The Perfect Fit

You Can't Just "Retrain" Creatives to Communicate Effectively

I received an email from a friend and former client of my from my days as a commercial photographer.  He's probably in his mid-40s now, and when I worked with him he was a young art director at the hottest creative shop in town, if not the midwest (or even arguably the US).  He was pretty good at what he did.

I thought his email had value for more creatives than just him, so I'm going to publish my responses to him.  The reality is that if "veteran" art directors, writers or even account people don't expand their awareness about how to communicate with a targeted audience beyond the traditional "mass" means of doing so, or through print collateral, POS and the like, they're dead . . . and unemployable.  Sad but true.  Great ideas and mastery of the Adobe Suite are no longer all it takes to get hired and be a valuable asset to your agency and clients.

"I hope you guys are keeping busy and pushing unemployed creative types into job openings all over town with reckless abandon.

I've been hearing about funding out there for unemployed people which provides education for 'retooling' people's careers. From your vantage point, what would you suggest an overly experienced art director/creative director/occasional copywriter to do to make him more instantly hirable by generous and adoring employers?

I'm guessing web design is high on everyone's list of things they want - right along with "knows every program ever created, washes windows and bathrooms and speaks twelve languages." I've worked with a web designer and know how to design for the web but never got into the programming aspect of it.

If you're ever lounging around, give a yell and perhaps we can grab a drink sometime."

I'm going to ignore the part about "pushing unemployed creative types into job openings", because that is so far away from what retained recruiters do, that it's another whole blog post.

The questions posed in my friend's email could be written about in depth and detail.  I'm going to take a "blogger's approach" and keep it simple, realizing there's just a lot more that can be said about this.

I don't think web design is high on a list  . . . it's a given.  So is online communication.  The days of drawing a hard, bold line between design and programming is fading quickly too.  While creatives might not be able to completely program a website, there's no question that the more you know about it, and I'm talking beyond simple "design", the better off your're going to be.  There has to be a basic understanding of html, user interface and information architecture.  You have to know the basics about SEO and designing a dynamic website . . . not just a pretty one.  And yes, if you have a familiarity (at least) with other apps like Flash, Dreamweaver, After Effects, JavaScript and the like . . . there are dozens . . . you're also more valuable. 

Bob Lachky Delivers St. Louis Advertising To The World

I’m glad I decided to attend the Ad Club’s Bob Lachky honorarium lunch last Wednesday on the campus of St. Louis University.  I was inclined not to go, as I felt the whole event was rather self-serving on the part of the Ad Club.  Let’s have an event where we honor someone who’s going to sing the praises of St. Louis agencies . . . It just somehow felt disingenuous.  As it turns out, it wasn’t.

I started feeling more hopeful when I read an article in the Post-Dispatch Wednesday morning, written by Jeremiah McWilliams, “A Real Man of Genius”.  McWilliams wrote a very nice article about Lachky’s, successful career, retirement, and what he’s doing now.  The line that really struck me was, “Now, one of Lachky’s unofficial roles seems to be chatting up the potential and track record of St. Louis agencies.”  Wow!  What a good idea!

While the event itself was rather pedestrian from a “staging” or decorating perspective, it turned into a fun, enlightening couple of hours where the value delivered by St. Louis agencies was truly celebrated.  The agencies that were featured included Waylon, Momentum, Cannonball and Shaw.

Bob Lachky did a wonderful job of deflecting the accolades from himself to his agency partners.  In listening to Bob and some of the Creative Directors of the featured agencies, one couldn’t help but to be proud of being a member of the St. Louis creative and marketing community . . . especially if you were even a soldier in “the beer wars”.  There is some very fine work being delivered by St. Louis agencies to world class clients, of which of course, AB is one.
 
The St. Louis advertising community has historically had very low self-esteem, starting when Gardner closed over a period of about 10 years , culminating in the closing of D’Arcy, formerly one of the world’s (yes, world’s) largest agencies.  The city just never had the confidence or felt respect in the industry that it had once had . . .

There have been historic efforts to promote the city’s quality of work and the advertising community, but when local companies that could stay in St. Louis to support the home team agencies and don’t (I don’t need to provide a list, they’re all too familiar and way too prevalent), it’s obviously going to be a tough sell outside of the region.  There has been little if any success in these efforts.
Bob Lachky and Anheuser-Busch have managed to keep St. Louis on the map for consistently superb marketing and advertising.  As it turns out, much of that work (probably more than you really know) is being proudly produced here, but the local agencies mentioned, and (by Lachky’s admission) many, many others.  Here’s to beer!

If Bob Lachky truly wants to talk up St. Louis creative, let’s support him in doing that!  We should put Mr. Lachky on the road for the benefit of the city’s advertising identity and growth . . . and self esteem!  Who better than someone with his credibility could speak to the capability, creativity and results delivered from home town agencies.  Who has more credibility?  Who can get in front of the biggest and most important prospective client audiences, with more to say than Bob?  It’s a no-brainer!

I think back on all the various efforts to promote the city,.   They’ve all been well intentioned, locally focused and unfortunately unsuccessful.  Let’s hire Bob and put him on the road with a killer reel, some AB product and let him loose on the world (or at least the Midwest).  Once again, "Making friends is his business!"   I’m betting he could have more impact with one media tour than all the previous efforts combined.  It can’t be very expensive.  Considering the possible results, it’s downright cheap!

How Recruiters Read Resumes

I ran across a very interesting article on how recruiters (and employers) read resumes.  The writer Matthew Charney, apparently used to be an "in-house" recruiter for a corporation.  In that position, he was forced to do what every recruiter has to do, wade through dozens/scores/hundreds of resumes on a daily basis, trying to evaluate and separate the talent with potential, from the masses.  Matthew has a sense of humor about the process and manages to tell the truth about how resumes are reviewed.

I'm sure you've head the saying that you get "30 seconds to make an impression" with your resume?  It's true.  I know that I can generally tell in less than 30 seconds which candidates are top performers, and which are not.  Admittedly, there's a large percentage of perception or intuition at work here.  There's also a way of scanning a resume, that Matthew has done a wonderful job of verbalizing.  I thought there would be value in sharing his article "Bullet Point to the Head".  You can read Matthews' entire article here.

I also suggest you check out the comments from other recruiters for this article.  They're testaments to the truths of what Matthew writes!