Collaborative Creativity

When we talk about collaborative creativity with regard to advertising, there are two separate areas: One being the creative collaboration between Copywriter and Art Director. The other being internal collaboration between creatives, account handlers and media planners.

The partnership between copywriter & art director is a longstanding tradition in the advertising industry and a wealth of research supports the notion that two heads are better than one. In the digital age however, it seems that the potential for collaboration can be extended far beyond a mere two heads.
   'Giant Hydra' www.gianthydra.com, conceived in 2008, acts as a platform for mass collaboration between advertising agencies across the globe. The idea is based upon Metcalfe's Law that 'the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users'. Basically, creatives are able to create a profile with samples of their work, which others can browse through. Agencies are then able to set projects and hand-pick the creatives that they wish to be involved. Ideas are shared, discussed, furthered and when executed, each creative that was involved is financially rewarded. This enables the volume and perspective of ideas concerning the given brief to dramatically increase well beyond what would have ever been capable of one creative team. Not to mention speeding up the process of idea generation; ideal for agencies bogged down with several ongoing briefs or agencies with limited time/resources.



Ideas such as this have massive implications on how we should be working across art schools/colleges/universities and across a range of diciplines. It is important for us as art students to note the wealth of creative minds and disciplines that we have at our fingertips. As aspiring advertisers, we're aware that the industry thrives on originality and innovation, so we should be looking further than the confines of our studio. If effective collaboration is possible between advertising students, then what potential does interdisciplinary collaboration hold? If word is spread well enough then maybe this simple Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=132871126762443) can start interdisciplinary collaborations within the college, helping each of us to build a strong contact book before graduating. If this is how it works in industry, why not start now?

For agencies to function, they depend on a structure. The structure of creatives/accounts/planners/directors has always existed, yet in years gone by it has, at times, become more of a heirarchy. In an article entitled Creativity and the Art of Collaboration (Campaign, 30/04/2010), a 'Fortress Creative Department' philosophy is described where creative people were physically and mentally excluded from the rest of the agency and gave the "double-barrelled upper-class twits in client service a really hard time". As Andrew Cracknell, writer of the article, comments, "If you're kept apart from the people whose role can occasionally come into conflict with yours, then that very isolation can fuel the antagonism" which suggests why it's not surprising to see so many agencies integrating departments with open plan studios. Brand New in Leeds, for example, is a converted warehouse where the only rooms separated from the main studio are the toilets, editing suite and kitchen. In the time I spent there over the summer I constantly had account handlers shouting over my head across the room to the other departments. I really buzzed off as this style of open collaboration as I felt a real part of the team and had an awareness of what was going on around me, so it's odd to think that agencies havn't always operated in this way.

A type of collaboration that appears to be becoming ever more apparent in agencies, is with the client themselves. The Campaign article states that both Mother and HHCL are pioneers of this method, but Cracknell shows his concern in that, "these project groups are only as strong as their most vociferous members - and he who pays the piper calls the tune". Put simply, the client becomes ever more powerful in the quality of the work. In my eyes, this is bad news. I agree that client should be involved in the progression of the work so that they take some ownership of the idea and, in turn, it should be easier to get work through the barrier of acceptance. And although Mother seem to have escaped thus far, I can't help but picture the potentially damaging effect on creativity that client-agency collaboration may have.

Steve Henry (co-founder of HHCL) claims,"Creative Directors used to be the people who made a difference. Now they're just people who can be wheeled out for pitches to make small talk". I'm all for collaboration, but if this is the case, I think I'd prefer to remain as a Creative.