I was recently asked to comment on the problems faced by people working with advertising agencies' creative departments in Kyiv. My view is that because the business is still in its formative stage there is a chance of avoiding some of the usual pitfalls and misunderstandings about creative department work.
A mistake that many people make is that it has something to do with art. The product of any advertising agency is its thinking. Art is the craft that you apply to that thinking and is very much a secondary process.
Now comes the tricky bit. How do you manage a creative department? The challenge is to make absolute sense out of potential chaos.
The tradition is to have teams consisting of copywriters and art directors. This sounds simple, but there is an unnerving twist. There are many art directors who have great copy ideas, and there are writers who come up with brilliant visual concepts.
The task is to recognize and bond these talents into a product that is salable to your client. In many cases, the best creative people are not the easiest to get on with. The conformist is usually the person who produces the dullest work.
One of the more difficult aspects of running an advertising agency is that creative people make mistakes. This is all part of the idea process. The chief executive of one of our major clients was quoted as saying, 'To find the future management of this company, I first look for those who have made mistakes.' So you never move business on without taking chances.
I suppose the biggest lesson to be learned from more advanced markets is to avoid complexity. Advertising is like golf. It's a simple game that's hard to play.
Try to make sure that creative briefs are contained on one sheet of paper. Most TV commercials last for 30 seconds or less.
You can't expect a creative team to provide an effective piece of communication if the accounting team are delivering their version of War and Peace. Agencies have frequently been driven down the path of complexity because of unnecessary intellectual debate. This usually comes under the heading 'planning.' A good account director will naturally plan his or her business.
McCann Erickson in London once fired its whole planning department because nobody could find a satisfactory reason for its existence.
My first impression of Kyiv was that it had more than its fair share of talent. Let's hope that it learns by others' mistakes and becomes the place that others look for creativity.
Derek Smith is the creative director at Linea 12/McCann Erickson advertising agency in Kyiv.
