Creative Directors are an interesting species.  They are at once, both children and businessmen.  You cannot be too staunch and aggressive with him or he’ll high tail it in the other direction.  On the same token, if you don’t take yourself serious enough he’ll view you as weak and prey on you with his creative prowess.  You must take care with this volatile beast if you are ever going to win his praise. Creative Directors spend great portions of their time doing something they call “concepting”.  To the lay person this is equivalent to sitting amidst a plethora of empty Starbucks’ cups while listening to rainforest sounds or hair-metal, contemplating.  If you are not in advertising you may be thinking that this seems like an activity you may have been involved in after a nervous breakdown but trust me, for them, it’s normal.  Note: If you hear the call of a Toucan and the sound of waterfalls coming from his office DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR.  If you do, any creative block he experiences will be on your hands.  He will not attribute it to the sheer amount of caffeine, alcohol, or anything else he ingested in the two weeks he has spent barricaded in his creative lair.  However, if you ever want to repay a debt to a Creative Director I would suggest a lava lamp or possibly a miniature serenity sand box for mental stimulation.  While Creative Directors are often quirky they are still the boss so if you are going to disagree with them, here’s a thought, be CREATIVE.  If he has a concept for a campaign and you think its ludicrous say, “That’s a really innovative idea, I would have never thought of that myself (skipping the part about the reason being because it’s asinine).  I wonder if we could add to it by ______ (insert your own idea here).”   Or if he wants to move up your deadline on a project that will be impossible to finish by that time, instead of saying, “Go back to lava land you monkey sound loving Mother F***er”Say,  “I’m glad you came by because I have a great idea about how to take this project to the next level and really impress Client X.” Creative Directors feed on ideas.  They can’t resist them like a 12 year old to a quadruple tanked water-gun.  Always have a few random ideas on call so in any tight situation, when he asks you do something you don’t want to do, you can quickly divert his attention.  They don’t necessarily even have to be good ideas as much as they have to be non-obvious.  That way it looks like you are working way harder than you actually are and conversely, you gain his respect.  The respect of a Creative Director is the goal.  The next step is keeping this respect so as not to join the hit list he keeps in his desk that will be employed when a sudden creative block leads to a rage blackout…  Look for next week’s blog, “How to impress a Creative Director: Part 2, Don’t Taunt a Tiger in a Cage”.

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