How to Inspire and Direct Creatives

Diversity Can Be Inspiring

A creative team, which can include writers, art directors, designers, programmers, videographers and photographers, may have their own perception of their involvement in a project and their own vision of the outcome. I prefer working with a diverse team because diversity is a competitive advantage. We are the sum of our inherited traits, spiritual beliefs, ethnic background and our personal and professional experiences. Our diversity makes us unique. Our uniqueness brings value to our profession.

At times, directing a team of creative people may seem as easy as herding cats, but the rewards make it all worthwhile.

Keeping a Team Informed

I believe in keeping a creative team informed throughout a project so that everyone is on the same page. Some directors like to spoon-feed information, with the idea that knowledge is power. When you give a person responsibility, the tools they need, and keep them informed, they take ownership and pride in their work.

What About Writer’s and Designer’s Block?

Anyone can experience this at any time in their life. When that happens, a brain-storming session, word association game, or topic exploration can help break through the blockage and allow the creative juices to flow.

What’s My Motivation?

One of the essential factors in realizing how to inspire a creative person is to discover what motivates them. I like to ask each person how and why they chose this career. Once I discover the individual motivation of a creative person, it is much easier to inspire them. When I uncover the “Why”, only then can I determine the “How.”

The Art of Collaboration

Most people are familiar with the phrase “There’s no I in TEAM.”  However, there is a “ME!”  If there is one important point we have learned about marketing, it’s that we must answer the prospect’s question, “What’s in it for ME?”  The same question can be instrumental in creating a successful team. For any team to be successful, there needs to be trust and collaboration… and one more important ingredient: incentive. Value and the rewards of working together needs to be stressed. Value such as increased production, unique solutions and improved results. Rewards can include verbal praise and future monetary gain. However you reward your team, adding incentives with a large helping of inspiration, creates a recipe that always comes out well.

I have worked with many creative teams and the experience is especially successful when people come together from completely different backgrounds to complete one common goal. This diversity brings unique ideas and most often, the outcome becomes the competitive advantage. I’ll use the example of an objective to create a company image ad for a pharmaceutical company that speaks about the genius behind the research that leads to developing a medicinal therapy. Collaboration between a creative director, writer, designer and a researcher would prove to have better results than simply sending a creative brief to the writer. Without collaboration, the writer would interview the researcher by phone, write the copy, and hand it off to the designer to create a visual. This series of tasks, which happens quite often, probably would not create a memorable ad. A brainstorming session would have a much better chance of generating something unique and exceeding the client’s expectations.

The Art of The Possible, a magazine ad written by Robert E. Huber and designed by Linda E. Danaher for Bristol-Myers Squibb Company.

That type of collaboration happened with the ad shown in this blog. The researcher had sketched something on a blackboard that looked like a formula. Bob Huber, a talented writer, and I saw something very beautiful on that chalkboard and we realized that this researcher’s scribble could possibly save someone’s life.  “The Art of the Possible” was born. By using a photograph of a frame and placing a portion of  the chalkboard formula inside, along with copy that touched on the emotional side of medicine, we stressed the value of the research. This double page ad, which we created for Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, appeared in Leaders magazine.