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You don’t work for resource managers or PM’s. A creative person’s job is to make your CD happy. They are the ones that can fire you. Making a resource manager happy will get you nowhere. If you are going to say no to anyone it should be the resource manager. Not your CD. Manage your PMs. Make it their problem. Not yours. You work at a creative agency. Not a PM agency.
As in, awards bait “plus-ones” in and around the work that delivers to the actual requirements of the brief? If so, this is very standard practice in my experience. Your PM should attend the brief, be CC’d on every new ask or make a point of connecting with your CD at intervals to make sure they understand the full scope of the project.
Sounds like your CD could be working with a loose-y goose-y brief with a real murky bullseye. How sharp is your strategy? Is the CD looking for the edges?
You change jobs
Say no. There is a certain amount of be a good partner along the way, but if it’s a pattern of behavior that needs to be nipped. Conversation with them…if that is not met well, conversation with their manager or the executive leading the business. I just don’t allow it. The moment you do then they push for even more. There is no end with people who work like that, so they need to be clearly communicated with as soon as that pattern shows up.
I had a CD who did this and it drove the PMs nuts. The CD lived and died by her work. After a while, she just realized I wasn’t on that level and dragged some other zealot into it.