In advertising you always need more time.
And finding it’s one of the main concerns for a Creative Director.
Particularly when one of the biggest pressures you’ll face from the business is to reduce the creative hours on jobs.
The Gordian Knot of Creative Direction. If Alexander the Great was faced with this issue, even he might struggle, you can’t solve it by taking a combative, aggressive approach.
Boil it down and it’s not really about hours, it’s about money.
More hours = more costs = smaller profits.
That’s the equation most agency business heads are seeing. It’s easy to see why, it comes from looking at the obvious issue after a job is finished, the hours on the timesheets. It’s just the problem isn’t really those raw, stark numbers, it’s ‘’why are there actually so many hours on the timesheet?’.
And when you start to unpick that you’ll find loads of things to swing your sword through.
// Brief not being signed off and changing through the job. More hours.
// Required outputs not being worked out ahead of time. More hours.
// The wrong skillsets being briefed through bad planning. More hours.
// Meetings that become opinion factories. More hours.
// Errors, poor communication, haste and panic. More hours
And so on…
All the extra hours spend dealing with the fallout from those issues is what’s really increasing costs. Fix them and you’ll work a lot more efficiently. The creative hours will reduce naturally as fewer are wasted on damaged thinking or pointless executions.
The solution’ takes more effort than ‘cut the hours’, but you’ll be rewarded with much better work…
…and better profits.
You don’t always need more time, you often need more useful time.
