It’s always good to get a reminder that strategy is what makes this whole thing tick. We all know that there’s no truly excellent creative that doesn’t have some truly excellent strategy behind it and I’m eternally grateful to the strategists who do the initial legwork on a campaign to actually make it happen. Still, I think as a creative sometimes I get so focused on honing my own craft that I forget that I need to be able to do it all. 

At Johannes Leonardo I asked the question “what happens when you get a bad brief? What do you do then?” The answer: you write your own strategy. You go out and do the legwork and figure out what the brief is missing and make it happen. This echoes back to my earlier post about doing absolutely whatever you can to make yourself useful and helping out anywhere you possibly can. It’s not enough to get a bad brief and kick it back to the strategists, or to go and complain about it and then go out and make bad creative. You just have to put your strategist hat on and fix it.

Personally, I find the whole concept kind of thrilling. Even though my heart lies with copy, I’ve always loved strategy and research and that rush of a really good insight. It’s not a daunting proposition, but rather an encouragement to go out there and put a whole new set of skills to the test. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I live for any reminder that the creative strategist model that we know and love functions not only on a team but within an individual.

Jordan Blackburn | 5/11/19