Creativity thrives on tension: the friction between familiar themes and unexpected twists, between collective purpose and individual expression. In advertising, design, fashion and the wider creative industries, culture is often treated as a brand asset.
Agencies speak of their “DNA,” hiring for people who “fit” that DNA, while simultaneously yearning for fresh ideas that will break the mould. How, then, can creative leaders hire people who believe in the agency’s mission yet bring radical new perspectives that challenge the status quo?
Traditionally, when employees share core beliefs (around collaboration, integrity or innovation) “they are more likely to align on long‑term goals, trust one another, and navigate ambiguity together effectively.” Shared values function as an internal compass that helps teams make decisions quickly, maintaining momentum in fast‑paced creative environments. However, a team composed entirely of people who think alike risks redundancy and groupthink.
Creative work, by its very nature, demands friction and unexpected connections; to stay relevant, agencies must assemble teams with complementary skills and different ways of thinking.
Why Shared Values Matter in the Creative Industries
Values build trust in collaborative crafts. Whether producing an advertising campaign or designing a brand identity, creative projects rely on intense collaboration. When team members share core values (such as curiosity, craftsmanship, integrity or respect for clients’ stories), trust flourishes.
When teams are diverse in skills but misaligned in values, the lack of trust undermines collaboration. In the creative industries, where work often involves subjective judgment, trust enables candid feedback and risk‑taking.
Values provide a compass in chaotic projects. Creative projects often feel like controlled chaos: shifting client briefs, tight deadlines, and the constant need to balance artistic excellence with commercial reality. Values‑aligned teams navigate uncertainty better because they rely on a shared compass.
For example, a studio that values ethical storytelling will not compromise on representation when pitching a global campaign, and a design agency that prizes craft will always fight for quality, even when budgets are tight. Hiring people who share these priorities ensures that when creative tension arises (say between an art director and an account manager) the argument is about how to achieve a shared goal, not whether the goal itself matters.
Values help hire for potential. In creative roles, the best hires are often those who may not tick every technical box but bring a strong portfolio and an unmistakable creative spark. This is why hiring for potential and adaptability makes so much sense.
A copywriter might not have experience in film, but if they share the agency’s passion for storytelling and show willingness to experiment, they can learn the craft quickly. Aligning on purpose and values allows agencies to hire the “unicorns” who grow with the organisation.
Why Diverse Voices Are Essential for Creativity
Zara Picken
Creative work thrives on inspiration from different cultures, disciplines and life experiences. The business case for diversity in innovation is robust. A large‑scale Boston Consulting Group study found that companies with above‑average leadership diversity reported innovation revenue 19 percentage points higher than companies with below‑average diversity (45% versus 26% of total revenue).
These companies also enjoyed EBIT margins nine points higher. Small changes to the makeup of management teams (bringing in leaders from different industries or countries or increasing gender balance) had significant impacts on innovation. This is particularly relevant for creative agencies, where leadership teams often come from similar advertising backgrounds.
The McKinsey’s Diversity Wins report shows that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity on executive teams are 36% more likely to outperform those in the bottom quartile. Such findings underscore that diversity fuels better decisions and bolder ideas.
The fact is, people from different backgrounds unlock ideas that a homogenous team might never stumble upon. Exposure to new ideas broadens the entire team’s capacity for creative thought, enabling cross‑pollination of design styles, cultural references and storytelling techniques. In creative industries, where differentiation and novelty are currency, diversity becomes a competitive advantage.
The retention benefits of diversity are also important in creative businesses. 69% of millennial and Gen Z workers are more likely to stay with a company that has a diverse workforce. Creative agencies face high turnover, often losing talent to in‑house teams or startups; a diverse and inclusive environment is a powerful tool for retaining top creatives.
The Pitfalls of Hiring Only for “Agency Fit”
Zara Picken
Many creative shops still hire based on “agency fit” or “personality fit,” seeking people who share existing norms, from similar art‑school educations to identical dress codes. This approach can reproduce bias and stagnation and may manifest in superficial preferences, such as favouring extroverted personalities or those who enjoy the same “cool” hobbies. In a creative context, this might mean hiring only people with a “hipster” aesthetic or who share the creative director’s taste in music.
Hiring for culture fit can encourage groupthink and homogeneity, “dangerous” traits that stifle innovation. Culture fit replicates the status quo and can embed unconscious bias, limiting the range of perspectives in the room. For creative agencies, this may lead to “house styles” that become dated or campaigns that fail to resonate with diverse audiences.
