Creative agencies don't spend a lot of time talking about creative.
That sounds ridiculous.
You’re obviously talking about the work you’ve got on.
But how often are you talking about ‘creative’ as a subject in it’s own right.
What is creative?
What makes work great?
Why should we push it?
How do we make it better?
Why even do it?
All questions that easily go unanswered in the never-ending queue of looming deadlines but really important ones if you want to create great.
There’s often no training around creative, outside of the creatives themselves learning job skills like crafting and concepting.
How many client service or strategists do you know who’ve had creative training?
You can tackle this with regular, hopefully fun, sessions.
Once a month hold all agency meetings with people from different depts and levels presenting a piece of work they love or hate.
They score it out of 10 and, importantly, explain why. Then poll the room, get people who'd scored differently to give their opinion. I'd moderate our sessions and chip in, putting my money where my opinionated Creative Director mouth is.
It’s all about creating more conversation about creative. Thinking about it more outside of the practicals of the daily brief and client work. What’s good and why, how to judge it, what does it look like, how an idea got bought or made.
They’re always interesting, loud and lively sessions. You can guarantee one person’s 10 is someone else’s 1.
Although I’d recommended not doing this with your own work to avoid brawls breaking out.
We ran them with clients too. Just as useful but a lot less rowdy.
