Finding Inspiration Among Peers
A Conversation with Creative Director Alexandra Fuller
There’s been some talk about mentorship around the office lately, including the vital role it can play in one’s professional development. There are definitely a few people from my own past who have taught me valuable lessons I cherish, and in some ways I value those lessons more than my academic degrees. Maybe you’ve had a mentor before — a professor, boss or colleague. Mentorship goes beyond the practical skills we learn in school by offering unique perspectives based on experiences gained only through trial and error.
We can all benefit from mentorship, regardless of our age or career stage. So in lieu of a formal mentorship program the ladies of Struck decided to gather once a month to share stories, advice and see what we could learn from one another. Creative Director Alexandra Fuller (or Alex, as we call her) was recently named One of 30 Women to Watch by Utah Business Magazine. During one of our monthly conversations, I had the chance to get to know Alex a little better. I was especially intrigued when she described her history — her resume is varied and full of adventure, while her personality exudes that of a true explorer, curious and brave.
After hearing Alex speak to the group, I had to know more. So, I sat down with Alex to dive a little deeper into her career path and philosophy.
You’ve had a varied and interesting career history. Could you describe the path you followed to becoming a Creative Director at Struck?
I went to a liberal arts college and double-majored in environmental studies and international studies. I always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t take many literature or creative writing classes, because it felt too pleasurable. I felt like I was supposed to be torturing myself for some reason. Maybe because my parents paid my tuition and I felt guilty?
Fresh out of school I worked with a few environmental non-profits then took some time off to go on an adventure. Through one of the non-profits I made a connection that lead to my first agency job where I held both creative direction and account management roles. It was a really small agency and everyone wore a lot of hats. Eventually I left that agency to work on the Olympics in Greece. When I returned, I built up a freelance career over the next eight years and began to work in documentary filmmaking. My long time interest in photography and writing seemed a natural progression to film. My first real film was called Sister Wife. I wrote, produced and edited the film, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2009. Next I produced a feature doc called Training For the Apocalypse that premiered on National Geographic Channel in 2012.
After becoming a mother I craved the company and challenge of other creative adults, and began to stalk Struck until they hired me. I was first hired as a senior writer, worked my way up to creative director, and now here I am!
Do you still make films?
I do. I work on them mostly at night and on the weekends. I love having a variety of projects. My most recent film project was a short narrative collaboration called Distance. It’s a weird, fairly inaccessible art film, and I loved making it.
How is being a creative director different from being a writer and filmmaker?
Creative direction is leadership, make no mistake about it. I think that’s actually one of the things that people may not think a lot about it. One of the challenges about creative direction is that our industry is structured for you to ladder up in your area of specialty as you become better and better at your craft. But being a creative director is a fundamentally different job than the craft you practice; it’s not a higher job on the career ladder, it’s a different job.
When you become an expert at your craft and someone makes you a creative director no one teaches you how to be a leader and suddenly your job is to do just that.
Your job is now to encourage, and nurture, and enable that craft in other people. Not for you to show off your own talent and skills.
We, as an entire industry in general, do a pretty bad job of helping people make that transition, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for everybody to have the job of creative director. I would love our industry to find a way to celebrate and value the people who are experts in their crafts. Keep them around, make sure there’s a way to reward them both financially and in terms of recognition, keep the work interesting, let them still be master craftsmen, and not make all roads have to funnel into the role of creative director. Creative direction for me is more about strategizing, selling, and leading rather than practicing a craft. Your craft is leadership at that point, it’s no longer writing or designing or art directing.
However, leadership is a different thing than management. A creative director can’t just be a manager or no one’s going to respect them. They have to be fully capable of doing their craft and of bringing out the best work in other people. It’s not a bureaucratic management position, all though certainly there will be some of that too. I do think there’s a mistake that we as creatives in general make by somehow thinking that creative directors are going to be super talented rock stars. But it’s work, it’s doing the work of leadership. And that’s work! And it’s often unsexy and un-rock star-ey.