From “Agency Fit” to “Creative Add”
The answer is not to abandon culture entirely but to shift from “agency fit” to creative add. This concept, derived from the broader idea of culture add, means hiring people who share your core values but bring distinct perspectives, styles and life experiences.
Hiring for culture add involves looking for people whose skills, personality, point of view, background and more are different from those already on the team so that the culture can expand and evolve.
For creative agencies, hiring for creative add might mean welcoming a self‑taught designer with a background in community organizing, a copywriter who brings linguistic richness from a bilingual upbringing, or a strategist from outside advertising who can translate social‑science insights into brand narratives.
Zara Picken
To implement creative add, agencies should:-
Define values as behaviours, not personalities
This allows the firm to align on what matters while welcoming diverse people. Making values behavioural reduces the risk of hiring clones.
Use scorecards and structured interviews
This structured approach reduces bias and ensures decisions are based on objective criteria. define clear criteria, ask the same questions in the same order, and avoid small talk that may reveal personal similarities and bias judgments.
Educate hiring teams on bias
Culture fit bias is subtle. Provide training on unconscious bias, emphasising how default preferences (for a particular art school, design style or accent) can exclude capable candidates.
Build diverse hiring panels
Involve creatives from different departments, backgrounds and seniority levels and use an interview panel that reflect the diversity the company seeks.
Invite radical candour
Encourage open and constructive feedback. This ensures that new hires with different perspectives feel safe to share ideas. For agencies known for big personalities, creating psychological safety is vital; dissenting views must be heard, not silenced.
Recruit for potential and adaptability
Evaluate candidates’ capacity to learn new mediums or technologies, not just past experience. Some of the best hires are those who don’t check every technical box but demonstrate a commitment to the mission and a willingness to grow.
Onboard for integration and growth
Onboarding should immerse new hires in the agency’s values while encouraging them to bring their unique perspectives. Pair new hires with mentors from different disciplines, host creative crit sessions where everyone’s work is reviewed, and celebrate projects that successfully blend unexpected influences.
Measure diversity and inclusion
Use surveys and engagement metrics to track whether employees feel valued and included. Also, remember that, while 56% of U.S. workers view DEI efforts positively, views vary widely across demographics. Understanding the sentiments within your agency will help tailor initiatives for creative talent.
Lessons from Spin: Radical Candour and Behaviour‑Based Values
Alyssa Drysdale, Managing Director at Spin:-
“Outside experience is incredibly valuable to grow, diversify and develop as an agency - or you become an echo chamber. But this is a difficult conundrum for sure and one we have focused on heavily as an agency over the last year or so. Being open to feedback, different opinions and change is key - that’s why we brought in our ‘radical candour’ manifesto earlier this year to really push ourselves when it comes to sharing open and constructive feedback with one another. Whilst in interview processes, we also use scoring against our company values to ensure we’re making the right decisions where we can.”
Rebecca Titmuss, HR Manager at Spin:-
“First, it's about aligning on what we mean by 'values'. For us it is about behaviours and actions that work to drive our culture forward, like curiosity, respect, initiative, and not about backgrounds or personalities. This ensures values alignment whilst also encouraging diversity. And with diversity comes new perspectives to help challenge how we do things.”
Shared Purpose, Distinct Voices
In the creative industries, where differentiation is essential and change is constant, teams must be anchored by shared purpose yet enriched by distinct voices. Shared values build the trust and alignment necessary for collaboration, especially amid chaotic client briefs and tight deadlines.
Diversity of thought and experience fuels innovation, improves financial performance and helps agencies stay relevant. Hiring solely for “agency fit” replicates the status quo and embeds biases. Embracing creative add (hiring for shared behaviours and mission but actively seeking fresh perspectives) allows agencies to evolve their culture rather than ossify it.
Spin’s examples show that this balance is achievable. By codifying values as behaviours, scoring candidates objectively, encouraging radical candour, and celebrating outside experiences, the agency maintains its creative DNA while avoiding the echo chamber.
For creative leaders across advertising, design, film and beyond, the challenge is to embed such practices into their own hiring, onboarding and daily collaboration. The result is a team that shares purpose yet brings varied strengths, which is precisely the tension that produces breakthrough work.
