It’s been almost a year since my VCU BrandCenter training. In addition to bringing back renewed energy, insight and industry connections, I brought back small nuggets of reality. Some of them I found delicious and others, still hard to swallow. Enjoy!
- Creative is NOT a department. It includes every position in the agency.
- Pull EVERYONE for resources and experiences. Ideas can come from anywhere.
- Boundaries are fading. 0% tolerance for hat wearers; 100% for pioneers/risk takers.
- NO ONE knows what they are doing digitally. Few only appear to know, because they have a clear path of determination.
- Creativity & Imagination + Business Context = Innovation
- Own your weaknesses and don’t pretend that you don’t have them. Be the agency that you are, not the agency that you think you should be.
- Our Brand is just as important as theirs.
- Our Business is just as important as theirs.
- Dictating clients can ruin the culture and the brand of our agency.
- Guns don’t kill people, PPT does.
- Most people have vivid fears and vague dreams.
- Spend more time on the things you think you can’t do.
- Birth the idea first, then find it a home.
- Subserviant Chicken was born out of a creative brainstorm meeting for TV spots. Collaboration of teams brought it to life.
- Creative agencies are a band of musicians. If you have too many solo acts, you will not grow to be rock stars.
- If an agency is integrated, the work will be integrated. Model the agency that way.
- Never let them take away your creativity.
- Only 6% of consumers believe the ads they see.
- Disregard organization charts. Do regard relationships with the people you work with.
- Always find the truth in the brand. Then tell that story in creative, memorable ways.
- In order to be a great story teller, you have to know the story well enough that you are a character in it.
- Your current customer audience is more important that the audience you want to have. Use them as bait to catch the audience you want.
- Culture is the colorful crunchy outer shell of creativity. Only feed it to those who believe in what you stand for. Tell the others to find their own candy.
- Boats that move swiftly have no weights of negativity. Toss the whiners overboard, no seriously. Get rid of them. It’s only a matter of time before they will sink you. There is an abundance of energetic young people looking for jobs. Find them.
- Only hire people who have amazing talent and aren’t afraid to stray from it.
- Hire your replacement.
- We are only strong as our weakest team member.
- We are only strong as our weakest alliance.
- Evaluate each team member not by their strengths, but their ability to admit their weaknesses. These are the ones that will prevail when things get tough.
