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I would hate it because when it’s time to move to a new agency how do you prove the level you’ve reached? What if you’re a Creative with a bunch of juniors and are leading the team but you’re all credited the same?A lot of career growth is about getting proper credit for the work you’ve done. If a company does this it just shows they don’t care about your career growth.
If nothing would change then why change things?
You did it. You found a way to get the juniors to listen to me even less than they are already willing to.
I started at an agency that had only creatives (junior, mid and senior) under ACD level. It was fine, maybe better. I learned to build decks and pull reference images and work with the design team and make photo selects and brief directors and sleep through color edits. My partner, who was otherwise an art director, wrote deck copy and listened to VO auditions and wrote scripts and whatever else writers do. It was a lot more efficient than the usual split because we split up the work based on priorities, but most teams will do that anyway if the workload calls for it.
i feel we should upgrade the title to lead GCD. some GCD get over on their subordinates.
@OP I don’t think it would make a difference. My agency made me a *senior* with 2 years of experience and I don’t take it seriously.
I don’t think the lack of unity I’ve seen is from juniors/seniors/mids. We just want to make stuff and beat other teams so we can execute the ideas we’ve been putting all our time into.
Usually a lack of unity stems from conflicting agendas and egos in leadership that override our efforts and don’t work towards one vision). That or an overall fear-based “every man for himself” culture. Frequent layoffs, favoritism, lack of transparency, etc.
I don’t think it would change anything if there are already designated roles for the people there. They would keep doing what they’ve been doing.
And how would you hire for that? How would it affect people looking for their next gig?
Overall seems arbitrary. Junior/mid/senior doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway.
If there were no CDs, though....just GCDs. Now that would be cool.
@OP can you clarify - are you talking about dropping jr/mid/sr titles, or just dropping cw/ad/tech/design titles?
Seems like everyone disagrees with the former.
As for the latter, that sounds nice in principal. But once you've got the idea, how do you assign craft? Personally, I prefer my creatives to have a specialism. I fully believe in one person being responsible for writing, another for art, another for tech etc. Otherwise everyone becomes a master of none. The separation of job titles helps keep everyone clear. Nothing stopping you jumping from one to another, but once you have the title, that's the craft you're responsible for. That's just what I think.
Also, for me, "creative" is such a nonsense title. What we do is the lowest end of what being "creative" truly is. Maybe "Commercial Creative" would be a better catch all title?
We did that, everyone under GCD is just an AD or CW. Until layoffs started, now it’s a mad scramble to reclaim titles to justify pay 🤷♂️
Rei Inamoto has this interesting was of doing it. It’s a 3 level System and that’s it. I’m quoting from an article below:
” In our case, we’ve implemented a three-tier structure: Partner/Director, Practice Lead, Practitioner.
A Partner/Director leads the engagement and functions as a strategic advisor to the client; a Practice Lead oversees and guides the day-to-day work, while a Practitioner is someone who can make things, and proves the strategic thinking with tangible outputs.
And a common custom we adopted from another industry—architecture: a Partner/Director is also a hands-on, engaged Practitioner. The best arsenal a creative director has is his or her ability to turn abstract thoughts into tangible ideas and the work, and that’s something consultants aren’t used to doing—yet.
I think it has something going for it - echelons and not endless title micro-modifications
I work in an agency like this right now and as a more junior person, I love it and would highly recommend it. It has allowed me to get and succeed at opportunities that would normally be reserved for more senior creatives, on principle
Interesting idea in theory. Awful idea in reality. Title is a way to reward creatives and something for them to work towards.
truth, however when a junior-mid level creative looks for leadership. Their GCD should be held accountable for growth and talent retention if not create another level of creative management such as Sr.or lead GCD who will step up and lead the growing talent. don't misuse and utilize young & experience talented creative. Some older ECD play the game well for self
Lots of good input.
To clarify the post: this is a question about outward facing titles, not responsibilities. Would we see more collaboration, less ego, and more unity in the creative department if we all shared the same title?
As far as assignments go, those who are more experienced and Sr would still be responsible for moving things forward. Writers would still be responsible for writing and so on.
And to that point, pay would still be based on talent and experience.
But by calling us all creatives, can we remove the need for creatives to judge themselves by title and just let them hone their craft and do the best work without getting caught up in what they are called?
It’s like that in a lot of places actually. Title mania is a US thing
What it would change is the agencies ability to recruit new talent.
SAD 1,
How much do you think it would effect recruiting? If an agency offers the right pay for for a candidate's experience and book, how much of the offer remaining is title dependent?
I hate the title fixation, just pay me well and give me good briefs to work on and I'm happy!
I very recently went through this exact thing. I had two similar offers on the table, and one of them was at an agency that didn’t have titles, and both agencies had similar reputations and client rosters. I took the job at an agency where I’d receive a title bump. I think that agencies like Wieden can get away with having no titles (or relatively flat titles) because the W+K name is a title in its own way. Without that, a no title structure poses difficulties for creatives looking to grow their career and gamble that your agency will help them do that.