Creating an In-House Creative Team. Where to start?

Most businesses, no matter how big or small, are going to have some form of political shenanigans between departments and personnel. When it comes to the creative corners of any business, be it marketing or even pr, that political high tide mark is way up there because everyone across the company believe themselves to be creative, that creative jobs aren’t that hard, that anyone can do them. That’s why you get everyone from engineers to the tea lady giving their two cents on any creative initiative…especially in hindsight.

The result of that isn’t exactly a positive one for teams feeling under attack. It makes them more insulated, harder for them to openly share early stages of their work, it makes them suspicious of outside interests…which all just feeds into that political death spiral.

It’s bad internally for those groups as well. A marketing department led by someone not that strong will be dismissive of their own team’s input in favour of their boss’ directions and suggestions. The path of least resistance may also be the path of least creative but there’s fewer ulcers along the way. Outside agencies and consultants working with those marketing personnel key into that fear frequency as well. An outside agency’s financial goal is least effort for the highest pay so they’ll soon enough learn the marketing head’s taste and pander directly to it. That only leads to lazy effort, lazy research, lazy work.

I’ve seen agencies pitch broadcasters creative campaigns done by tv companies in other countries with the idea that we’ll just steal it and just put our brand on it, no one will know. While there’s a slew or reasons why no one should ever do this on multiple levels, in speaking with the agency reps, they claimed to be doing what the client had wanted, plus showing them someone else did it first gave them the client the courage to take it up to their boss.

You don’t get great work that way. You aren’t doing your company, your brand or personnel one iota of good if any of that behavior is believed to be acceptable. That’s why, whenever I’m helping anyone with an internal creative team, I always pitch them the four basics. An independent team of good people led by an excellent creative director who protects the team and the brand from abuse.

Let’s start with independence…or at least the illusion of it for the team. The reason for it isn’t just to avoid the political silliness mentioned above but to help feed that team’s creative soul. They aren’t going to be highly paid, (especially in comparison to the agencies they’re actually on par with), they’re hard working (perfectionists actually that will be making a lot of personal sacrifices to ensure the best results in the time they have), they aren’t political as they’ll be helping all without fear or favour.?But the independence adds one thing, one specific little thing that makes all the difference in the world. It allows the team to see themselves as the protectors of the brand, the corporate soul, they innately know the brand personality, it’s attitude and how it will be speaking to all customers…and that makes them care….a lot..about everything. We’ll come back to that. Anyway, where were we…oh yeah, independence.

In a perfect world, everyone sits down and hammers out what has to be done, who has responsibility for it, what the image and message should be, then scurries off in a coordinated attack and makes it happen...that's how wars are fought, political campaigns are won and channels are launched. They’ll be lots of marketing bingo talk of seeing through "the vision" or "positioning strategy". But perfect worlds don’t exist and the truth is that while most businesses live far away from that utopia, as long as they strive to fix that a little bit every day then they’re making progress and that’s a good thing.

No one wants to do a bad job…but every business has many departments with a lot of people doing a lot of jobs that need to fit together so they hopefully can function like a well oiled machine, like an army moving forward with their battle plan. No co-ordination and you’ll have marketing making up catch-phrase slogans that don’t reflect what the product is, salesmen making promises to clients that they can’t fulfill, manufacturing making something way off target, and worst of all…a confused public that won’t give a damn.

The last corporate internal area where we get steered wrong is the forest for the trees. People concentrating so much on their own piece of the puzzle they’re no longer caring how well others in pipeline are up to speed, perhaps even tempered with smaller, pettier things. Divisional/departmental rivalries, politics, potential budget cutbacks, personnel issues…all worries that press personally inward making their clog a personal issue so much so it’s hard to see the other's clogs in equal light.

So here’s where I pitch you on an in house creative team…or agency, again we’ll come back to that. As we stated at the beginning, a good in house creative team cares about everything. They see themselves as the living, breathing entity of the brand. They understand it far deeper than the design brand do’s and don'ts. They instinctively know the look, the identity, the character that makes up what that brand may be. In all situations. They know the brand’s attitude, how it changes for different situations or times of year. They know how the concept of the brand flexes off various competition.?

And while many friends in marketing will be saying, “Well that’s us or should be an extension of us”, I beg to differ. This team or internal agency is an independent, hands on, kick ass, quick turn around, internal agency that can do pretty much anything. Write, produce, create, edit…even fix outside agency efforts if need be. They work in all formats for all formats. They serve all, including marketing but are not there to be anyone’s lapdog. Otherwise you’ll be right back to where this article started.

Ok…enough for today. More later as to structure, people, work flows and why you need a good Creative Director.

Stay tuned.