The Third Creative

By Henry Lambert

Often enough working in the creative industries we seem to deliberately divide ourselves into two camps: creatives – those who think up the concepts, do the drawing and production – and the suits – the people that do lunch, organise things, deal with clients and do the billing. This self-imposed divide is only reinforced when the suits actually wear suits while the creatives toil away in their jeans and t-shirts with their shiny Macs.

As a suit I find that we deliberately impose this agency apartheid upon ourselves and this puts us into the a mindset that is at it’s best efficient, at it’s worse negative and destructive. Yet the very reason we have been hired is to provide the best possible information and environment for creativity to flourish and for the agency to produce effective and interesting work that engages the target audience.

So how do we move from our negative and destructive mindset to an engaging and inspiring one? We have to realise just how much we can influence the end product.

By putting as much effort into writing a creative brief as we would expect the ‘creative’ team to put into it at the other end we can provide incredible direction, insight and ultimately shape the end product. But we have to realise the power we wield and put in the research, brainstorming of propositions and arguing over the target audience to get there. Not only this but we can make a creative briefing an experience in itself. Promoting the latest Range Rover? Why not brief the team after a couple of hours off-roading in it?

If you’re reading this blog then there is a good chance that you’re a planner or account handler in a creative agency – the fact that you are reading this shows that you are by nature creative and inquisitive. Well this is your opportunity to release the pent-up artist inside you and put all you’ve learned from life (and IF and PSFK) to use and be the third creative when it comes to producing great work.

Contributed by Henry Lambert