What qualities are essential to your role as creative director?
Curiosity and empathy are the two most important qualities for my own leadership style. Curiosity is going to propel you toward innovation. Being curious means that you become fearless about throwing out established procedures and practices. It means you’re able to embrace the notion that the right ideas could come from anywhere, and it encourages collaboration and collective brain power. I think the idea of celebrating curiosity means that we don’t just tolerate but we need to welcome experimentation and encourage early failures.
The word empathy is tossed around in leadership circles now like an inflatable ball at a pool party. But for me, the word has a timeless and significant weight to it. Empathy leads to better work by allowing a team to imagine the needs, desires and world-views of a particular audience, then finding a common human experience to share with them, instead of creating campaigns that resonate with only ourselves. It means understanding and respecting the hopes and fears of clients and working with them, rather than in spite of them, to create meaningful projects for their brand. It means taking the time to know my colleagues as complex individuals, recognizing and respecting their strengths, their challenges, their outside pressures. No creative work is done in isolation, it’s always a team sport.
A good creative director is a leader who holds to a clear, strong visions, but yet is able to release that vision enough that everybody else is able to take hold of it and bring it to life.
You don’t seem like the kind of woman who believes in regrets, but if you could go back in time would you have done anything different?
I feel like I was really lost for a lot of my 20s, I can make it look not that way on a resume but I do really feel like I was lost. (After school) I didn’t really know what I supposed to be doing and wandered. But I wouldn’t undo the wandering now. I think, whatever path we all take, even the painful or scary parts are necessary to get us where we are now. And I feel really happy right now, really fulfilled. But I would have loved to have made myself not so worried during the times that I felt lost. But I don’t know, maybe you have to feel worried too.
What advice would you give to aspiring creatives?
First, look honestly as the jobs of a senior master craftsmen and that of a creative director to see how they’re different and how each is valuable. Let the title go and look at what the job is and ask ‘does this job look interesting to me.’ Then look at a course that’s going to chart toward one or the other.
A mantra my mom always says has been a good guide for me, and I apply this to our jobs as creatives; she says
“Your job is to do three things. It’s to show up, tell the truth, and release the consequences.”
Showing up means being prepared, being on time, being intellectually curious, emotionally open to new ideas and processes, to people you don’t always enjoy working with, and to projects that at the onset don’t seem like they have juicy potential.
Telling the truth means bringing your best self and your most honest efforts. It means speaking your mind. I think that’s something that maybe women have a harder time with sometimes, because we can be labeled as bitchy, instead of being seen as candid. Being brave enough to be vulnerable with your ideas, even if you’re afraid they’re going to sound dumb or be unconventional.
Releasing the consequences is sometimes the hardest part. It means allowing your ideas to be shaped and evolved by others, but also not shying away from conflict if it’s necessary. That is to say we don’t have to go looking for conflict, but sometimes it’s there and it needs to be addressed. At the end of the day the client may decide to totally change the work, but releasing the consequences is about how we can find love in the process and let go of the result. You have to be able to find satisfaction in the making of a thing.
There’s a fine line between art and commerce and we all feel very personal about our ideas and our work. But it’s strange in this business where we’re creatives for hire. It’s not our art, we don’t own it, our clients do. It’s their idea, and it’s their work, and they can do things with it that we disagree with and that’s totally fine — it belongs to them. It’s a weird thing to realize that. It definitely takes some ego wrestling.
Do you feel pressured to do something mind blowing now that you’re one of 30 Women to Watch in Utah?
I always feel a lot of pressure to do rad stuff, but the award isn’t going to be the driving force of that. The success of The Mighty Five campaign put more pressure on me to do something great. After such good reviews it seems inevitable that whatever you do next is going to be somehow disappointing.
It’s hard to come back after a failure, but it’s somehow even harder to come back after a total success.
If the goal is to avoid pressure, then we’re in the wrong industry. We can handle pressure, we’re very capable humans. People are designed to thrive under pressure.
