It always seemed to me there two basic ways to be an ECD.
Start your own agency, then hire younger teams as you grow.
Or take over the ECD’s job at a large existing agency.
I always wanted to try the second way but I never got the chance.
I’ve always had to do it the first way.
Maybe I dodged a bullet.
When I’ve been building agencies I’ve hired juniors and trained them.
This has worked out great for me.
They’ve learned to do it the way I want it done.
Which saves tons of aggravation.
At an existing agency, teams would have their own way of doing ads and it probably isn’t the same as mine.
This is a problem.
Either I take my hands off the controls and let them do it their way, in which case how am I being a creative director?
Or I try to make them do it my way, and they hate it and leave.
I can understand that, too.
That’s why I’ve pretty much only ever worked with juniors that I’ve trained.
Juniors who learned and grew fast, who won awards and got famous.
Who became creative directors at other agencies or opened their own agencies.
I think the parallel is in football.
Some managers build the team and train youngsters.
Then the entire team wants to do it their way, because that’s how they’ve learned.
Some managers come in and take over an existing team.
Then try to get it playing better than it was.
You’d put Shankly, Revie, Clough, Busby, Ferguson, Wenger, Bobby Robson, in the first camp.
You’d put Redknapp, Allardyce, Hughes, Hodgson, Mourinho, Mancini, Benitez, in the second camp.
In advertising, you’d put Hegarty, Webster, Saatchi, Saville, in the first camp.
You’d put Arden, Souter, Fink, Cracknel, in the second camp.
Some ECDs have tried both ways: Abbott (DDB, FGA, AMV), Tim Delaney (BBDO, LD), Steve Henry (HHCL, TBWA) Trevor Beattie (TBWA, BMB).
It’s salutary to look at Brian Clough, he tried both: Leeds and Forest.
At Forest he built a team that wanted to do it his way.
They won the European Cup twice.
At Leeds he took over someone else’s team and they didn’t see why they needed to be told what to do by a bully.
He lasted ninety days.
Either way can work, but you probably have to get the right man for the right job.
It’s two very different jobs: building a creative department, or managing one someone else has built.
Very true.
On each course the obstacles are completely different.
To be fair, Dave, those managers who built teams did rely on bringing in or inherited a degree of experience to help the kids along.
Robson and Cantona certainly brought on the likes of Scholes, Beckham, Butt, Giggs and the Neville brothers.
Of course the key is in the experienced players singing from the same hymn sheet as the manager. There is ultimately only one way.
As they say, it’s my way or the high way.
One of the best books on management is by Rinus Michels – Teambuilding. He developed the principals of total football at Ajax, Barcelona & the Dutch national team and while it is a book on football he talks about talent management and as John says getting people to sing from the same hymn sheet. Even when it’s not what the fans want to see, a team is always better than an individual when everyone is all working together. For me, Messi and Argentina are a case in point. Messi is arguably the best player in the world, which is great at Barcelona, but the team around him at Argentina are not good enough for him to deliver what everyone knows he is capable of. I think the same can be said of CD’s, the team around them is so important and in many agencies it is actually forgotten.
I take your point Geordie, but it’s a different analogy.
In my analogy the ECD isn’t a player, he’s the manager.
In your analogy the ECD is the best creative in the department (Messi) doing the best work.
I don’t think it’s the ECD’s job to be the best player.
IMHO it’s the ECD’s job to get the best work out of the people in the dept.
That’s why I think Rinus Michels is much more appropriate.
How to get 11 people playing like 13 or 14 people – ‘total football’ or total creativity.
My cat, Puskás, is spitting fur balls at the mere suggestion that the principles of Total Football originated in Holland!
Dave,
As an ECD/Manager don’t you just build your team around a number of core ‘experienced’ like-minded individuals and let them mentor and bring along the kids?
That was my point John.
Some people grow it, some people inherit it (see above).
Ferguson built it, Moyes inherited it.
Two different jobs, as it is in creative depts.
Dave,
To a lesser or greater degree all those managers inherited what went before.
Surely you would have relished the opportunity to determine who to keep and who had the potential to make more of?
Turn a creative into a planner perhaps?
The kind of planner that reads the game they way you want it read.
Nope, I’m pretty sure if I went to an existing big agency it would be like Clough going to Leeds.
A mass walk out.
Dave,
You’d probably be doing Advertising a favour.
Hi Dave, I clearly confused myself in my writing. I agree, Rinus would be the ECD for sure. I was trying, albeit unclearly, to point out that it’s the role of the ECD to make sure he has the right team. I shouldn’t have turned him into a player.
Yup we agree Geordie.
As Kenny Dalglish said, when he was player-manager at Liverpool: “I’ll know I’ve got the team right when I can’t get on it”
Liverpool haven’t won, what has been said to be the true test of a teams worth, the league championship or the the premier league as it is now known, since Dalglish quit in February 1991.