Geoff Gower, digital creative director, AIS
Q: What technology does a digital creative director have to be au fait with?
My background in production and technology means I started from a different point to a digital creative who has come from an advertising or design background.
At the very least we need to be on top of all things online, mobile, digital-outdoor and experiential.
We also need to have a broad knowledge of all emerging technologies across a wide variety of industries. For example an idea we developed last year for O2 used image-recognition and image processing - technologies originally born out of the military sector.
Q: Do you report to an overall executive creative director?
Ultimately the creative partner, Steve Stretton, has the final say on all work - but we work as a relatively flat team and take responsibility for the whole output of the agency together.
I've picked up enough about DM, ambient and TV at AIS to feel confident contributing to a creative discussion about work in any media. Almost nothing we do is confined to one medium anyway, so it's important to be able cross those boundaries.
Q: Can you give us a sample day in the life of a digital creative director?
On a day in October, I worked with one of our creative teams on some ideas for O2's sponsorship of England Rugby...then I thrashed out the user-journey for a website with the EDF Energy team...reviewed a book from a young team with a great product idea....met a new senior client from O2 and showed him Google Wave and had a chat about the possibilities....started to work out how a phone application for anxiety sufferers might work for our new charity client AnxietyUK.
Q: Any work that you're particularly proud of?
We did a social networking piece for O2 to dramatise their 'We're better, connected' positioning called ‘Fill the indigO2' which won a Cannes Lion this year. We seem to keep coming back to the model we created for that - and we see other agencies present ideas which copy that model, so it must have been good.
Q: What are the pressure points for digital creative directors? What keeps you late at work/early at work?
I always try to leave in time to get home to see my three boys, but the thing that keeps me beavering away on the laptop in the evenings is usually a desire to see everything going on across all the various media I'm interested in.
Angus Mackinnon, digital creative director, Kitcatt Nohr Alexander
Shaw and former digital brand director at Nike
Q: What job made the big difference on your way to this role?
After doing an MA Fine Art Ruskin School of Art, I did a holiday internship with Chelsea design agency Blueberry in 1995.
I was drawn in to their proto ‘New Media' division and I was lucky to have a great mentor in one of the founders – Rus Sellers – a true web pioneer with a big digital vision.
Being 1997 I was in the perfect place to ride the wave of the dot com boom. The agency grew to over 120 people, evolved its proposition to 100% digital and in 2000 I became design director. Then it all came tumbling down, but that's another story.
Q: How is your agency's creative department structured?
The creative department is fully integrated so we don't make a distinction between offline and online creative's. I report directly to Paul Kitcatt, one of the founders and I work alongside two other creative directors: Phil Keevill and Simon Robinson.
The department is structured around a perpetual pitch mentality which means a high level of collaboration, concentration of thought and an appreciation of a great idea no matter where it comes from.
Q: Any work that you're particularly proud of?
I'm not long at Kitcatt Nohr so the best is yet to come here. Back at my old agency Playgroup I loved the HIV awareness campaign ‘G.I.Jonny' that we created for the BBC. It was brave, attracted a high level of attention and participation from the target audience and picked up a People's Choice Webby. A creative couldn't ask for more.
Q: What are the pressure points for digital creative directors?
Aside from the obvious pressure points- last minute briefs and pitches, finding time for quality thought is a constant battle.
Group environments are overrated for idea generation so you've got to create space and time for big thinking, including all the creative housekeeping that falls outside project work. Random flashes of inspiration keep me lying awake at night. I've never been very good at getting in early.
Jamie Bell, creative director, CMW
Q: How did you get here?
I did a BA hons in media advertising at Buckinghamshire College. My first job was as an art director at Grey London working on above the line and doing digital for clients including Mars.
Q: And the job move that made the big difference to you was...
I would say HTW - working under Steve Harrison was an amazing core foundation in integration - not about how you use above the line media, but about how you can max the potential of a big idea.
Q: Do you report to an overall executive creative director?
We don't report to an ECD - we have ten creatives working under us.
Q: Any work that you're particularly proud of?
Our online work for Cadbury - Twisted, Creme Egg and Wispa - this year, as examples of integrated campaigns. The Wispa one, for example, allowed users to control the content that they saw - it was a constantly evolving site based on what consumers wanted.
Q: If you're at a dinner party and someone asks you what you do for a living, how do you describe your role?
I say that I come up with creative advertising ideas that sell across all media.
More digital creative Q&As on tomorrow's DM Bulletin
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