Creative directors are in the business of professional insanity
Let me start out by saying that I loved being a creative director. On most days I probably felt like I had the best job in the world. I start out by saying this because I imagine a lot of what I write will seem to the reader like I’m describing a negative situation or a hardship. And I guess for most people insanity probably would be a hardship, but we creative director types are not normal. Not even a little. You might even hold the illusion that you are normal. I know I do. Yet even though for I have described myself as very, very, normal person for years and years, I have not been able to generate much agreement in this area.
To be a creative director is to be paid to be insane. A sort of professional Schizophrenia. And there is a huge distinction between professional insanity and amateur insanity. The former pays much better than the latter but there are other distinctions too. Otherwise you could just scour the sanitariums of the land to find creative directors. Which contrary to what most account people might think, won’t actually work. The difference between the pro and the amateur is the ability to turn it off and on. I guess mostly to turn it off. It gets turned on pretty much automatically.
Usually by other people. Who need you to think about their ideas. And there are a lot of these people. They’re mostly but not exclusively called art directors and copywriters. They have so many ideas and they like them all. And their ideas fill your head. They insist on it. If you’re really busy and there are a lot of assignments flowing through the shop, it seems like you can go a week without having any thoughts of your own. It’s not that you don’t think. You think all the time. But you think about thoughts that weren’t born in your head. Strange and wonderful thoughts that your brain may not even be capable of having are cohabitating with hundreds of other thoughts that might all be in direct contrast to each other. Fighting in your head with your own damn thoughts taking both sides.
Now if you had a lot of time to do this thinking it may not be so much like insanity. It might be described with lofty terms like philosophy. And I do believe all good marketing and branding is essentially philosophy. Create a philosophy and express it. But it’s definitely philosophy light. And the thought process is more similar to schizophrenia. With each thought never in your head for more than 15 minutes and with each thought carrying the exact same amount of importance.
You’re not supposed to have your own thoughts. You learn to discount your own thoughts. It’s not fair to the people who work for you. You don’t want to compete with your art directors and writers. You want to build their ideas. So if you do have an original thought (and it does happen) you better to give it to somebody else so they can warp it and give it back to you.
Now I haven’t described anything any decent psychotic can’t do. But here comes the professional part. You take all these voices and find a compress them all into one. Some have to go away some have to combine and other have to wait until later.
Oh, and when it's all done you just have to present all this insanity to the client like it is the sanest idea anybody has ever had.
