Why creative directors can be hopeless at hiring
In this guest post Paul Fishlock explains why promoting those who seem to be best at their jobs to management can be damaging for diversity.
“Mum, I’ve been made creative director” is a great moment in any creative’s life.
Particularly copywriters, who may have spent years trying to explain to their mothers why their art director is a director and they’re not.
“I’m so proud you’ve finally caught up”, she replies, “when did you learn to be a creative director?” Good question. The honest answer to which is “I didn’t”. Creative director is a role few agency creatives are ever ready for and fewer, if any, have ever been trained for.
One day you’re living the dream, creating great campaigns. The next you get a tap on the shoulder and offered the big chair. How can you refuse? Not just for the leap in salary and status but because it’s the only career progression open to you. And so it is that someone who’s passion and talent is having ideas suddenly becomes manager of the department that can make or break your agency. It’s a million miles from your old job.
Chances are you never studied commerce, business or management so the Excel spreadsheets about resource utilisation and department budget forecasts are sure to take you out of your comfort zone. It’s also unlikely you’ve had any training in HR.
But as a new CD some high profile hiring and firing may well be top of your to-do list.
What happens next is no excuse for the much-discussed lack of gender, race and other diversity in creative departments but it may help explain it.
As new CD, you need to make your mark by hiring a hot new creative team. There are three places to start your search:
- Mates – people you know and people they know;
- Headhunters – whose easiest earn is to dish up who they think you’ll buy; and
- Awards – last refuge of the insecure CD – people other people think are OK.
Given the cost and importance of senior creative hires, none of these is what you’d call rigorous. But portfolios are put forward nonetheless. Bill and Ben have their names on an international award-winner. What’s not made clear is that five other creatives, three CDs and two ECDs are also on the credits. So which part of this wordless work of genius did Bill and Ben do? And was it Bill or was it Ben?
Maybe an interview will shed some light. Being far too cool for a structured interview in an office, you have lunch in an expensive restaurant. Everyone gets on famously. You like the same music, movies, ads, you have friends in common and the same sense of humour. What fun it will be to have Bill and Ben in the creative department. And what a press release: ‘New CD lures multi-award-winning team’.
Nobody stops to consider that the last thing an agency needs is a creative department of creatives who all think the same. It makes for a friendly, comfortable, fun time, but lack of diversity at the workstations is a recipe for lack of diversity in the work. The alternative – managing diverse creative people with diverse views on everything makes the CD’s job a whole lot harder. But isn’t that why they get the big bucks?
Maybe reference-checking Bill and Ben will save the day? But if the CD is only seeking confirmation, the referees Bill and Ben put up won’t disappoint.
As you will have noticed two senior hires are virtually signed and sealed without mention of filthy lucre. Everyone’s so loved-up, negotiation would be vulgar. In one famous story, a CD asked a team what they were currently getting and immediately offered them both 50 per cent more. What he didn’t realise was that the team had just told him their combined salary.
Exaggerated to make the point, I admit, but essentially this is how a lot of creatives get hired. If it later emerges that Bill and Ben aren’t the promised messiahs, un-hiring them is not just costly and disruptive it’s painful for everyone – including Bill and Ben.
I have a dream. You’re an agency CEO who’s just offered a senior creative the CD job.
He or she will only accept it on one condition: you get a business coach to train them to run a department, hire, fire and negotiate. Then you’d know you’d got the right person.
- Paul Fishlock is principal of Behaviour Change Partners
Messi, Ronaldho, Beckham, etc al might suck at management. The issue in workplaces is the ego and traditional corporate ladder. (Everyone trying to out do each other to be ranked more senior…) This race to the top actually hurts creativity, team work and collaboration in the work place. Super stars might be be super stars as director’s, however they could be more worthy to a business than many of the senior leadership team. These super stars should be rewarded like star footballers; they are the fire power.
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These days CDs are rarely even group heads. Few can give feedback, instead they say ‘fuck it – I’ll just do everything myself’.
Then whinge loudly about how busy they are, blame the team when the work turns out shit and find a million excuses to never let anyone underneath them grow into a position where they could one day take that CD’s job.
A whole generation of super insecure micromanagers at a time when advertising is suffering the fiercest competition it ever has.
