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Let me tell you a little story. I started out working as a designer in design firms: corporate identities, packaging, annual reports, etc. I was a design major in college and that’s what I thought I wanted to do. Problem is I actually hated it. I didn’t really know how to get my foot in the door of an ad agency. Anyway, long story short, I’m not gonna go into how, but I eventually got an interview at an ad agency. The CD interviewed me and saw a bunch of design stuff in my book. I had zero ads in it. He needed an AD to do design grunt work for an airline account. This was back when airlines still advertised their fares and destinations in print. He figured I wouldn’t complain about doing all the garbage other ADs didn’t want to do. So he hired me (to this day, I don’t really know why, but I’m thankful).
This airline client did a shitload of print work and banners and did a one big budget spot per year. I started out doing the work I was hired to do: airfare ads garbage and tons of resizing of these ads. It was hell. But I started being proactive and asking for opportunities to think creative ideas when my shit shoveling was done. I was very proactive asking for more work without neglecting the stuff I was assigned. It wasn’t easy. I worked twice as much as everyone else. But my priority was to make myself more valuable by my ideas and my thinking than by pushing pixels. Nobody was going to ask me to do this, because it was not what I was hired to do and it was not expected of me. I had to ask for the chance and to prove my worth.
It worked. I showed that I was more valuable in that front. Whenever there was a campaign or a pitch, my CD would tell the Senior AD “Sorry dude, I need him to think about this brief. Find someone else to do this shit.”
But this had to come from the CD. I never refused to do the grunt work and I never acted like I was beneath it. I just became fast at it when there was an opportunity to work on something else, so that I could finish that garbage and get to the creative stuff.. I became good, but not too good. If I became too fast and too good, I would only be rewarded with more grunt work. So I was always willing to do it and did it well. But my goal was to become REALLY good at thinking creative ideas, so that my superiors would rather have me do that.
The Sr AD in that team wasn’t a very good ideas person. So it was very easy for me to overtake him in that front. Soon he was still doing the airfare garbage work while I was presenting my ideas to the CCO for the yearly TV big budget campaign, even though I was barely a mid level.
I was later given an alcoholic beverage account to manage where I had lots of creative freedom and responsibility with the art direction. All while I was helping on pitches routinely. I became one of the go to creatives for pitches because I built a reputation of being a responsive and fast idea generator as well as a very skilled AD.
So I was initially hired to do shit newspaper print work for a shitty account, and I had no advertising book when I started. But three years later I left that agency with a really decent book with 3 big budget TV spots, a ton of good print and outdoor ideas, and a YouTube video with 10 million views (which was a first at the time) that became a viral sensation for one of the agency’s clients.
All this long ass story to say: Don’t be the best at the stuff you don’t like doing or don’t want to do. You will only be rewarded with more of it. Spend your energy becoming the best at the things you want to do and create opportunities for yourself by being extra proactive and extra helpful. I never refused to do the shit work. I instead proved to my CD that I was more valuable doing something else. Eventually, he was the one who didn’t want me pushing pixels.
I recommend you look up a book by Paul Arden called “How good do you want to be?” It deals specifically with this type of dilemma. It’s a short quick read, but good.
This is the story I love to hear. It mirrors my own. But I think the catalyst for me is the CD that gave me the shot. In fact I’d say that is most important to win him/her over.
There are MANY designers trying to do the same role switch. It’s how you can communicate to those gatekeepers that you’re THE idea person and do things more conceptually and with volume.
Never be too good at something you don’t want to do!
Communicate this word for word to your CD