Inside the creative mind: Craig Davis

Wouldn't it be great if we could get advise from the best creative minds in the world?
Inside the creative mind is a series of posts bringing you exactly that through Luzer's Int Archive which is a magazine that showcases outstanding print, Posters and TV advertising from all over the world.

Every issue is anxiously awaited at agencies because its pages are an incredible source of inspiration for creatives worldwide.

In each issue they interview someone who has managed to put together a successful career in the creative arena. Not an easy accomplishment. That's why I decided to share with you a summary of some of these interviews.

The first one is with Craig Davis who at the time of the interview was Regional ECD in Asia and Africa, but today is JWT chief creative director Worldwide (those titles keep getting longer)
I decided to go with this as the first of the series because I happen to believe that what he says is key for successful agencies, the essence of innovation and the true job of a good creative director.

The role of an ECD? Find people who can deliver world-class work. Helping them do it, developing people and helping client embrace that kind of thinking. Basically, getting good ideas and making them happen.

A lot of people are capable of finding strong ideas. The tricky thing is to make them happen. I think that most agencies are the same, The key difference between a greta agency and an ordinary one is that the great agency is much more successful in getting interesting thinking into the marketplace.

I think my job is to simplify things. I think that what we do should be pretty simple but it's just made complicated. I try to simplify expectations, and try to simplify briefs and simply the idea.

Perspective is worth up 10 IQ points.I think that the best solutions are often discovered by people who are not up to their neck in the problem.

(Agencies) We are in a problem solving business.

I'm not a big fan of processes. Repetition breeds similar outcomes. changes will invariably lead to fresher, more interesting solutions.

(creatives) You need to be hungry for information. You need to collect sources of inspiration and ideas from all over the place.

I think more often it's people who are willing to explore and who can throw a lot of ideas out, and can later on come back and sift through them... that's interesting... To me that's the way it works. I think that you've got to sweat out a hundred ideas and if you are lucky, two or three can be really cool.

That's another thong I do, encourage people to think past the obvious, because the obvious is normally pretty dull stuff.

In this business you've got to enjoy thinking. You've got to enjoy the exloring part.

I think people think that they are born with 100 ideas, so they keep those 100 ieas really close to them. Because they have a career ahead of them. But I think that there are a million ideas out there running around all the time.

I think that tehre is a growing number of clients either frustrated with that (tradictional agency) process or with the outcome of that process. I think that there are lot of smart clients who see that the value is in the idea, the value is in the solution.

The competition to a client is not the other people who produce the same kind of products or provide the same type of service, the competition is music videos, films, television, news, newspaper content, etc. You have to give people surprise or delight. You have to touch them in some way.

I believe he is one of the great ones of our generation. I love his approach and his philosophy.
Look at the work of JWT recently and you'll notice his influence.

I hope you enjoyed it. There many more coming up. Stay tune.