How many Cannes Lions were won by advertising agencies this year? Why are so many young creatives choosing to work at start-ups, media companies or Google and Facebook?
Why don’t advertising agencies invest in creative leadership courses for Seniors / CDs, maybe hire some of the ‘old school’ blokes who were booted out of advertising in the GFC? They might not be great at digital, but they sure knew how to run a department.
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First we have “Don’t be advertising”, now we have “No-one knows how to hire any more in the Creative Dpeartment”. Is our business really that broken that we need this constant carping from the sidelines? Seriously, isn’t time to bring something positive to the table? Maybe we should have the next article “Why are people in AdLand so miserable?”
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Nice piece of writing..
“wordless work of genius” hit the nail.
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@Moan etc…the two articles are world’s apart, especially as this one is, in fact, positive. (The other was just boring and badly written, thus obscuring any valid message.) But maybe you can’t see the upside thru your myopia, or maybe you are part of the problem. Maybe you could re-read it and Think About It… and look at the real Bravery inherent in championing diversity. PF nails it – especially observing the tired press release where talent is always “lured” – yawn.
PS methinks it’s whose not who’s
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This ain’t confined to “Creative” role filling. It is everywhere. People hire in their own [self-]image. And any potential hire that is half decent (only half) can discover and deliver what the hiring manager wants to hear. All my best hires have been after I gave candidates some challenges at extended interview: creative, attention to detail, and diplomatic. One of the good things about this methodology is that the people who are too self-important for this kind of rigour don’t apply.
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There were some Creative Directors who were hopeless at everything. Usually those who took over the agency from Daddy and chose the title for themselves because they thought it the most sexy. Not infrequently they add the word “executive” at the front making them really, really creative. And there are some who were appointed CD on merit. Sadly the CD job rarely suits the best creative person who usually gets it. Why? Because it is a management position which needs management ability, political ability and more mongrel than most exceptional creatives can muster. I have seen too many great creatives fail as CDs because they no longer get to do real creative. Or, if they do they don’t do the management. The industry needs to let creatives create, and managers manage.
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The timing is impeccable and the sentiment spot on.
Right now, there’s a highly regarded Australian agency with a newly appointed creative head wreaking havoc on the creative department theyve inherited. The agency CEO, who has a thirst for awards, something they find important to balancing out the agency’s business success. So seeking fame, a new creative head was appointed and has been allowed to hire numerous people from their former agency, while systematically ignoring all those currently in the creative department. Morale is low, me a two class system is in full swing. Those that can deliver the metal are in, and everyone else is working long hours and weekends on proactive work hoping to catch the bosses eye.
Fair?
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Well disguised Piper, not.
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@ Groucho nails it too and I feel for ya Piper – back in the day we had CDs who were also owners and as a result often neither good creatives nor good managers, so they could stick a dolphin in every ad if they wanted to…
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O’Really those were the days, dicks in inverse proportion to egos.
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This article misses the key point that most appointed CDs are not fit-for-purpose because they represent where the agency currently is, rather than where it needs to be. The check lists they are approved against are invariably put together by the very people who are holding the agency back – its current senior management. As Tolstoy said “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself” You get the legacy CD you deserve, not the one you need. That person is way too much of a threat.
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Not a CD is right. Look at the number of legacy agencies in Sydney that have changed CDs over the past two years but business continues to flounder. They haven’t changed. Independent shops and other non traditional agency businesses are making inroads because they don’t believe in the cult of the CD.
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I’m not sure I agree with the hiring strategy Paul outlines either. Who can seriously expect to make a difference staffing up with traditional creatives right now, however many shiny awards they have won? Top of my list would be a good strategic writer, a digital designer and ideally someone from an ethnography/anthropology background. Not glamourous, I know, but I would want CX to live within the department from the moment I took over. Then use the teams already in place to work to their own strengths. Good as this article is, it belongs in another era. The fact that agency management keep repeating the old formulas is part of the problem. In most agencies there is too much irrelevant fiddling while Rome burns. As True that implies, if your CD is not decentred by now, it is probably already too late for your agency.
