A Creative Director is ultimately in the end responsible for the quality of the final creative product. From individual development of each of the team members to fulfilling basic managerial roles, the duty of the creative director is critical to the success of the entire creative team. A great creative director inspires their team to work together as a team and pushes them to dig deep within their creative talent to produce the best work possible for the client.
The Creative Director is responsible for the creative approach, path of the advertising course, marketing materials, and campaigns. The creative director also must posses the skills of examining the human nature to detect which advertising campaign will be most effective to market the clients’ products. The creative director must be a natural leader, diplomat, and an attentive listener and must possess excellent communication skills. All potential creative directors should be comfortable being the link between the client, marketing department, and the creative team who is ultimately responsible for execution of a marketing and/or advertising campaign. Many times the creative director will be pulled back and forth between the client, marketing team and the creative team until the final product is complete, and satisfies everyone in the process. A good creative director will work well with everyone patiently to secure the success of the advertising campaign.
To become a Creative director is an unwavering but steady rise up the ladder that all comes with experience, knowledge, creative self development and perseverance. Design and copywriting experience, of course, is critical. The ideal candidate will have a bachelor’s degree with three or more years experience in any of the following categories advertising, television, promotion/design, production, marketing, and strategic brand development.
The difference between a good creative director and a great one is their ability to manage beyond their creative team, they must be able to manage several clients, meet their clients’ expectations, marketing and brand expectations, product managers, upper management, and of course create great advertising campaigns.
