There are some excellent creative blogs out there - here are a few recent posts that have chimed in with my creative interests.

Whistle Through Your Comb

A new discovery this week, via Russell’s post of the month. Having blogged about creative environments, I thoroughly enjoyed The Perfect Office - which is emphatically not the kind of creative showroom where ‘the architecture is meant to communicate to the onlooker, “we’re highly creative.”‘:

I think an agency should not look at its office as a place: it should look at it as a tool. In other words, agencies should not create architecture that communicates creativity. They should create architecture that generates creativity.

Among the suggestions for a truly creative office are “No headphones… ever” - the author evidently agrees with the Creative Review blog that iPods Can Seriously Damage Your Creativity.

Noisy Decent Graphics

Great post on what it’s like to be a graphic designer - The Design Disease. Subjectivity rules on Wishful Thinking - I’m always fascinated to glimpse the world of someone who works in a different creative field, and this gives an good idea of what it’s like to be thrilled by arrows and tormented by shocking kerning. I draw the line at choosing a book by its cover though.

Cookin’ Relaxin’

Another new find, with an ingenious analysis of ways to consume Time based media such as music and radio programmes. With creative synaesthesia fresh in my mind, I’m intrigued by the visual representations of radio shows - and it’s worth reading to the end for the fractal bit.

Logic + Emotion

David Armano has put together a nice end-of-year e-book in the words of his readers:

2006: The year of…
PC (Power Consumer)
Connection
2.0
Business + Design
Video
Creativity
People

Download page: 2006 in your words

This interview for my research into Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Terry Childs, who has the dual roles of Managing Director and Creative Director at Silver Chair.

Founded in 1998 Silver Chair has developed into an agency with international experience in creativity and media, working on brands such as BMW, Barclays, Kellogg’s, Sears, BT, Norwich Union, HSBC and Land Rover. 2006 saw the agency expand with the launch of Silver Chair Digital.

Terry is the Managing Director and Creative Director at Silver Chair and has spent over 15 years in the marketing communications industry. During this time he has worked for both agencies and clients including Ogilvy & Mather, WWAV, Leo Burnett, BT, Norwich Union, Safeway, BMW and has recently developed campaigns for tic tac, Yamaha and the Department For Education and Skills.

Terry gave an entertaining account of the challenges involved in managing creative professionals. He also described Silver Chair’s internal mentoring programme, and highlighted the importance of using appropriate terminology when ’selling’ a development initiative to a creative team.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Terry Childs: Download

This interview for my research into Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Jill Fear, Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Manager for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

The IPA is the industry body and professional institute for leading advertising, media and marketing communications agencies in the UK. Collectively, IPA members handle over 80% of media spend (worth £13 billion in 2004) and a large proportion of the £43 billion spent on marketing in the UK each year.

The role of the IPA’s 55-strong staff is to serve, promote and anticipate the collective interests of IPA members; and in particular to define, develop and help maintain the highest possible standards of professional practice within the business. The IPA’s CPD in Advertising Standard is the industry’s training and people development standard, launched in 1999. Commitment to achieving the standard is now mandatory for IPA membership.

Jill Fear spent eight years at full service agencies (DMB&B and J Walter Thompson) before moving into the design industry as Group Marketing Director of Coley Porter Bell and Client Services Director of Springpoint.

In 2003 Jill joined returned to the advertising industry when she joined the Professional Development Department at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). There she manages the CPD (Continuous Professional Development) Accreditation Standard.

Jill’s experience of agency life as well as her current developmental role enabled her to give a well-rounded overview of the issues involved in managing and developing people in the advertising industry. She argues passionately for greater recognition of the quality of informal development practices in advertising agencies, as well as the need to balance these with more formal programmes. Towards the end of the interview she gives some excellent examples of informal coaching by managers going about their day-to-day work.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Jill Fear: Download

I’ll be presenting at the Direct Marketing Association’s ‘Open Minds’ workshop on 7 September at the London Art House in Islington. This is the third year I’ve presented at ‘Open Minds’ and I’m looking forward to another day of creative ideas and meeting new people.

There’s a strong line-up of agency speakers, including Chris Arnold and Mick Rigby who have featured in my current interview series, plus a client perspective from Honda. There should also be a good mix of agency and client delegates, making for some interesting cross-disiplinary discussions.

I’ll be talking about creative flow and how managers can raise their teams’ creative performance by coaching for creative flow - plus I’ll be giving delegates a chance to try it for themselves.

More details on the Direct Marketing Association website, plus the pdf brochure below.

Open Minds brochure (pdf)

Hope to see you there.

