Salt, creativity, and the chance to sit at the big table...

Clients worth their salt generally love dealing with creatives worth their salt.?

It gives each side the chance to see the other creature face to face. Generally, with no bars in between.

More importantly, it puts together the people who should always have been together in the first place. The people who want great stuff done…and the people who want to do it.?

Of course, if it happened all the time, there wouldn’t be time for either party to do their own jobs properly. They’d be too busy being fascinated with each other.?

So, it only happens some of the time. Hopefully the most important times.

That’s why the people inside agencies but outside creative departments are all indispensable to the process of keeping clients (and agencies) happy and successful.

These are the people who can deal with clients on a day-to-day basis. People who can know clients more intimately than creatives (who merely know their products and services intimately, or should). People who can befriend clients. Gain their trust, their respect, sometimes even their admiration.

These are the people with thick skins who can get shouted at by clients when things don’t go according to plan.

These are the people who can help persuade clients that their brilliant new creative campaign is exactly what they need…whether they realise it at the time or not.?

These are the people who can form strategies. Who can plan campaigns not just for the present but also for the future. Who know every media option inside out. Upside down. And sometimes from side to side.

These are the people who deal with the filthy lucre side of things and make the agency wheels go around.

And these are the people who, since proper advertising began, have often been just as creative in their thinking as those who get paid to be creative.?

I remember when such thoughts were considered heresy. Folk were burned at the agency stake for less.

But not anymore.?

Our creative thinking is no longer limited to only listening to the ideas of creative people in creative departments.

Now everyone gets the chance to sit at the big table.

The problem with this, of course, is noise.?

The more chairs we fill around the table, the more voices there are. And the more voices there are, the more they all want to be heard.?

The problem with this, for some, is chaos.

The bad thing about chaos is that order goes out the window, coffee gets spilled, rules get ignored, and the odd disagreement ensues. Fists may be shaken. The odd punch-up may occur.?

But that’s also the good thing about chaos.

It wakes folk up. It disturbs their equilibrium. It throws creative spanners in works. It quickens the pulse. It gets folk talking. It gets folk thinking. Lightbulbs go on all over the place.?

As a side effect, it gives tosspots who always do things by the book a swift kick up the arse. Hopefully on their way out the door.

But best of all, it often results in the one thing that anyone worth their salt came into this business to do.

Bloody good work…

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You've just read an extract from one of my books of urban essays...Ad Infinitum.?

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