Bestads Top 6 of the Week reviewed by Tony Clewett, executive CD, DraftFCB Auckland
November 22 2012, 12:30 pm | | 6 Comments
Each week Bestads picks the very best advertising in the world, in every medium – which is reviewed by a top creative director or team to select their own personal favourites.
This week’s guest judge is Tony Clewett (left), executive creative director at DraftFCB Auckland.
6 Comments
Does any new Old Spice ad just automatically qualify for Bestads? This one is pretty average.
Can I just challenge the stupid title ‘Executive Creative Director’ as used by the ad industry?
In any other business ‘Executive’ as a prefix to a job title simply means that the person actually has a real, day-to-day job in the company, as opposed to an honorary position. For example an ‘Executive Chairman’ in the real world is someone who actually works in the business, and doesn’t just attend board meetings.
However in this vainglorious advertising business it’s a way of elevating someone above the title of mere creative director to some sort of puffed up demi-god ‘I’m really important’ status.
I seem to recall it starting in the early 90s at Lintas Sydney when a certain creative figure was brought in as creative director over the head of the existing creative director, so an embarrassed management had to invent a title for the usurped person.
Now it just seems to be endemic. And it makes us look ridiculous.
Discuss.
Hey Old Guy CD…discuss this: GO FUCK YOURSELF
Thanks Old CD Guy. Finally someone is questioning this ludicrous title. I’ve always thought it started because agencies didn’t want to lose the Seniors who demanded to be elevated to Creative Director – and the existing CD was too hard or too good to move on. Hence everyone shuffles up a notch.
It seems to be happening a lot lately. Ultimately it devalues the “Creative Director” title… Now the young-uns expect to be made a CD as soon as they’ve won an award or too. Other obfuscating new titles that make me gag are “Creative Leader”, “Creative CHairman” and “Head of Ideas”. As the young-uns are want to say…WTF? Oh, and another thing, isn’t the lowest rung of suit an Account Executive? Will they soon want to move up a notch to Executive Account Executive?
@Old CD Guy,
I’m new to the business, but I assumed that Executive Creative Director would mean at least one of these things:
• Part of the Executive Board / Executive Committee, able to sit on important board meetings and make decisions based on the creative department.
• Has at least one CD they oversee, a CD that is at least 70% autonomous in their role, who would naturally have a creative group head underneath them in order to be a CD.
• Can smoke cigars in the finance department while laughing loudly.
Am I far off?
These days, the title usually means the person with it has some skin in the game – like losing a lot of money if things go pear-shaped – rather than being just an employee with all care, but no responsibility.
There’s no doubt it’s a malaise in our industry – the more ECD’s there are, the less creative risks are taken.