The Great Divide: Marketing and/or/against Creative
Please take a second and visit Aquent.com. I'll wait.
Thanks for coming back! Now, based on the homepage, what is it you think we do? Specifically, is it clear that we place so-called, "creatives" - designers, print production artists, writers, etc.?
Granted, the title of the homepage does read, "Aquent :: Search for Marketing and Creative Jobs" (though aside from search engines?), I'm not sure who looks at those - I know I don't), but most of the body copy focuses on marketing. "Aquent helps top marketing organizations and talented marketing professionals achieve their full potential" is dead center, layout-wise, and is typographically offset by the phrase "staffing for marketing organizations" beneath it. Even the business scenario depicted, while possibly evoking a futuristic ad agency, reinforces the "marketing" slant of the site. I mean, there is definitely a guy wearing a suit in that picture. Need I say more?
I bring this up because I was told that, while meeting with a contact at a large, media company, one of our account directors was asked, "Do you do creative staffing?" That question struck her as odd since Aquent has represented creative professionals for over twenty years and literally thousands of them are working for our clients all over the world right now.
Mulling this over, I began to wonder if our "marketing" message, "Aquent is a marketing staffing firm," was less inclusive than I had thought at first. I guess I always thought that creative was part of marketing, indeed, one of the most important parts.
For the most part the creative folks that Aquent employs are producing work at the behest of marketing folks; while in some cases they are working in agencies with marketers as their clients, more frequently they are working in departments or groups that are situated within a larger, corporate marketing organization. For this reason, I had been thinking of creative professionals as a subset of marketing professionals. After all, isn't the work they design and produce often referred to as "marketing material" or, more bluntly, "marketing"?
As sound as my logic may be, it's flawed because, frankly, creative professionals do not think of themselves as marketing professionals. Some see this in a negative light, lamenting that "[c]reative teams don't generally understand that their work is supposed to sell products â€" and not just win awards." Others see in the disciplinary distinction between creative and marketing an opportunity for the former to provide the latter a valuable service: a "different way of thinking" that can solve business problems "by design."
When I posted about this before, I referenced a post on another blog which insisted that the issue was linguistic: marketers and creatives use the same words, "brand," for example, but mean different things. I think this is also at the root of the rift between marketing and creative. On the one hand, these words refer to specific activities requiring specialized skills, and on the other they refer to general activities, such as engaging in commerce, and attributes, like the ability to conceive of and "create" things. The situation is made worse and more confusing because these two spheres of human endeavor are absolutely and inextricably dependent on one another.
I believe that there is a real difference between marketing and creative which is not reducible to a difference in tasks; at the end of the day, a product manager has more in common with a data analyst than with a Flash designer. I also believe that this difference is illusory: a product manager may in fact have a lot in common with a copywriter or an art director. In other words, I'm of two minds. My ambivalence may stem from the fact that I am essentially a creative professional in a marketing role, meaning that my career has unfolded in a zone where the two are indistinguishable (to me, anyway).
On a more insidious level, my ambivalence may be a symptom of Aquent's business interest in the relationship between marketers and creatives. This business interest leads me to judge creative work in terms of marketing effectiveness rather than aesthetic sophistication or technical mastery. If marketing effectiveness defines your primary goal, aren't you engaging in a marketing activity? If you are engaging in marketing activities, aren't you really a marketer, Ms./Mr. Creative?
You could sum up my perspective as: Creatives are really marketing professionals even if they think they aren't!
Still, no matter what I say or think, the creatives don't see it that way. Neither do the marketers, actually. The question then becomes, "If, creative is not marketing and vice versa, what do we gain by maintaining this distinction?"
Any ideas?
Comments
This creative considers herself a marketer as well, but luckily for me I think that sweet spot is a rare talent. Some creatives don't know how to channel their talents into creating something that "speaks" to the target audience. Likewise some marketing guru are full of great strategies, but can't package it into something that is visually compelling.
For the record, we consider a brand to be everything that a company touches from how it looks visually, to how they answer their telephones. Every exchange you have with your audience leaves an impression in their minds of who you are.
As to why companies can't understand that Aquent fills marketing and creative positions. I think this has less to do with a distinction of what is what and more to do with the fact that these days everyone is quick to put people in their little boxes. If they are currently working with you to place marketers then you quickly become "the company that places marketers". Even if they LOVE working with you, it takes a lot of singing and dancing to get them to see that you also do OTHER things as well.
If it makes you feel any better we've been working with a client every month for 3 years now. They love us, we even hang out with some of them socially, and yet it always shocks me when they are surprised that we design logos and packaging in addition to printed materials we create for them.
Posted by: Sheri L Koetting @ Aug 8, 2007
Matthew, I agree wholeheartedly. Creatives are marketing professionals, in fact, probably the ones who have the most potential influence on how a company is seen, a product sold and messages understood.
If they don't think of themselves as marketers, then they aren't cut out for agency life. (At agencies that understand this, because not all do.)
Posted by: Mark Goren @ Aug 8, 2007
We all get paid for our efforts by the same satisfied customer so there can be no question that we're on the same team (or should be if we hope to succeed).
To me, the notion that creative professionals are somehow different and distinct from marketers is absurd -- akin to proposing that goalies are not hockey players. Or that field goal kickers don't play "real" football.
Put differently: they may have different day-to-day objectives, use different tools, and be culturally different, but who would seriously dispute that goalies play hockey? Or that a SuperBowl kick is essential to football?
The more important question: how can we bridge the gap that Matt has identified? Is raised sensitivity enough to make us all get along?
What else can be done?
Posted by: James @ Aug 9, 2007