The Modern Creative Director (Survey Results, Part 4 - How much time?)
(This is part four of seven questions in the survey. Here's the first question, second question and third question.)
Now we're getting into a more particular and specific request—to try and determine exactly how modern Creative Directors ought to be spending at least 40 hours a week. (Emphasis on "at least.") For those of you working in publicly-held companies, please use the "non billable/agency" job number to track your time spent reviewing this topic.
I gave survey participants eight general categories in which to allocate time. Some are clearly specific (e.g. "Learning/Sharing"), while others are quite loose (e.g. "Winning Awards" or "Writing"). I'm open to any interpretations of the more vague categories—I assume writing could take many directions, for example. Because the real point with this question was to ascertain how we perceive balance.
If question #3 asked about sole focus on creative, and 94% said, "No—modern creative directors should focus more broadly than 'creative,'" I wonder, well, where should they focus?
QUESTION #4: Totally on average, how much time should the modern Creative Director spend focusing on the following during a 40 hour work week?
Respondents answered, essentially, "focus a little bit on everything." There was not one, single area of discipline respondents want modern creative directors to focus in. Note the concentration of most preferences around and below 20% of available time.
Take Writing: The strong majority of respondents believe modern CDs should spend less than 20% of theirtime writing (however loosely "writing" is defined).
Likewise, almost all respondents believe modern CDs should spend less than 5% of their time working on developing technology or coding. Yet, many still believe development and coding should occupy some part of the schedule. As technology becomes evermore interwoven into the work of all creative directors, will this percentage increase? Or, as technologists devise even easier ways to implement technology (e.g. blogging tools like Posterous), will this percentage remain the same?
Even more interesting: Respondents believe "Learning and Sharing," as well as "Teaching and Mentoring" should occupy a decent portion of each work day. In fact, 4% of respondents thought "Teaching and Mentoring" should occupy the modern CD's entire work cycle. 3% thought the same of "Learning and Sharing."
Agency Profitability and Winning Awards (two sides of the same coin?) obviously merit some portion of any Creative Director's time. Perhaps not surprisingly, roughly 74% of respondents felt the work of winning awards rated around 10% of a Creative Director's weekly time; while only 47% of those respondents felt the work of profitability merited the same effort.
Here's the graphic:
COMMENTS:
Anonymous comments from respondents to the question, "Totally on average, how much time should the modern Creative Director spend focusing on the following during a 40 hour work week?" (Respondents were not required to submit a comment to this question.)
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1."100 percent of time should be on leading and inspiring. only filled in above due to no choice that really reflects the job."
2."There will hopefully be other people keeping an eye on the agency profitability--it's not irrelevant and shouldn't be scorned, but it's less important than trying to get the right thing sold and in front of Real People."
3."Today's CD should assess the quality of the strategy and improve upon it. Start with a great idea and then find the best channel for it to live to achieve the most impact on your target audience. And teach and mentor creatives. Awards will automatically follow great work. They're merely a bi-product of great creative."
4."Doesn't it seem like Writing and Design, along with Strategy (Chicken/Egg), are the fundamental tools of our trade? Decoding and Digesting are just as important. But anything a relephant can do to help is always appreciated."
5."Should add up to 100, no? couldn't really answer properly." [Editor's comment: I am not a pollster or statistician by trade -- and my point was merely to try and figure a balance, as close to 100% as possible.]
6."All of it matters, but learning/sharing/failing/growing matters most. Awards are shiny paperweights. Nothing wrong with winning them (or showing them off) but certainly something wrong with FOCUSING on this."
7."if you're doing your job right, you're always teaching, leading and guiding. that means you split your time evenly from aesthetics to verbiage to strategy. coding and developing is a build. you need to react to it, not participate in it. so percentage in that realm goes way down. you have to be profitable, but it's not our job to maximize it. award-winning work gets noticed. and getting noticed means attracting better talent and generating more leads. and more leads means..well, you get the point. our work should be our best new business asset. that, in the end, is how we will profit."
8."When does a Creative Director only put in a 40 hour week????? Focusing on awards is part of maximizing agency profitability - it's part of how an agency gets notice."
9."As you said, it depends on the size of the agency."
10."i assumed this person was a writer. not many creative directors here putting in 40 hours. : )"
11."Awards are unimportant. Do good work, focus on the clients and the awards will come on their own."
12."I tend to educate internal and external peeps on lots of different approaches and tactics these days, less hands-on to pass onto team."
13."Like you can ask creative directors to do math." [Editor's comment: Exactly my point to the #5 comment above.]
14."I think a good CD should spend most of his time guiding. Crafting. Pushing. And it's hard to say exactly what that entails. Sometimes it's writing headlines. Sometimes it's generating an idea. Sometimes it's working to craft the pitch-perfect brief. Sometimes it's knowing when to shut up and get out of the way. But it's basically making sure you're available for your teams to help them make their work better and keep it on strategy. A great CD doesn't have to be able to do the best work -- just has to be able to extract it."
15."Very hard to break this down on an hourly or percentage basis. In a perfect world (or agency environment, anyway), each of these should beget, influence, and inform the other."
16."Being a CD means you have experience and with experience, comes mentoring a team. I figured the Modern CD would work 50 hours in a week, so I went to 110%. I hope you don't mind."
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(I will admit to not being a professional pollster. Only 72 individuals responded to my survey in roughly 72 hours. I used email and Twitter to connect with current CDs, ECDs, CCOs, media planners, account executives, art directors, designers—and even a few client marketers. The process was anonymous, via Survey Monkey. So, perhaps these results are merely the result of 72 monkeys. I can't say for sure.)
How will you go about creating positive change?