Understanding Your Creative Team
Your creative colleagues can be a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, all steeped in a bottomless drip coffee you didn’t even know existed.
Here, we’re going to try and unravel some of these misunderstood traits that many in the creative industry often bring to their work.
All in the hopes, that through gross over-generalizations, we can shine a little light, on what is sure to be a puzzling personality, to anyone that doesn’t identify as one.
Creatives are altruistic to a fault.
I, we, care—a hell of an awful lot. Often when we couldn’t. For projects and people that we shouldn’t. If a person has a hand in whether or not our ideas become realities, we’ll force ourselves to see the very best in them and their schtick. Trusting them in the process, because we’re so set on making our mark in the world, that our ambition blinds us while working with those that aren’t.
We want to use our creative energy to help people. To make the world a better place, one brand at a time. It’s not uncommon for agencies and in-house creative departments to have an ethos or a manifesto document—we do—that specifically outlines who we won’t work with and what products and services we won’t help sell.
It’s every kind of cheese imaginable. And we know it. Unlike the person that claims the bands, Staind or Creed as their inspiration for having two beers instead of six during Dry January—we’re aware of the plot holes. We embrace altruism anyway.
Creatives are empathetic to a point.
Sitting shotgun to our altruism is our empathy. We’ve got loads of it. Which is why we’re able to find the one redeeming quality in businesses devoid of multiple. It’s why we can write passionately for a medication we’re not on, that treats conditions that we don’t have—and do it in a manner that reeks of emotional sincerity. And then, turn right around and write about the latest energy drink with the same amount of fervor. Or ideate for an HVAC company, having never had centralized air.
Our empathy makes us effective. No matter the size of our feet, we’ll wear most anybody’s shoes if it means helping out. That is, until we perceive you as being a monumental d*ck. And we’re not talking isolated incidents or one-offs, we’re talking about a consistent pattern, a wake, of unfettered @sshole-ishness that would have made Bernie Madoff blush.
Empathy is our most valuable trait. Provided you’re on the right side of it.
Creatives are inspiring to no end.
We can’t help but be inspired and inspire others, ourselves. It’s the single most important driving force behind our chosen professions in advertising. And inspiration can come from anywhere. A song, a movie, our co-worker taking our order for afternoon coffee, or the passion with which our neighbor edges their grass. It cannot be helped.
We seek to inspire you. We want to inspire our colleagues, our bosses, our clients and their clients, Bob in reception, Jenny in accounting, and the stranger next to us in the movie theater. It’s an impulse that boarders on anxiety, a kind of frenetic energy that won’t be contained. When we bring you our latest ideas—which believe us, by this point we’ve already poured over and refined a thousand times—we want you standing on Oprah’s couch, jumping, yelling and waving your fists in excitement. Ask us how we ever came up with something so brilliant. Ask us how we can pitch it to the client and how we see the client taking over the entire industry with it.
Grandiose and on the verge of delusional, sure. But that’s how all great actions start. And its on this rousing enthusiasm that most campaigns find their momentum—a momentum that carries them well beyond everyone else’s expectations.
What do you do with this?
Embrace it. They’re not changing. If you can’t get on-board, your creative colleagues will likely jump ship. Many have, for far less.
See some of these traits in you? Albeit deep under the surface and less concentrated. Welcome!
Not sure how to navigate these findings, or how to integrate these superpowers into your sales and accounts process as you work alongside your creative counterparts, we offer training for that.
You’re inspired without direction?
This likely got your wheels turning. Maybe even revved up. So much so that you want to better understand how you can bolster these attributes and start operating at full strength? Get in touch. Don’t extinguish a good spark before it catches.
