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My strategists deliver vague brief after vague brief and actively try to stifle good creative. And are constantly getting promoted. I think you can make a great career at being a bad strategist and fired for being a bad creative.
^this
It’s been mentioned earlier but you have to have a partnership between creative and strategy. Left on their own, I find strategists usually do a great job looking at something from a research perspective but don’t come up with a unique insight or a compelling “one thing” that needs to happen for a successful project. Left on our own, creatives usually default to “wouldn’t it be cool if…” kinds of thoughts.
Gotta work together.
Amen!
Working with bad creatives is like herding cats
Ah the beauty of being a creative, you can always blame the strategy, or account for not fighting, or the client’s budget, or the client’s bravery.. or the media company’s placements, or the consumer’s stupidity...
Yep, CD2. The brief is rarely criticized because it’s “backed by data” or “what the client wanted to say.” Or it’s so early in the process, creatives just assume they’ll be able to spin it into gold.
With weak creative, it’s always assumed that there’s some other solve you haven’t found, so it’s questioned or blamed way more frequently. And creatives have to defend their work on the basis of much more subjective things, like taste.
A great strategist is invaluable. But it’s much harder to be a great creative.
Turn into a bad creative is easier in my opinion. Creativity is a mix of millions of little pieces of emotions, inspirations, feelings, intuition, people...right things at the rights time. Everything can influence a creative and lead to a “bad product” (starting from the strategy, as you mentioned)
A strategy, in my opinion, is a much straightforward process with fewer bumps and perhaps easier to control. If you know what you are doing you are halfway. Looking forward to hearing some different opinions from fellow strategists/creatives.
Ps: Sad that the negative spotlight always redirects to just creative teams and not the bad strategies behind some decisions.
It’s easier to be bad at everything than creative. We’re the people who are left holding the bag.
Its easy to be a bad anything. The proper question is "is it harder to be a good strategist or a good creative?"
And the answer to that is unknowable. Because the very best at each know they need the very best of the other, and aren't trying to do each others jobs.
Seems like everyone on this thread is saying it’s harder to be a good strategist than a good creative (I.e., creative is easier).
I mean, if there are no good strategists then logic would say it’s a harder job.
Let’s say I’ve been in 30 briefs in the past couples years. I would say three of those times I genuinely thought, “wow the strategists did a solid job on this.”
Most of the time it’s just some unedited list of articles they found, somehow still being a 14 slide keynote.
And no, the slides aren’t clean or well designed. They’re an info packed mess.
I can’t count how many times I’ve asked “what is the challenge here? What are trying to do exactly, other than ‘sell the thing’ or ‘get people excited’”, and gotten blank stares.
Tons of times, in my career, I’ve seen creatives being blamed bc of a bad strat...
So true about creatives picking up the slack for crappy do nothing Strategy people. Back when advertising was better, good creatives, good account people and good media people worked with good clients to make great strategies and successful brands.
Now creatives have to give half or more of their allotted time to dip shit strategy people who in the end advise “make it like something Apple would do.” And this - When the client is insurance, pharma or an American car brand.
Where’s that place Frodo took the boat to after the ring was destroyed? I’m ready to head there soon.
I know it was rhetorical, but Mount Doom.
Rising Star
Strategists always think more is more to try to justify their existence or effort. "Look at this 50 page PowerPoint with personas." Yes okay, but write that down in a sentence otherwise it's worthless to me.
I think it’s probably six of one, 1/2 a dozen of the other. if we’re not actually in a partnership, then we’re picking up the slack from each other or fighting each other rather than adding to an idea together.
In my experience, I see strategy get blamed when creative goes off the rails after not being engaged earlier in the process because the resulting work, while good looking, doesn’t help solve a real business problem. And I’ve seen creative get blamed when the brief leads them down a lame and timid path.
Both of those moments suck. And both can be solved by acting like a team from day one, internally and in client discussions.
It’s easy to be both a bad strategist & creative, but hard to be a good ones. Clients accept too much average work these days, so people get away with being bad and just think it’s normal.
Sometimes I think they encourage average. Not out of any overt desire for crappy work, but because in this era of too much data and too little stability, our clients can default to a “minimize risk” approach bs “maximize memorability” approach.
David Droga once told me that advertising needs to be brutally simple and easy to understand. And Honestly, out of the countless briefs I’ve worked on in the past 5 years, I can only remember ONE that made sense and/or was compelling. If you think you change that, go for it.
Creative is tough because just about anyone can have an opinion.
Strategy less so.
Analytics is best because no one has any idea what they're looking at and usually just takes your word for it rather than admit it :)
Oh it’s easy as hell to be a bad strategist. Here. I’ll mail you a few. DM w address.
As someone who just stayed up on a Saturday night until 2 am to write the strategy section of next week’s pitch, I wholeheartedly agree.
This conversation sounds like a lot of places are creating bad definitions of strategists. I’ve worked 20 years as a CW. Strategists should be more like content supervisors and copy CDs (so I don’t understand these entry level positions I sometimes see). You set the overall direction, voice and you lead the writers. This is particularly true in UX design.
So if the copy is bad, it’s on me. I don’t create vague memos of suggestions. I approve every word.
If this is a coasting job for some, you’re setting yourselves up for a rude awakening if you move somewhere else where the job is defined better.
This is a wild and concerning comment to make about the role of strategists
I once heard a Strategy Director ask “what’s an insight?”
I’ve heard myself ask a Strategy Director “Where’s the insight?”
Rising Star
Yes. The answer is yes.