One lesson I wish I had learned as an early stage creative producer.

One thing I’ve seen teams get wrong time and again is letting labels like “strategist”, “designer”, and “developer” dictate how they solve problems.

Believing idea development is the exclusive domain of some roles and not others, they let the creative process unfold in silos, openly and practically distinguishing “thinkers” from “makers”.

That’s a mistake.

Our goal is to transport brilliant ad creative across a vast ecosystem of devices, channels, and platforms. Practically, that means the only way to know an idea will scale to where and when it’s needed is to understand what the tech can do. When the tech is the thing that can make or break the idea, you want the coders involved every step of the way.

In the 1960s, Bill Bernbach decided words and copy should sit in the same room and forever changed the ad industry. Creative teams still exist today because the necessity of that relationship is well understood: a singular idea is infinitely more powerful than competing ones. Well, the rule applies to devs and designers as much as it does to words and copy.

The people who have the ideas need to be the same people who make the ideas because making stuff is how you get good at knowing what to make.

That’s it. That’s the thing I wish I’d learned.

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