The New Creative Team

"I want the Moon." ~Conrad Hilton

"Often, clients get in the way of the best creative work." ~Don Draper

Here's the problem with the above statements: They are both correct.

You need to do great work AND please the client. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Creative Process

The creative process for an agency pitch has a lot of hands in it. It often goes in one department and comes out looking completely different after another department has gotten done with it. However, this doesn't mean that each variation of the idea is a bad one. It just means that the people involved are merely looking to their own interests and concerns. What may be obvious to an accounts person may make absolutely no sense to a creative and vice versa.

The trick is finding a balancing act for an integrated plan that is able to be executed (with measurement), creatively brilliant, involves the community and sells the product effectively. That's a tall order. Some would say it might even be impossible to hit every notch on that checklist.

With those goals in mind I've sketched out an organizational structure that I think could work internally at an agency. Obviously, support roles will be in place to help each group effectively bring their best foot to the table.

Creative Structure

Creative: Copywriter and Graphic Design

Community: Public Relations/Social

Reality: Account Services and Analytics/Development

Want to throw a multiplier effect into this creative mix? Call in the cavalry known as the crowd. Utilize remixing, pool ideas from the community and leverage the free insight of an informed group to help make decisions with you.

Creative, Community and Reality. Seems pretty simple when you lay it out like that doesn't it? (I do get a kick  out of calling Accounts "reality"). All these pieces need to have equal say in the creative process (pitch to implementation) and work with each other to both support and augment existing ideas. If all three aren't equal in the creation of the process? Your pitch or campaign will fall short.

Management

How do you manage these people and keep them on the same page? All while giving them an equal voice and ability to make positive changes? It's easier then you may think. The tools, methods and strategies are there for the taking. You just have to know where to look.

Collaborative Tools

Internal Communication System: The best solution here isn't email. Tools like Yammer, the Wave and Wikis are far superior for collaboration amongst a group. You need to figure out what works best with your group though. Smaller groups can utilize the Wave, while larger agencies would be far better off leveraging wikis or an internal twitter system like Yammer.

Project Management: You need to figure out some way to hold everyone accountable while also allowing them the freedom to do their best work? What better then a project management system like 37Signal's Basecamp which allows for importing and organization of a variety of platforms.

Free Analytics Tools: Allows creatives, account services and community people to be involved in the day-to-day metrics of an operation. The metrics guys get the real meat, but this allows everyone to get a baseline estimate of how the campaign is doing (and how to adjust accordingly. Ex. Google Analytics, Compete, Quantcast.

Social Audits: Social presence is becoming more and more important for sizing a company up for a campaign. You need to determine their pre-existing capabilities, effectiveness of implementation and overall presence. Tools like Quarkbase and Shareaholic allow for everyone to be on the same page.

The tools I've described above are just a taste of what's out there. However, if everyone looks at these and is informed about the company's situation? The process will go far more smoothly. You're allowing transparency to come into your process and let others see what kind of great work you do.

Collaborative tools can help streamline and get everyone on the same page. Disagreements don't happen because people communicate.

tagged as agency partnerships, building a campaign, building something cool, collaborative business models, creative agency collaboration, creative team, developers in the creative process, marketing process, reality of creative