Creating is different to managing.
Creators try to break rules, managers set them.
Creators look inward, managers look outward.
Creators are introverts, managers are extroverts.
Not 100%, but most, AMV/BBDO once Myers Briggs tested their creative department.
The results came back - fifty people were rated ‘I’ (introvert), one was ‘E’ - the creative boss (Peter Souter).
I’s are ‘more likely to be successful in careers like writing, science and art’.
Makes sense.
“I’s are predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things. Give an extrovert a problem and they’ll share it with others, give it to an introvert and they’ll ‘go into a cave alone to solve it’.
(Try finding a cave these days. In Soho. Nightmare.)
Today, creatives are often described as being “on the spectrum”.
Whether their diagnosis is right or wrong, it's true, our brains are wired differently.
It's fine when they need someone to look at a problem from a new angle.
More difficult when they need someone to play the role of manager.
That dark, cosy cave is swapped for bright, stranger-filled boardrooms.
Primarily to pitch, possibly the furthest distance from that cave.
You may be told to ‘have chemistry’ with six strangers from the world of moist wipes.
Or to present your funniest ‘jokes’ to some folks about to spend £6m persuading the public that their product has isn’t a cake, as its name suggests, it’s actually a biscuit.
It’s an adjustment.
Some adapt quicker than others.
I found it tough.
In the early days of CDD, clients having just left after a pitch, Peter Mead looked up at me and sighed “You should’ve seen David Abbott present creative work”.
Heartbreaking.
What did Abbott do?
How did he present?
I’d love to have seen him present creative work.
But agencies rarely invest in training or mentoring, they lob you in and hope you can swim.
It's like telling a footballer to “Put this helmet and shin pads on, you’re now a Cricketer’.
How do you make that transition less record scratchy?
I thought it’d be helpful for those about to go through it to have a bit more understanding of where they're headed.
To do this, I managed to pin down someone who knows more about pitching than anyone else; Martin Jones.
He’s sat on both sides of the table - he ran new business at the biggest agency in Britain at the time; J. Walter Thompson,
then ran the biggest intermediary in the Country for the last thirty years; The AAR.
Personally, he's run over a thousand over the last thirty years.
It’s meant that he’s seen every agency and senior person pitch.
I’ve known Martin since Arsenal’s Invincibles team, over the years he’s given me endless advice, but hearing him talk about his experience was a revelation.
If you have anything to do with new business; listen, you’ll be better at the end.
Hope you enjoy it.