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Piper, know where you’re coming come mate. The new CD. Been in that position many times over the years and it truly sucks. The new guy won’t give a shit that you’ve been handholding a nervous (and valuable) client for 2 years. The CD wants “metal” to prove how clever or funny or inspiring he is. (Usually a he.) And the older he is, the more ageist he’ll be. Doesn’t even matter how “award winning” the work is you present internally – he’ll want it to come from the young teams he’s mentoring. I once beat everyone in the agency on a global inter- agency brief. Next rebrief, the CD sent one idea off from me and 14 from the young team. It’s the nature of the beast. Leave.
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Let’s not forget two important factors here.
CDs hire creatives for their folio. I would argue that is a lot more rigorous than most other industries, where you simply have to show up, be nice for a few fifteen minutes interviews, and accept an offer. With nothing to show for what you’ve done at your previous jobs, you can tell the interviewer whatever they want to hear.
@Not a CD — Top of your list [when staffing the creative department]? You’re not a CD, so who would want to work for you?
The thought of working in an agency and having my work approved or rejected according to the opinions of the suits/planners/management/finance/receptionist makes me want to top myself.
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@David
Love to know what the “diplomatic challenges” are you give in job interviews? You get the applicant to go fire the person they’re replacing? Or, do you fart loud and stink up the room. Or you ask them what they see as YOUR weakenesses. Maybe just bung some parsely on your teeth or capuccino “lipstick”? Hey this is an awesome brief!
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methinks Not A CD has an excellent hiring strategy – diverse as PF suggests
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@Peter Rush
Answers to your questions:
“Love to know what the “diplomatic challenges” are you give in job interviews?”
Depends on the role. But we do some scenario discussions involving problems that have no ideal outcome; no “right” answer. See how they respond and ask them how they’d break the news; rationalise the solution/decision. Actually firing someone is in there. And I’ll identifying MY (sic) weaknesses … that’s a good one. I have some of those.
My point (actually someone else’s point) is that there’s at least one thing worse than having an unfilled role – creative or otherwise – having the wrong persons fill the role, or perhaps having the right person (creative skills-wise) who is also an arsehole and looses you valuable business and colleagues.
Not sure about parsley on my teeth etc …
Speaking of diplomatic challenges. I see Joe Hokey got to be Australian Ambassador to the US. Wrong person and an AH!
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Not a CD, you want a strategic writer at the top of your list for a creative department? Then a designer. Who’s coming up with the idea then?
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Fishlocks photo looks like he’s trying just a little too hard to listen, so I felt compelled to check out Change Partners website. With ‘cognitive biases’, ‘heuristics’ and the 70 Tendency cards, I’m thinking it’s got the Dyannetics about it. Man, I’d leave my family to get my hands on those Tendency cards.
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@Bored
Oh yes, I’d kill for those Tendency Cards. They’d help me uncover valuable insights into my core consumer.
You know what else would help? A proprietary rip-off of Karl Jung’s brand archetypes – so powerful!
And just to top it off, how about an Empathy Session where I can learn how well a few very unrepresentative people can tell me what they think I want to hear.
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What a wonderful opportunity this article has given to those who wish to aspire to the job description. let’s call it outmoded since the author is a certain age, let’s call it sexist since the author is a certain gender, let’s make book by hinting at vague comments that may intrigue, If I were suddenly to find myself in the CD job etc.
I am white, male, middle class, and way too old to be a dreamer or a contender, as I say this: The position of CD should not be a very high paid position high up on the corporate ladder. It should not be a job requiring a business degree or even accounting skills, it should be a position for a person who has been at the coal face for a good while, who has good copy skills , mixed with some production skills and has shown promise in not only art work, but people skills.
A CD should be a team leader, a head shepherd, who will apply for budgets, listen to and share ideas, and conduct workshops and meetings with like minded talents.
A good idea would be to create a kind of roving assistant CD position, where a range of people get a shot at working close to the actual CD, and where the CD is not set in stone. Hate it? I bet you do, but it is an idea with merit.
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@Richard
Good thing actors don’t get to specify the salary of people in advertising. And vice-versa. Do you even know what a Creative Director does? Because as an ad creative, I’d never presume to know the intricacies of being an actor.
And the best thing of all is that you don’t run an ad agency.
