01.28.08

My Creative Director and all around diplomatic nice guy Norm Shearer has granted an interview with the local ad-speak blog, The Denver Egotist. He speaks about our elusive Ad Agency, Cactus. He also talks a lot about his personal philosophy on managing a creative team, which was enlightening to me on a personal note. We are a rough and tumble, super-determined crowd at Cactus and Norm often finds himself in the middle of the rumble. It’s a special kind of chemistry that keeps us all going and a unique brand of glue that holds us together. Each of us is, in no uncertain way, our own individual, and that goes from account side all the way up through creative. The thing that keeps us together is the respect we have for each other. We often agree to disagree. We also measure our success by the end result we achieve for our clients, not our shelf of awards. A lot of people find that hard to believe and think they smell something disengenuine but that is the truth. It is really the only ultimate way to achieve job satisfaction in our industry and that may not seem important right out of school, but it sure as hell becomes important after a few years of practice. Of course you always insert a certain amount of your own agenda and if you do receive recognition from your peers, you won’t turn it down, but client’s could care less if you win some award they have never heard of. They want to see the line move on the graph in an upward trend. We really get in there with them too because good advertising stems from good strategy and it is pretty damn hard to move the needle without weaving them together.

Norm addresses all of these issues and more. So, if you want to know more about what is going on at my day job, head over to the Egotist and check it out.

written by Christopher | tags: , ,