The next interview for my research project on Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Chris Hirst, Managing Director of Grey London advertising agency. Grey London is a top-10 advertising agency with 200 staff and over £300 million in business. The agency benefits from being part of an enormous network, employing 9,000 people worldwide.

Chris read Engineering Science at Oxford before beginning his career at SP Lintas. Hired as a Planner, he quickly switched to Account Management, then to BBH where he worked on a range of domestic and global brands including TAG Heuer, Audi, Olivio and Remy Martin.

In 1999 he joined Fallon London where he helped pitch and win the award-winning Skoda account and a place on the BBC roster which he ran until he left, being responsible for Radio 1, Radio 1xtra, BBC3 and BBC Music Live. He was also responsible for the Sony Europe and Citibank Europe business. As Client Services Director Chris restructured and ran the Account Management Department, ultimately helping build one of the strongest departments in London.

Chris joined Grey London in 2003 as Managing Director. In his three years at Grey Chris has overseen a major turn-round in the Agency’s financial and creative fortunes. He has day-to-day responsibility for the Agency’s Client relationships, the implementation of its Business Plan, its people and its processes.

He is an average tennis player, a below average golfer and a fatalistic Newcastle fan. He is married with two small, but very noisy, boys.

In the interview Chris describes ‘managing relationships’ as a key skill in advertising, and talks about the challenge of motivating and co-ordinating staff, including dealing with inevitable conflict. He takes a pragmatic approach to people management, breaking it down into the specific behaviours that have a positive impact on performance and development.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Chris Hirst: Download

The latest interview in for my research on Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Russell Davies, who until last month was Global Planning Director for Nike. Before Nike Russell spent 9 years as a planner at the advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy.

Campaign magazine called it “a sign of the times” when Russell announced his resignation from Nike via a blog post rather than a press release, and it’s fair to say Russell is embracing the potential of the web in a big way - his latest project, the Open Intelligence Agency as a “global small business” with him and his partners “trying to see if we can be online using regular consumer tools, not fancy corporate stuff”.

Check out Russell’s blog for an eclectic and stimulating read about anything from planning and post-rationalisation to kerning and the grammar of roads. And look at the sidebar for his other web pages, such as the Account Planning School of the Web and eggbaconchipsandbeans - an encyclopedic review of greasy spoon cafes, and a public service if ever there was one. Anyone who remembers my post about creative environments will be interested in his Squidoo lens on creative spaces.

Russell’s pragmatic take on business emotional intelligence is very relevant to my research, so I asked him about the kind of managerial emotional intelligence needed to get the best out of creative teams. The result was a down-to-earth and entertaining interview covering creativity, people, failure, managing and mentoring.

Listen Now:

 Interview with Russell Davies: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My latest interview for my research project Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Chris Arnold, Executive Creative Director of BLAC (Barradale Leagas Arnold Campbell), a creative integrated marketing and advertising agency that specialises in change marketing.

EDIT (5.7.07): Chris is now Executive Creative Director of the ethical marketing agency FEEL.

Formed from the merger of Ron Leagas’ integrated agency Edge and Chris Arnold’s creative shop Feel, BLAC seeks to challenge conventional thinking both with its clients and internally. Read more about their approach on the Change Marketing blog.

Chris has strong opinions about the state of management in the UK advertising industry. He is also very interesting on the subject of managing risk - always a hot topic in a creative business. As with my other interviewees, I was struck by the way his approach to people management seems to emerge naturally from his creative and business strategies.

Watch this space for more interviews in this series…

In typical bohemian fashion we met for our discussion in a cafe, which means there’s some background noise on the recording - but hopefully that won’t be too much of a distraction from what Chris is saying.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Chris Arnold interview [40:02m]: Download

This morning I had a very enjoyable chat with Mick Rigby, Managing Director of Monkey Communications, as the first interview for my research project on Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries.

As a founding director of a creative communications planning agency, Mick had some very interesting things to say about managing and developing people in a business that requires a highly specialised form of creative thinking.

Monkey is a creative communications agency that has extended traditional media planning to include other communications channels, such as sponsorship, event creation, PR and ambient. On 6th August they will make broadcasting history by producing the first ever live TV ads, with Match.com and ITV (Love Island, 10pm).

Talking to Mick, I was fascinated by the way Monkey’s people management strategy has evolved organically from their business and communications strategy. Topics covered in the interview include hybrid managers, the dangers of being a prima donna, and why Van Gogh would have struggled in an agency.

Many thanks to Mick for getting the interviews off to a great start. I’ve got some more interesting interviewees lined up for the project - watch this space…

Listen Now:

 Interview with Mick Rigby: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download