a senior creative to come to closure with. But it will pay off. It will pay off big time with patience and guidance. Yes it will be a difficult transition watching people do what you were doing a few months ago in a fraction of the time with far superior results, but you are going to drive yourself insane if you keep thinking like this. You are the Creative Director, your job is now to guide and nurture. You need to start taking pride in your staff’s work, even if it’s not the way you would have directed or written it. Because your job is now to push THEIR work, so you better get behind it or the client will see right through it.
• Challenging the Creative Process: A Creative Director needs to keep an eye on his teams without looking like he/she is micromanaging. Because it is easy to forget that behind the manager’s door, Creative Directors have 10, 15 or even 20 years of campaigns, packagings, commercials, brochures behind them. And most likely their teams are far less experienced. Far less. As a Creative Director you have to be able to remove yourself from the creative process and empower your teams, but at the same time you have to make yourself available to them for you can easily right a wrong in a matter of minutes and save your teams days of work if they went down the wrong path. You have the experience, you’ve been there thousands of times, they haven’t. The teams that welcome your input and recognize that they have hit a bump will come running in your office and ask for your insights. Some of your teams will be reticent in doing so because they really want to impress you and want you to be proud of their work. Be smart about it. Keep tabs on your teams and insert yourself only when needed. Remember that they also need to learn from their mistakes.
• Steering the Ship: If an agency hires the “wrong“ Creative Director the work will immediately decline. Guaranteed. It doesn’t mean that this particular person is incompetent or ill-equipped, it just mean that every agency has a a particular style, culture and spectrum of clients. A small regional B2B agency can hire a new Creative Director and all the sudden the work jumps a couple of notches and allows the new biz team to pitch much larger and much higher profile clients, or even foray into B2C space. A company can try for years to penetrate a particular niche and all the sudden is able to develop a couple of clever marketing campaigns simply because the new Creative Director has a better grasp of the brief, or has a more acute sensitivity with this particular segment.
• Setting the Standard: If you ever wondered why Creative Directors change agencies often and why clients and staff follow them to their new ventures, wonder no more. A Creative Director sets the pace, sets the standards. Watch carefully what happens to an agency when their beloved Creative Director leaves for greener pasture, or to open his/her own shop. The work changes. The clients leave, there is an hemorrhaging of top talents, the morale hits rock bottom throughout the whole place and of course the work suffers immediately. A good Creative Director makes everything gel, everything click. Sometimes he/she can be difficult to work with and sets impossible quality standards, but people will work on weekends and sleep at the office without being asked to, because the work has become a clear cut above the rest.
• Directing vs. Dictating: When dealing with art, design, ideas and concepts, you are neck deep in subjectivity. Every CD has a personal background and experience which leads to a very personal management style. Some CDs will not tolerate being questioned or second-guessed at all. They will expect you to do what they say, or fix what you’ve done their way. I can think of a long list of very successful Hall-of-Fame Creative Directors who fall squarely in this category, and I’m thinking Karl Lagerfeld is most probably on that list. On the other hand you will find a very large number of Creative Directors who do welcome input for the sake of making the final result better. Challenging and pushing the status-quo can definitely improve the work. To a point. There could also be a danger of a “too many cooks in the kitchen” dilemma looming on the horizon as well. And sooner or later, someone will need to have the final say without trampling everybody else in the process. Find balance in your leadership abilities.
Work Ethics
This is a very important set of skills that we all feel is currently grossly overlooked in many cases. If you love being surrounded by friends, go to yoga with your besties, love discussing The Bachelorette the next day, run the office fantasy football league or love chatting around the water cooler about that cute new gal/guy, forget about it. “It’s lonely at the top” is your new catchphrase. Can you handle that?
• To Serve and Protect: One of the duties I personally feel most strongly about is to keep my teams focused on what they do best: Design, create, imagine, illustrate, write, edit… I go through GREAT lengths to shield them from company white noise. Layoff rumors, inter-department gossips, office politics… it all stops with the CD. It is your job to handle those distractions and deal with them so your staff doesn’t have to. Keep your staff informed of what you feel is absolutely necessary, they will understand why they are the last ones knowing that Maria in Receivables and John in IT are “no longer with the company.”
• Promotion Ave. is a Lonely Road: Because the road to the office of Creative Director is unequivocally through experience, sooner or later you will find yourself promoted to the job. That very minute, you have officially lost all your agency buddies. All those days and nights spent working with your fellow copywriters, editors and art directors bonding over cold pizza are gone. Some may not agree with this statement, but your friendships will not survive your promotion, sorry. You are now their boss and there will be an awkward transition period, but make no mistake, your buddies are gone. If you are not prepared for that, it will hit you hard.
