The amiable Patrick Collister has chucked in his executive creative
directorship and vice-chairmanship of Ogilvy & Mather to set up a
creativity training school from his home in Kent. But he may face an
uphill struggle convincing creatives that training rather than divine
inspiration has brought ads of the calibre of Guinness’s ’surfer’ and
Blackcurrant Tango’s ’St George’ to our screens.
Gerry Moira, creative director of Publicis, believes there is an
inherent reluctance among creatives to accept training: ’There’s a macho
thing. You’re either a creative guy or you’re not. It’s a different
story with clients, they’re always off on a jaunt at some country house
hotel to improve their skills, while for creatives it’s down the
pub.’
His view is supported by Tim Mellors, executive creative director of
Grey Advertising, who says creatives have to be taken to courses at
’gunpoint’.
He adds: ’Creatives don’t like courses. But you can never find a
planner, they’re always on a course.’
Collister’s courses, which last two or three days, will offer three
areas of training. One is for creatives, who he feels lack confidence in
their ideas and for whom he will offer a kind of step-by-step guide to
coming up with ideas. He says: ’I want to encourage their creativity.
Show them that there is always more than one idea. Often people have one
idea and spend all their time defending it. There are some simple
techniques for helping crack creative problems.’
The second is for clients, planners and account people. He aims to imbue
these groups with the ability to judge creativity and to understand the
way creatives think. One of the exercises involves getting the student
to build and paint a kit aeroplane and just as all his or her creative
pride has been unleashed, Collister will smash the plane with a
mallet.
His point: that they understand what they are dealing with when they are
presented with creative work. And how it feels to have your work
demolished.
The third area of training is for big businesses. Collister will teach
executives how to think laterally about their business. ’I’ve developed
exercises to take the blinkers off,’ he explains.
Despite creatives’ inherent reluctance to learn from formal training,
Collister expects to receive a lot of students from the Continent, many
of them from O&M. Over the years, he says, he has come across a lot of
European creatives who look to London for leadership. He says: ’It may
be that a lot of UK agencies think they don’t need it, but in
continental Europe they’re crying out for it.’
But even if his classrooms are full, some doubt that creativity is
something you can teach. Al Young, creative director at HHCL & Partners,
is unconvinced by what Collister will be offering. He says: ’The only
golden rule in advertising is that there is no golden rule,’ a belief
which makes Young conclude that there is little to teach. He fears that
such a course ’can be very conservative and reinforce tradition’. He
says creative work is an attitude rather than a learned skill and that
the advertising industry already suffers from a ’culture of
competence’.
But others are more positive. Moira says: ’You can do stretching
exercises, lateral thinking exercises. There are ways to get creativity
into focus.’ Mellors adds: ’You can encourage people to open up their
minds.’
Mellors is also convinced that Collister is the right man for the job:
’He’s a good writer and creative director so he knows how to lead ideas
out of people. He’s not egomaniacal - he can put himself in other
people’s boots.’
Most agree that there is a need for training. Mellors says he sees
Collister in ’the mould of John Gillard’. Gillard ran the highly
regarded School of Communication Arts, which trained art directors until
it closed in 1995. Its closure left a training gap, which many believe
is still unfilled.
Adam Kean, creative director of Wieden & Kennedy, says: ’Everyone’s
crying out for training. There seems to be a desire for this sort of
thing. You can help people find it in themselves. It may not be a
revelation but it is worth stating some basic truths every now and
again.’ Moira adds: ’There is a need and Patrick is well qualified to
fulfil it.’
Almost everyone believes that training clients to understand the
creative process - another of Collister’s courses - is a good idea.
It is a subject at the centre of Winston Fletcher’s book, Tantrums and
Talent, which aims to teach businessmen how to work with creatives.
The book opens with a quote from Sir Denis Forman, former chairman of
Granada Television: ’There is an unbridgeable gap between the logic of
business management and the laws of the creative world.’
Fletcher says: ’There needs to be more understanding. Clients would say
it’s the job of the creatives to understand them. But clients want
effective advertising, so it’s in their interest to understand creatives
and maximise their creativity.’
The advertising industry is still in the relatively early stages of
evolution; it wasn’t that long ago that poets were shipped in to write
copy. As the industry becomes increasingly corporate the role of the
tantrum-prone creative is likely to diminish and practical courses such
as Collister’s should have more of a role to play.
