It's been a long time today since creative work has no longer been produced only in advertising agencies. The deconstruction of the media market due to digital revolution allowed virtually any player in the market to offer creative ideas along with — anything. Production companies, media companies, publishers, artist management, sports celebrities management, consultancy companies (even the then-considered most boring ones), you name it.
Initially there were some ethical concerns, we are partners, we don't sell your services; but then again OK, no ethics, just business.
In parallel, advertising academies and schools kept educating art directors and copywriters as if their ideal career would develop within creative agencies. Reality is, they could end working in any given environment where someone decided to offer creative product, from digital transformation firms, to the client itself.
What's missing in the picture? Mentorship.
OK, advertising agencies didn't prove being the best in defining virtuous processes. Still, they were the cradle where the industrial process of building communication ideas has been developed. Yes, they used to fund it with the infamous 15% commission, instead of making it clear that professional consultants were delivering professional strategy, professional creative ideas and professional client and workflow management, and they had to be paid for these; but they designed the process. Starting from data analysis, then identifying the consumer insight, generating creative ideas and delivering beautifully crafted messages.
Nowadays, as a graduated creative, if you are lucky to work in a big consultancy company, for example the one which bought that big advertising agency, you probably have the chance to live in an environment where the ability to "industrially" generate creative ideas is intact; but imagine being hired by a company where creative work is sold as a side commodity, and often these companies don't even bother wondering about roles involved in the process: they just hire "the creative", you are the creative, now create.
If there is no longer the possibility to accomplish a proper apprenticeship with senior mentors in all the roles that a fully fledged creative process involves, such as Strategic Planners, Creative Directors, Designers, Production Directors and so on, which skills will the junior develop? Probably an imitation, a full-stack-one-man-band approximation of what the original process was.
I’m not here to defend doomed job places in the advertising industry (well, maybe a little, especially for friends still in those roles), but I am standing up for the process itself: you may not have the person for the role, but you have to go through that step of the process.
I am not championing for full-stack do-it-all-ology either but, to paraphrase the unforgettable Steve Krug who battled in his several books since the 2000s for "lost our lease, going-out-of-business-sale" website testing, with the wisdom of quotes like "Testing one user is 100 percent better than testing none", let's say that going through the strategy process without a strategist is better than skipping it.
What I am trying to say is that probably, if agencies are no longer there to grow process-aware, robust creatives, Schools and Academies should do it, not taking for granted the fact that students will receive mentorship in their first job. They must embed an understanding of the process directly into their education.
So, even if left alone in the jungle, the stranded creative can focus on the process, starting from on-budget, guerrilla techniques to fill the gaps, up to advocating for new hires, or for a better use of the existing resources to manage a fully developed workflow in the process of generating ideas.
I see advertising courses and schools as the keepers of a "wisdom" that can get lost amidst the fuzz of today's marketing landscape.
In Italian we have a phrase, which I don't know how to translate, as a synonym for apprenticeship: fare bottega. You can loosely deliver it as in "attend the shop", but the verb fare means "to make"— so it's something more active than just attending.
Bottega were small artisan workshops where skilled masters crafted beautiful, functional artifacts with the same attitude that gave birth to design excellences like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Gucci, and so on. Back then, master artisans often used to hide their working hands to young workers to be sure that their art was not traded in order to make it difficult to substitute them. So, young apprentices had to "steal" the art of doing, a piece at a time. If you didn't spend enough time doing "bottega", you wouldn't learn the essential skills for the job.
Creative job stays halfway between intellectual and artisan labor, and both used to be learned through osmosis when immersed in the "bottega" of advertising agencies.
Leading creatives in non-creative companies, like consultancies, publishing companies, production studios, honed their skills in these very "bottegas". But what is left for future leaders? Will they grow in an environment where they can absorb a virtuous, detalied process to generate ideas, or are they doomed to be stuck churning out "meme" ideas without preparation and context, and the necessary credibility to be revered as "professionals" instead of "funny creative guys"?