• Taking a Stand: People will watch all your moves. People will listen to everything you say. Clients, staffers, vendors, executives. You will need to back up your teams’ work and ideas or send them back to the drawing board. You will need to step up to the plate and tell the client that enough is enough, an eighth round of revision is not acceptable. You will need to say no when an entire board room expects you to say yes. You will need to tactfully disagree with clients while letting them know it’s for their own good. You may even have to tell your CEO to fire a client that has become unprofitable or disruptive to the agency.
• Leave Popularity to Cheerleaders: Because of the aforementioned points, sooner or later you are going to upset people. Your job will eventually lead you to disagree with individuals on a daily basis, and no one likes that, even if deserved. Even if your art director KNOWS that you are challenging him/her, or that you are pushing your copywriter to create better headlines, you are bound to create resentment, you are bound to create enemies. I don’t believe that this gives you the right to act and behave like a giant turd but there will be a difficult balance to achieve between fear and respect. And it is not easy. The night you can walk to your car in the dark parking lot without looking over your shoulder is the day you should feel pretty good about yourself.
• Hire the Right People: If you find yourself micromanaging every project and have people lining up in your office to show you progress on the most minute task, you have FAILED. You have failed at hiring people you can trust. You have failed at hiring professionals who can handle the tasks assigned. No one likes getting hired for a job only to be followed around the office and asked every 2 hours to report on progress. That person is looking for another job as we speak. Guaranteed. If you are taking over an existing staff, you may need to be pragmatic about it and go through a robust evaluation and make sure you have the staff to achieve what you were hired to accomplish. If not, you’ll end up having to be the one signing off on exhibits’ carpet swatches and deciding between Helvetica Neue Light and Helvetica Neue Thin. And that will make your staff feel sooo very special.
• Positive and Constructive Feedback: This one is tricky and we all seem to have a different take on it. There is a blurred line between giving thoughtful, constructive and delayed feedback, and giving concise, clear and immediate feedback. Problem is that every CD has his/her own individual cognitive process. Do you want my FIRST answer or the RIGHT answer? Some Creative Directors will have no problem telling you right there and then what they like or don’t like about your ad campaign, logo, soundtrack or exhibit layout. Which is great for the designer or writer. Done. Moving on to execution. But often, creatives are also left with the feeling that several weeks of work were quickly judged in a few seconds with very little thoughts or consideration. On the other hand, some CDs will want to have the work left with them and reflect upon it, go back to their notes, compare the different options, consult with their ACDs. But when they tell you that they really like concept B, you know they mean it and you will welcome their feedback with open arms because you know he/she gave your work enough respect not to judge it between two sips of mocha latté. Of course, some designers will call the CD wishy-washy and not standing for his/her vision. Again, this comes down to chemistry. If you have built up a great relationship with your CD based on mutual respect, feedback should seem effortless and should not create any resentment.
Business Intelligence
How about a 30,000 ft. perspective?”
Welcome to the world of “Strategy” and “Big Picture” and “30,000 ft. View”. You are no longer the obsessive detail-oriented designer kerning words pica by pica, nor the compulsive copywriter tweaking each sentence so it is absolutely correct in AP, SW and Chicago Styles. Your world is now about problem-solving, business acumen, experiences, perspectives … and yes, staff holiday schedule...
• Strategic Problem-Solving: As discussed in our previous story, many Art Directors or Copywriters who have a hard time transitioning to Creative Director positions have acknowledged that it was very difficult for them to abandon the tactical part of their job for a more strategic mindset. Many even decided to revert to their previous positions. The change of pace and environment is drastically different. As a Creative Director, every thing you touch is about strategy, long-term planning, future implications and business acumen. The Creative Director needs to be able to absorb a thousand pieces of individual information gathered through dozens of sources, aggregate them and make sure that the final product solves the given problem. One day you may realize that you don’t even have Photoshop on your machine. And the saddest thing is that you’ve had this laptop for over 6 months now. See what I mean?
• Intimate Knowledge of the Brand: The Creative Director has a finger in all the pies and at times it seems overwhelming, but that is the only way to keep a pulse on the life of a dozen projects. The Creative director is a bridge to all other departments of the company. Strategy, planning, client management. The Creative Director needs to absorb a tremendous amount of information to better equip his teams. A flawed creative brief will send the creative teams on a wild goose chase, and without an intimate knowledge of the brief from day one, it will be extrememly difficult to get the teams back on track. Unfortunately, while a single creative team may be assigned to 2-3 brands and become extremely knowledgeable about those specific projects, a Creative Director overseeing multiple groups can sometimes oversee dozens of brands. I personally oversee a portfolio of over 30 individual brands and there is no physical way for a single person to be FULLY engaged with 30 brands yielding upward to 100 projects every quarter. See where hiring reliable and trustworthy staff becomes key here?
