Does collaboration actually just screw things up?
September 29 2014, 5:06 pm | | 1 Comment
By Simon Veksner
Creative Director, DDB Sydney
We work in a highly collaborative industry. And collaboration is universally held to be a good thing. In fact the very worst thing you can say about an agency is that they work ‘in silos’.
But hey, long-term readers will know that I get a kick out of questioning received wisdom.
So – just as a thought experiment – let’s ponder for a moment, what would our industry be like without any collaboration? READ ON…
1 Comment
I was well-known – and often reviled- for eschewing the standard model of the writer/art director team. As a writer I preferred to work alone. I realise that makes me the odd man out – pun intended. I believed then and now that you don’t need two people to crack an idea. And it’s a financial extravagance to pay two senior salaries for idea generation when one genuinely talented individual can do it – without having to play the weird political game of seeking consensus from your creative partner to present an idea to the Creative Director. My ideas often came fully-formed and only needed a technician to realise them.This of course made me unpopular with art directors who were left feeling like a wrist/afterthought – which of course they were. Likewise commercial film directors. I believe the more consultation that occurs, the more people in the chain want to add their two-pence worth, the more the purity of an idea suffers. Imagine a Mozart or Beethoven or Steve Vai or Leonardo Da Vinci or Orson Welles having to show their latest work of genius to another musician or artist and saying “Er, what do you think?” Shall I go on?