Creative director

Qualifications

Creative directors are usually promoted from copywriting or art directing positions, and while all have a command of one of the two disciplines, they are more than familiar with the other, and in some rare cases they are equally adept at both. Long lists have been arrived at to enumerate the qualifications a CD should have, but the lists can be as illuminating as they can be obscure. Vindicative opponents usually help embellish the list by arriving at qualities CDs shouldn't have. CDs should be more than just masters at their craft. They also should be able managers of people, especially the charged and livewire individuals that gravitate to advertising. Nevertleless, at the very least, art directors who become creative directors should have developed an extremely fine ear for good copy, just as copywriters who become creative directors should have an educated eye for design.

David Ogilvy once advertised for creative directors for his agency, and called them "Trumpeteer Swans." This may highlight the difficulty of finding consensus on what qualifies a creative director. There isn't an easily understood qualification similar to an MBA for creative people. However, the management schools and independent advertising schools do graduate people with their own degrees and diplomas.

Management experience

The advertising process itself may help throw light on this. Since the advertising agency exists to produce advertising, the creative director is called on to be the key participant in, and contributor to each and every part of the process that results in the advertising. Within most agencies, the creative director is a key part of the formulation of the brand and advertising strategy, the formulation of the brief, the actual process of creating the advertising, the presentation or selling of the advertising to the client, and its execution.

So essentially, a creative director must be qualified as a "manager", very nimble and astute manager of people, in harmony with the business plans of the company. This is a tremendous challenge for anyone. A precious few creative directors excel at all points. Besides needing to have the requisite aptitudes: he must have the force of personality to prevail over the process. Part protagonist and part mediator, the creative director must pick his way between currents of differing ideas, personalities, and agendas. The advertising process can be fraught with people with different agendas, and creative directors must have their way with force and grace when contrary views are expressed with fervency.

A creative director's lot is a complex one: there is also the matter of credit and blame: while clients and awards can be won or lost for a great many reasons, the win is frequently attributed to a great many reasons but a loss can be place quite squarely on the creative director's doorstep. Creative directors are more often than not a lightning rod for the ire and blame game that can follow. It is not too infrequent for an entire creative team to be fired when an agency loses an account and when that happens, many a creative director has realized that his own team also looks at him askance.

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