• Accomplished Creative: This can sound like a non-question but it is indeed very important. Of course with 10+ years of experience there is no doubt a Creative Director can design, create, edit... The important question is: Are you willing to give up your passion to become a Creative Director? Because let’s face it, your design or writing days are over. You have now become a “Jack-of-All-Trades, Master of None”. Yes, it sounds very harsh, but as discussed above, with potentially 30+ brands covering potentially such disparate fields as emerging markets healthcare and industrial mining, and encompassing a scope of projects from TV commercials to consumer packagings there is absolutely no way a human being can be covering that much ground. And we are not even covering the basic management responsibilities, human resources, and daily agency duties. That said, I also know several Creative Directors who are so heavily involved in the day-to-day production that they are actually hurting their groups by creating giant bottlenecks by not dedicating enough time in other crucial areas, such as staff development. It’s a vicious circle.
• The Last Line of Defense: Despite all your best efforts to delegate, empower and inspire your team, if the work isn’t there the night before the client meeting, guess what? It’s all on you. You will need to come up with the solution and save the project with your bare hands. Whether you gather your team, order 12 pizzas and pull an all-nighter to come up with the “Great Idea”, or decide to lock yourself up in your office, down 12 expressos and start from scratch is up to you. What’s the alternative? Showing up in the client presentation at 9 a.m. and sell mediocre work you know isn’t answering the brief? … Yes, I thought so.
• Catalystic Converter: Yes, I made that up, but quite frankly at the end of the day a Creative Director will infuse a new level of excellence in every product that comes out of the creative department. Whether a logo, print ad campaign, fashion collection or TV commercial, every project that comes through a Creative Director’s office one way will come out better the other side. Same goes with the staff. If you’ve been working for a CD for a couple of years and you are not feeling that your work and skills have improved, then it’s time to look for another CD, and I mean just that, don’t just look for another job or another agency. If you want to elevate yourself to the next level, make sure to enquire about the current Creative Director. Would you still want to work at Vogue if Grace Coddington wasn’t the CD?
• Selling Style: This is probably the strongest point of contention where a lot of Creative Directors differ. Because of various personality styles, company cultures, agency needs and other outside perimeters, some Creative Directors are expected to help develop new business, pitch ideas to outside clients or sell campaigns internally. One of the CD I consulted with writing this story lives for that. She absolutely loves to pitch campaigns to clients, she loves to present and sell ideas. Another Creative Director told me he doesn’t pitch at all, for his new biz team handles all the presentations, which is just fine by him. Still, at some level a Creative Director needs to be able to present the ideas his/her team came up with to somebody, even if to the internal brand manager or editor-in-chief. Your own personal style is entirely up to you. There are gregarious and flamboyant Creative Directors who can mesmerize and dazzle a boardroom full of executives, and there are Creative Directors who will seal the deal over lunch with the CMO with calm confidence.
Find Balance
Obviously depending on the size of your agency, industries and overall company culture some of the above skill sets will immediately become crucial while others will inevitably recede. As mentioned earlier, not knowing what a jpeg is will inevitably sooner or later become an issue. Not being able to hire nor retain talent will, as well, quickly become an issue when it comes down to build up a good team. Balance is the recuring theme here. It’s absolutely okay not to recognize yourself in all of the above traits, but be aware that you will need to be very strong in some areas to make up for your inevitable weaknesses. You’re just human.
I’m not sure how strong Karl Lagerfeld is on work ethics and selflessness, but I’m quite sure he is a force of nature to reckon with when it comes down to steering the Chanel brand in the right direction or executing on the Fendi vision.
Don’t get me wrong, even though this story paints a pretty drab picture of the daily life of a Creative Director, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. I know people out there who are absolutely miserable being Creative Directors, and make everybody else feel the same because, you know, misery likes company. I am not sure what went wrong with their career path. But I also know dozens of wonderful and passionate individuals who cannot wait to get to the office in the morning, talk to clients, develop staff, discuss projects with brand management, catch up on current status and sign off on amazingly creative work that contributes to the success of many grateful clients. Seeing it all coming together is the true reward.
As long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, you’ll have a blast.
If anything aforementioned is making you feel icky, think this through very carefully.