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@Richard – Considering it’s creative that the client buys and does the selling, not sure why the CD role shouldn’t be rather well paid? There’s a lot of responsibly on those shoulders.
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Ben. Good question. But I guess you didn’t read what I wrote then? Who will come up with the ideas are the same people who already come up with the ideas (“use the teams who are already in place to their strengths”) The point of the new hires is to add a different dimension to the department and ensure it is fit-for-purpose in omni-channel environments where, yes, there will be lots of writing to ensure a consistent TOV, yes there will be a need for functional UI that delivers CX and yes, personas will need to be created that allow more traditional creative function to continue to happen and remain relevant. Otherwise the media agency, the PR agency, the consultancy and the in-house CX may well have nicked all the work, leaving the rest of us with nothing to do. And @creative, 10.40am. Maybe “Not a CD” is simply a more accurate description of the role I now perform as head of the creative department?
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@Not a CD
So you’re not a CD, but the head of a creative department? In a creative advertising agency? I suspect not.
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How satisfying to have launched such a robust debate. If there’s a common theme, it’s ‘room for improvement’. Something clearly embraced by more than one management trainer who has contacted me (uh?), keen to know how to get a piece of the action.
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Name dropping omni-channel, customer experience, tone of voice, user interface – yep, you’re definitely not a CD!
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@Ben, @Creative. There’s something safe and cosy about the traditional CD-creative in relationship, isn’t there? You both know how it is. He’s got to the top but he’s got lazy. His heart’s know longer in it so he relies on you guys to keep him in touch with what’s going on out there. But rather than exploring and embracing the changes that could keep you and him in employment beyond the next couple of years, you hide away in the comfort of bestads and adsoftheworld and Archive and long afternoons on the blogs, keeping him amused but concepting yourselves into irrelevance. Even now they are talking about how to re-invent your agencies to better service the connected consumer (another name-drop, I’m afraid). And guess what? The traditional creative and the traditional CD aren’t on the list (unless they have miraculously kept up). What you see as “name-dropping” is everyday vernacular where I am from. And where I am from is the place taking all the work from right under your noses. Paul is at one end of the scale, with his consultancy model, I am at the other. You two, it seems, are in the middle. And that gap is disappearing quicker than you think.
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Interesting discussion. I found myself laughing with familiarity at Paul’s observations and nodding to pretty much everything ‘Not a CD’ says.
I take issue with one of his or her points (@8 Dec 15, 1:53 am) though; Paul’s suggestion is that CDs need to engage themselves more substantively in management process. I don’t see how this necessarily places them in the ‘legacy/old school’ basket. I would suggest that a CD taking these administrative aspects seriously is as forward-looking as might be needed. Of course, the results would have to speak for themselves.
Paul’s piece suggests the type he might not be inclined to hire, but doesn’t suggest the type he would. ‘Not a CD’ does suggest the types he or she would hire, and I generally agree with that list – although I will point out that some of us writers can do both ‘strategy’ and ‘concept’. In fact, with the prevailing omni-channel environment, I’m finding it harder to separate between the two.
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@qt.14 Carl Jung, not Karl. Now there’s a real Creative Director. Someone who could understand the minds, and hearts, of people.
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A textbook example of the ‘Peter Principle’ at work.
You know the one: “promoted to the level of your own incompetence”. It’s not the fault of the individual, it’s a structural issue in hierarchies of all kinds.
In the case of the CD, as Paul clearly lays out, the job is now running the department as opposed to writing the ads. And the required skillset for success in that is completely different from the job people are being promoted from.
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Me (@9 Dec, 3.08pm) Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that Paul’s angle was wrong (I agree with a lot of it) I was suggesting it missed a key point somewhere around “One day you’re living the dream, creating great campaigns. The next you get a tap on the shoulder and offered the big chair.” The selection criteria leading to this tap on the shoulder is the crucial bit that he glosses over, but is the bit I reckon has already doomed the legacy CD to failure. As I suggested, CEOs rarely hire people who are a threat to them. In the last couple of roles I have discussed with senior management at agencies where there has been an appetite for change, it becomes clear as soon as you start discussing the fundamentals and what this might mean to the way their agency is structured, they begin to revert to their tried and trusted formula. That’s what I mean by getting the CD you deserve.
