One of the best things about working in agencies, should be the sheer mix of people you get to work with.
I say should be, because many agencies think they're full of openness and colour, when the reality is startling sameness.
We like to say it's clients who are conservative, while agencies are different. However, in many agencies, while the dress code and etiquette are less formal, there is plenty of expectation to behave a certain way and 'fit in'.
It's no accident then, that agency land tends to have some consistent archetypes that become clear, if you work in them long enough. I wouldn't be surprised if you've met one or two of them.
Here are some to watch out for. By no means a comprehensive list, these are perhaps the most dangerous...
The Meddling CEO: Despite the fact they haven't done anything good themselves in years, nothing gets out the agency without their blessing. They may have been amazing when they were working on the day to day, but those days are long gone. They will try and tinker with the strategy, they will get very close to taking a layout pad in a creative review and when it comes to the deck, they'll try and rewrite every slide. All this would be amazing if they added much value, but their days of glory are long gone, so they don't quite know what they want, but will make you change stuff and change again until they see it.
The Creative Turd Polisher: You know when you're working with a great creative because their thinking will work on a layout pad, or an a few sentences that inspire you as to how they've turned the brief into gold. Then there are those who's ideas are less impressive, or at least they are when you strip the layers of Mac work, or amazing writing, they've undertaken to cover this up. There are many variations of this kind of creative.
One consistent theme is their ideas are usually very average, but they've blown the budget trying to make them look better than they are.
There is the Video Star, who blows you away with the wonderful little film they've made - until an hour later when you realise all you have is a film, rather than an idea.
There is the Headline Act who, no matter what the brief - an event, it might be an installation - they will write an amazing headline. It might be the next Just Do It or Appliance of Science, but that doesn't help you when the brief was nothing to do with this. Variations on this are the Prose Writer who writes amazing copy that says nothing at all, or the Persistent Punner who can't answer a brief without creating a line that's a pun, or in many cases, endless bastardisation of the client name.
The Bookworm: There is a very special kind of person usually in leadership, who can't think for themselves anymore. They slavishly follow the pearls of wisdom from the latest book they've read. Don't get me wrong, some leaders have been inspired by a piece of thinking, it's influenced them deeply and they consistently follow through on what they have learned. These people are great, its the ones who change their minds four times a year with every new book they've ordered. Those are the ones you have to watch out for. You'll find yourself following a philosophy that has no resemblance to how things really work, but just as you manage to work around it (as you must with all proprietary agency processes), they'll be on to something next. The equivalent of the Creative Turd Polisher, they'll say fuck all of use, but it will sound bloody impressive, until you take another look and realise there is nothing there but smoke and mirrors.
The Pro-Amateur: A newer species, but no less challenging. They have evolved as the model for agencies has changed. Once things were relatively simple. Ad agencies did ads, brand consultancies did over complicated brand positioning for everyone else to make sense of it, media folks did media, PR folks did PR and designers did design. As the market got tougher, media fragmented and lines blurred, you started to get media folks with creative directors, ad agencies getting back into media, digital folks trying to do lead creative. Even PR agencies trying to be lead agency. The thing is, every bit of the marketing mix is hard, but people who have grown up doing one bit naturally think what everyone else does is billy basic - so they try and do it themselves and like most mediocrity, just can't see how average (at best) their attempts at work outside their own specialism is. If you are from one background and have been asked to join a new organisation who wants to branch our into what you do now, be very careful, or, to be honest, run for your life.
There are more archetypes of course, this small collection is perhaps the one to be most careful of. What are yours?
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