So accountants are boring, huh? Creatives and advertising types are so much more interesting and stories about boring accountants are a cliché. Arguably the most creative person in advertising is an accountant. As I said in In The Black a couple of months ago.
Accountants can have the last laugh. While the profession has long suffered jokes about creative accounting, one of the most powerful men in the creative world is an accountant.
His name is Martin Sorrell, who 20 years ago took the improbably named company Wire & Plastic Products and built one of the largest communication groups in the world through a series of acquisition. WPP now owns advertising icons J Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather among dozens of other well known brands.
Entering its 20th year, WPP bills some $50 billion annually.
Now that’s creative.
Everybody is creative in some way, even if only in their spare time after work. The secret is to know how to focus the brains of staff to harness these ideas. ‘Everybody uses creativity in their work,’ says Ric Pellizzeri, head of drama for Grundy Television, producer of dramas including Neighbours with a studio team of about 40 people plus 22 actors and half a dozen guest actors a week. It has a writing team of 25 plus another 20 freelance writers producing two and a half hours of drama a week, 48 weeks of the year.
The difference between so-called creative companies and run-of-the-mill companies is that creative ones build an atmosphere designed to inspire creativity in all staff. And as Pellizzeri says: ‘You are dealing with people who are more emotional. I think that is a big difference. You have to keep your emotional intelligence high and treat everybody differently.’
It used to be advertising agencies that were renowned for their wacky offices. And many still sport the usual array of games such as pool, table football, table tennis and PlayStations. But it is in the growth industries of software, gaming and animation where the really wacky stuff gets happening.
Pixar, the animation company behind Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, inhabits a campus with all the usual games and a few more. The building is a giant warehouse where in one corner there are what seems like Hawaiian beach huts, a hacienda, a medieval castle and a wild west saloon bar. Each is the office of an animator.
One animator, finding a trap door in the wall of his office, converted the small room behind it (used for maintaining air conditioning) into a cocktail bar. When he changed offices his new office featured a hidden casino behind wooden bookcases – opened by hitting a red button found by flipping open the head of a bronze bust.
The advantage of all this chuff, as well as assorted espresso machines and toasters, is that the staff, who enjoy themselves best while at work, spend more time at work.
It also relaxes them into a zen-like creative state.
Danny Searle, creative director of Clemenger BBDO in Sydney reckons creatives have to be ‘loose’. He says: ‘You can’t sit there and squeeze out fresh ideas under stress. It doesn’t work. You want
people who stay loose and relaxed even right up to that deadline.’
It’s about having the right sort of environment where there is no fear of failure or ridicule for delving into the unusual. Searle says the office atmosphere has to have a buzz. ‘It’s got to be exciting. It’s got to be electric. It’s got to have people motivated and up.
‘You go around some offices and they are the drabbest places you could ever imagine. Even if your people are creative, creativity is not going to come out of that place. It’s almost like the antithesis of it.’
There is a difference between the inspiration of an artist and creativity in the workplace.
Searle says: ‘We have to have creativity on call. If you said to a great artist, ‘I want that painting tomorrow,’ they’d have a nervous breakdown.’
Searle says he is the gatekeeper of creativity for Clemenger BBDO. ‘You have got to set up a place where there is no fear in failure because without taking those risks you are never going to go anywhere. My job would then be how to manage failure as much as it is to manage success. I’ve got to positively reward magnificent failure but still manage to mine those gems of success out of it.’
Searle never thinks of himself as running a creative department. ‘I always try to think and hope I am running a creative agency. So everybody is encouraged to be creative. I want my account service people, my managing director … everybody to be creative.’
That means leveraging and nurturing the creativity of 140 staff rather than only the 25 dedicated creatives.
Similarly Grundy’s Pellizzeri says you have to create an environment where people aren’t frightened to make mistakes or say something stupid. Ideas come from the most unexpected places and people. He says: ‘You can’t dismiss the role of anybody.’
He says that as a producer of creative people you are a conduit for their ideas and you have to work with them to make them believe that they can make a difference.
Pellizzeri used to be a drama director. When he became a producer he wanted to treat people as he liked to be treated. ‘The world shuts down when only the boss’s ideas are valid. Everybody stops thinking and contributing,’ he says.
According to research at www.managing-creativity.com, a company’s creative staffers work best in organic rather than hierarchical environments. That is where authority is decentralised, tasks are loosely defined, and communication is horizontal, flexible and adaptable.
The same research found fear of doing a bad job is a contributing factor to creativity blocks, according to leading London ad agency creatives.
One block is the meddling of managers in ideas – a concept that is taboo among arts organisations. This creative script was written many years ago for the artists at the Bell Shakespeare Company. But for the people who manage the company the story is different. Being an arts organisation, it is split between the administrators, artists and a plethora of committee and panels.
Jill Berry, general manager at the Bell Shakespeare Company, describes her role: ‘The demarcation line would be that the artistic director [John Bell] would manage directors who in turn would manage the actors. But at the end of the day if there is an issue of considerable importance it would come back to the administrative head of the company to take responsibility for it.
‘The biggest challenge – to be absolutely frank – is to explain to [the artists] why they can’t do what they want to do all the time. There are barriers and reasons why certain things can’t happen.
‘[My] staff are very at ease working with actors and know how to dialogue them in a way that doesn’t set them off their balance.’
Berry adds that it is important that admin staff stick to their side of the business and don’t meddle with the artistic.
‘Certainly you wouldn’t say something to an actor that was about their craft. You would never offer a critique as an administration member of this company. They may in other companies but it is part of the discipline of this company. It is absolutely clear from day one to any staff member that this is outside their realm.’
Loose tongues generate ideas
No idea is stupid. Head of drama for Grundy Television Ric Pellizzeri’s ears prick-up when he hears, ‘this sounds stupid but …’. Usually the idea acts as a catalyst and is not stupid at all. Clemenger BBDO’s creative director Danny Searle says: ‘Even if an idea is wrong it can be creatively brilliant.’
Everybody can be creative. Encourage everyone to generate ideas. Yes, that includes the chairman and mailroom as well. In TV ideas come from almost anywhere, which is known as ‘layered collaboration’.
Relax. If you’re not having fun then you are not relaxed. Get out of the office but not to a boring hotel suite. Go anywhere that will relax the team. Some of the best ads have been written on linen napkins at lunch. Pellizzeri says: ‘There is the idea that creativity comes out of conflict but it really comes when people are enjoying themselves and relaxed.’
Keep it simple. The mantra of Maurice Saatchi, founder of two global ad agencies Saatchi and Saatchi, and M&C Saatchi is: ‘Brutal simplicity of thought.’ He believes the strength of a strategy is in inverse proportion to the number of words used. For example, British Airways ‘the world’s favourite airline’, sums up the airline’s mission in four words.
Creativity can be learned. And the more you do it the better you get. Organisations such as the De Bono Institute teach creativity using techniques such as the six thinking hats. Go to www.debono.org
Many creatives use techniques to generate ideas. Some simply get a blank sheet and write ideas down randomly. Others use word association games – as simple as picking random words from a dictionary.Â
Look at the problem from a fresh perspective.
Involve outside people from different types of organisation who may examine problems from differing perspectives. Searle says: ‘Some of the best mathematicians have been really creative because they look at things from different angles.’
Take time out. There is value in going to the cinema or reading that book. You never know what will be the catalyst for a winning idea. Searle prescribes an interesting life. ‘The more experiences you have the more you can use in your creativity.’