Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Featured Author

As Director of Strategy at AKQA, Craig Walmsley is responsible for research, insight, proposition formulation and user experience development across AKQA's service offerings. A veteran of the digital industry, he has worked on such clients as Microsoft, Xbox, Orange, Dockers, and Shockwave, developing solutions on multiple digital platforms. As well as working in the digital industry, he is a published writer and historian, with a Doctorate in the History of Philosophy.

More articles by Craig Walmsley





Features

Delivering Digital: The New Agency “Director”

Written on
Jul 11, 2006 
Author
Craig Walmsley  |
Share
Delivering Digital: The New Agency “Director”

Take, for example, an aside by Director Bryan Singer on the “X2″ DVD movie commentary. Referring to a scene where “Iceman” leaves his family to join the X-Men, Singer remarked: “Instead of having the jet take off and spending the money on that, we just played it in a close-up on [Iceman]. You get more emotion out of it and save about $100,000.”

One decision with major implications for the budget, special effects, production schedule, acting, scene set-up and emotional out-take — all down to the Director’s vision and understanding of the movie-making process. In short, Movie Directors look after the whole — and make sure that it is greater than the sum of the parts.

Like making a movie, delivering digital requires a new kind of role — the Director – the right person in the company who can understand all aspects of the project, who has a vision for success and who understand the inputs and outputs from everyone else involved. These individuals act as a universal translation mechanism between team members, and the key point of contact for the client. Such individuals will typically oversee and provide firm leadership for the project as a whole — liaising between departments and making decisions where necessary – much as film director provides the vision and guidance for everyone involved in making a movie.

In your typical agency of days gone by, these people would probably have come from the “creative” department, but these days that department is only one part of a larger delivery capability. As projects become more diverse, skill sets more niche, and interdependencies more complex, people who can speak the language of a variety of different disciplines will be needed. Directors may come from the IA team, the technical department, project management or the creative team — as long as they understand all the interconnections within the project, have a clear sense of what the experience is trying to achieve, and can clearly communicate with the wider team and the client.

If you work in a digital agency at the moment, you probably know some of these folks already — the people who just get it, understand the constraints of the situation and the implications of their choices – they just know the right thing to do in any given circumstance. It might not have “Director” on their business card, but that’s who they are, and that’s what they do. As digital continues to get more complicated, these are the people who will be able to deliver the complexity that clients require – understanding the requirements, providing the strategy, coordinating the team and navigating the trade-offs that every complex creative-technical project entails.

If you don’t know who these folks are in your agency, you may be finding that no matter how hard you manage the project, it never quite turns out the way you expected — everyone did their bit, but somehow it just didn’t come together the way it should have. Maybe you should think a little differently about how things get done. What was that? The sound of scores of agency managers saddling up on their high-horses? “That’s not the way we do things round here”, goes the cry, “I can’t have a techie or a planner or whoever telling a creative the best way to do something! The world will end! The sky will fall in! Well, the creatives will throw their toys out of their prams, at the very least!”

It is peculiar that an industry that prides itself on being “innovative” can be so hide-bound and reactionary when it comes to the way work gets produced. Innovation starts at home. “Creative” is an adjective, not a noun. You don’t have to have the word in your job title to think original and insightful thoughts. Nor do you have to work in Photoshop to have a vision for new types of digital innovation.

If you want your agency to be pioneering and inventive, to truly do something that is truly new and different, the best place to start might be your outlook about what “creativity” means in the digital age, the way that you work, and the people you employ to set the direction for delivering digital.





Reader Comments.

Spot on. Any agency that doesn’t get this (nor retain people who do get it and can play this role) will work harder vs. smarter. But hey, they’ll survive, like they always will but why does everyone keep banging their head against a wall as if working collaboratively and multidisciplinary is rocket science? It’s not, as Craig points out above. Just needs folks to put their egos and silo mentalities to one side and trust in that one person. She/he is doing so in order to allow each discipline to have an environment to do their best work. Nuff said. Great article.

Posted by Jane | 12:42 pm on November 18, 2006.

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

Pages: « previous page 1 2 3

Tags: , and
Article Sponsor

More Features


  • Right now, at the beginning of 2012, what are you watching the most closely for its ad and marketing opportunities?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...


Adotas Partnership