Innovation Blog

Wanted: Creativity in Creativity Depts.

By Shlomo Maital

A Wall Street Journal report by Suzanne Vranica (“Help wanted: creative executives”),  WSJ Friday-Sunday June 4-6,  p. 20,  reveals a remarkable paradox:  There is a shortage of creativity precisely in the place known as “creative departments”  in advertising agencies.

According to Vranica,  as the recession eases and advertising spending slowly recovers, big advertising agencies are struggling to fill a crucial position: Head of creative departments.  These are the departments that come up with the big ideas for campaigns, which are then transferred to the production departments for implementation.

These jobs get salaries of $1 m. yearly and more. Top agencies like WPP and Interpublic are searching for talent.

According to Nick Brien, CEO of Interpublic’s McCann Worldgroup,  “Creativity is now far broader and far more complicated than it used to be.  This is where art and science are meeting and it can be either a beautiful thing or a painful one.”

Painful?  Why painful?

Because what is needed today is not just creative ideas for campaigns (like the masterful campaign for Mastercard,  “XXX, $4.95,  real conversation, priceless”), but indeed, a new creative idea for an innovative business model for advertising, to combat Google and Yahoo.

And this is where even highly creative people, whose job definition is ‘creative’, stumble. Because many ad agencies are stuck in the past, unable to escape from the constraints of how advertising was in pre-history, and how it must transform itself in the age of Web 3.0.

Such transformations have occurred before in the advertising business.  A group of talented people transformed advertising in the ’80s, from “better, sweeter, stronger, nicer”,  to emotional branding  (“I Love NY”).   But this new transformation must be even more sweeping, and there are few signs that anyone has come forward with strong creative ideas on how to transform conventional print and media ads.  It must innovate advertising’s business model, not just its content.  This is always tough to do.

If you have some good ideas — try applying. These are fascinating, highly paid, highly stressful positions, and success is quickly measurable and well compensated.