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@34. That last past is particularly resonant. I’ve been called into agencies with an agenda for change, but the reality is as you described. Its not enough to prepare them with homilies such as ‘ya gotta break a few eggs…’
You had me thinking about what ‘type’ would be appropriate for the role and the only example I can think of comes from way back in the day when I was a young and eager junior at a multinational. One of the creatives moved to account service. Couldn’t get my head around that at the time, thought it was a coward act but in retrospect it strikes me as the sort of person who might have made a great CD. Not necessarily the best creative but as CD wouldn’t have needed that ability so much as the capacity to empathise across the ‘silos’ and identify work that met all requirements and not just metal. Have to admit that this type of example is not very common, though.
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@qt3.14
Jung discovered archetypes.
Margaret Marks and Mary Pearson of Y&R New York invented Brand Archetypes.
This wonderful thinking was based, in turn on the work of Joseph Campbell in his ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ (first published in 1949) – a seminal work of comparative mythology, much plagiarised by the likes of Lucas and Spielberg since.
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I kind of think Paul’s article is a bit of a pile of ‘so fucking what.’ I’m a CD, I work for a CCO, and this person handles most of the senior management stuff. But between the two of us, we both encourage diversity, and we both embrace a certain amount of chaos that we both believe is healthy between all players in the creative department. The article is filled with empty generalisations that fail to observe that many CDs operate within existing or traditional hiring methodologies – but in completely different ways, base don their own experiences and perceptions. Where is your solution? And, how have you ever done it differently?
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Let’s be honest here. CD’s nowadays are actually senior creatives. Senior creatives are technically mid/junior, and mid/junior creatives call themselves senior after a year or two. So therein lies the problem. CD’s aren’t really CD’s – they merely take the good briefs and flog the crap to the “senior creatives” who sometimes have more experience then the CD’s. And, because the CD’s are really just a senior team, they spend their life doing up their own ideas and have very little time for proper mentorship to the junior/mids that need proper direction and influence. The ECDs are the one’s with wisdom, but they have zero time for the juniors, so really they are CD’s, but instead they have hired CD’s to do ideas that they can attach their names to and keep their large pay packet.
In short, if you’re a senior, mid or junior, you’re pretty much the same job title just on different pay. There’s no real system of working your way up anymore. And we wonder why our industry is disillusioned.
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Assuming you’re a fellow creative? Your description is a little simplistic for my liking, but agree with the general direction.
In my experience – 18 years from next year – everything has just gotten so damn hierarchical. I’m lucky I started young and still look like I left college, otherwise I’d be in the old man’s pile. One recruiter told me Sydney is the most ageist market in the world.
Clients are lucky to have anyone over the age of 30 working on their briefs. And it’s not because people who are older than 30 are suddenly no good. It’s cost, and clients refusing to pay for creative, which delivers them experience and wisdom.
It’s true most CD’s are just senior creatives, but a lot of senior creatives also CD. Your title is more of a reflection of how much you’re getting paid rather than what you do for a job. If you get to the point and want to earn what you’re worth, you need the CD title – whether you have the resource under you to actually be a CD or not. There are still a few seniors getting paid CD level wages without the stress of being a CD, but they are very few and super awarded.
In terms of CD’s being terrible at hiring? Paul, there are a few exceptional recruiters who take care of all of that. One company in particular that every department seem to trust who have been the go-to the entire time I’ve been working.
Maybe CD’s don’t need to be great at hiring if they hire great recruiters.
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While we’re at it Paul, why are most Creative Directors hopeless with people?
Most seem to have some kind of borderline personality disorder and many can’t assert themselves without being aggressive or demeaning, even to their own staff.
In any other industry they’d be reprimanded, even fired for bullying.
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Hire me as the CD! I gots the HR, Accountancy, Law, Kommerce backgroundz! I has the practical and theoretical backgroundz! I iz Digital Nativz on teh Interwebz! I knowz the l33tspeakz ppl! I laugh at picturez of LoLKats! I spell “c” words with a “K” just like the Kardazhianz!
It’s just that I don’t know anything about advertising, being a creative, organising or running a campaign…
Oh well. Back to being a corporate drone/slave/master.
Keep smilin’
Cheers (Kheerz?)
Jimbo
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