Tina Chadwick — Director of Strategy & Integration, Moxie
Tina talks to TheNextGag about her past as a creative director, her vision on creativity and why the Divergent movie is a perfect metaphor for advertising.
Tina Chadwick is SVP/Director of Strategy & Integration at Moxie in the USA.
At Moxie, Tina is responsible for generating business-building ideas for Verizon Wireless and bringing them into fruition. This includes marketing campaigns, major initiatives, price changes, launches and any other go-to-market activity that need cross-segment support.
Tina Chadwick has worked as an Account Executive at J. Walter Thompson and a Senior Writer at Brighthouse Atlanta among many other positions. She transitioned to the creative department and was Associate Creative Director at 22Squared (formerly WestWayne), Creative Director at Exile on Seventh/Siderous Group and Creative Director at MATCH, Inc.
In addition to her varied corporate positions, Chadwick is also an entrepreneur. She was the owner of Tina Chadwick Copy, Inc. for nearly two years. This business was born when clients requested her consulting services after the agency she had previously been working at closed down. Her other business, bee well wishes, inc., was born in 2007 during her 8-month recovery from brain surgery as “a specialty gift company for those in recovery or simply needing a useful gift of cheer.”
When she’s not busy applying her cunning creativity throughout the world of advertising, Chadwick enjoys exercising, rescuing dogs and spending time with her daughter Elizabeth.
THENEXTGAG: WHY IS IT ODD TO SEE CREATIVES TRANSITIONING INTO OTHER POSITIONS ?
TC: I don’t think it’s odd. I think it’s a natural evolution from the stale thought that creative has to come from a person wearing a name tag that says, “creative.” Every discipline requires creativity. Too often we attribute “creative” with “artistic” — and they are not the same thing at all. I would call Ben Franklin creative. Accountants are often creative, right? (At least the good ones.)
TNG: HOW DOES MOXIE DIFFER FROM A TRADITIONAL AD AGENCY ?
TC: Moxie differs from a traditional agency because everyone here is dubbed and operates as creative. When we brainstorm, for example, all positions are represented because a creative idea without a tether to reality is useless in a business environment.
TNG: CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU ENDED UP WRITING SHORT STORIES ABOUT DOGS ?
TC: Ah, creativity finds its outlets in many ways. I would say my biggest joy is to connect with dogs and to truly go through a very idealistic anthropomorphic moment with them. Writing about them also furthers my delusion that I can actually speak dog.
TNG: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A NO-EGO CREATIVE ?
TC: Absolutely. A true creative is more concerned with creating and connecting ideas than with whose idea it was — or thinking there is only one well-spring of creative thinking. True creatives are no-ego by nature because they are driven by the thinking, not the accolades or credit.
TNG: HOW DO YOU HARNESS DATA IN YOUR JOB ?
TC: That’s hard to answer in the single-person mindset. We have an entire intelligence practice that wields data, building complex algorithms to make it behave long enough to extract tangible, actionable direction that is analytically supported. But to answer the question from my chair, I take that distillation and use it to build business cases for creative ideas. We have to get very savvy in data in order to support ideas that have no path because they haven’t been done before. It takes a lot of creativity and acumen to know which data sets tell you the right path to machete. In more simple terms, data is a north star for the foundation of our thinking through to the validation and expansion of it.
TNG: DO YOU BELIEVE THAT HIGH-TOUCH LEADERS ARE THE BEST KIND OF LEADERS ?
TC: YES. All caps a must. Time and time again I have seen out-of-touch leaders completely derail a precision team by not knowing the true nature, purpose or culture of their teams. It’s really inexcusable and irresponsible to not be in touch with your team. The “watch out” here is to be sure that even though you’re high touch, you don’t micromanage — take on too much of the work so you can’t lift your head up and lead. I’m guilty of this myself. My sleeves stay rolled up and dirty more than they should (which is why I’m answering this question for you at 1:19AM).
TNG: CAN STRATEGIC THINKING BE APPLIED TO CREATIVITY ?
TC: Strategic thinking should be the buoy of creativity. Anyone can fill a white board with crazy thoughts. It takes a true creative thinker to find a solution within a framework. An example of true creativity is when the Apollo 13 engineers were given a box of items onboard the rocket and told, “You have 3 hours to use these things to save those astronauts. Go.” No one can say that wasn’t a true test of creativity.
Today’s environment calls for creativity in every faction of business
TNG: HOW SHOULD CREATIVES COLLABORATE WITH OTHER DEPARTMENTS WITHIN AN AGENCY ?
TC: Although I’m older and do remember when creatives were more isolated, I’m not sure that mindset is still prevalent. Creatives are routinely part of larger, multi-department teams. As far as how they should collaborate, I would say share. I still see creatives who think they are the only entity that can contribute to a creative concept. What’s dated about that is today’s environment calls for creativity in every faction of business. You have to come forward with creative tech solutions. Creative platform integrations. Creative partnerships. Creative ways to operationalize ideas. Creatives should know the business so that they can be relevantly creative, not novelty creative. Immerse. Engage. Be present and don’t sit back waiting to be baby bird-fed a brief. Think for yourself on what the problem is to solve.
TNG: CAN YOU EXPAND ON YOUR NOTION THAT TRUE CREATIVITY IS FINDING FREEDOM WITHIN A FRAMEWORK ?
TC: I can expand a bit on that, yes. The true creative brain can think under pressure and with constraints. Another example is the movie Divergent. The Dauntless faction were chastised for thinking for themselves outside of the expected answers. They were the ones who had to come up with the creative answers to get out of tense situations — solve a problem in a way that hasn’t been solved before. But without the problem to solve (constraints), it’s not creative; it’s just a fun romp on a mental hippity-hop with no outcome of value. Any football player can throw a pass down the field without linemen. But when that lineup of 250-pound men is ready to tackle you and you only have seconds to figure it out, it becomes much more impressive. It requires much more thought — and creativity. The tension is what begets the creativity.
Tina Chadwick
SVP/Director of Strategy & Integration
TheNextGag offers ad professionals an up-to-date calendar showing upcoming deadlines of the major global ad awards competitions and rankings of campaigns, brands, agencies and creatives in a beautiful mobile site.
TheNextGag | Obsessed with Creative Advertising
