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A creative director is a position usually found within the advertising marketing, media or entertainment industries, or in other creative organizations such as printing business, web development and software development firms as well. The job entails overseeing the design of branding and advertising for a client and ensuring that the new branding and advertising fits in with the client's requirements and the image they wish to promote for their company or product. The main aspects of this role are to interpret a client's marketing strategy and then develop proposed creative approaches and treatments that align with that strategy.
Since the advertising agency exists to produce advertising, the creative director plays a pivotal role: he or she is required to be the key participant in, and contributor to, each and every part of the process that results in the final advertising.
Good creative directors are included in the formulation of the brand and advertising strategy, the formulation of the design brief or creative brief, the actual process of creating the advertising, the presentation or selling of the advertising to the client, and its final execution for release in media.
Awards and portfolios
For good or for worse, awards have become a ubiquitous way to "rank" a copywriter or art director, and of course, a creative director. In fact awards rule the fate of the careers of creative people, and since awards also have a burnishing effect on an advertising agency's creative reputation (a decided advantage for the agency when pitching for new clients or attracting top-flight creative people), award-winning creative people find that they lead much more charmed lives than do the crative people who don't win.
Criticism of awards as qualifications
A curious aspect of advertising awards is that most awards (outside of the EFFIES) are given for the "creative quality" of the work, with no regard to whether the advertising worked for the brand or not. Awards have been defended as a way in which to reward and encourage creative people, and inspire them to exceed themselves. But the industry is aware, and will acknowledge, that an award-winning advertisement is not necessarily a successful or effective one. For many brand managers and marketing people in the client's office, the sheer publicity and prestige of winning an acknowledged international award on their watch is very rewarding and satisfying.
Non-traditional qualifications
Many creative professionals arrive at advertising from a variety of other professions too, which include the more mainstream professions and some not-so-usual ones. To those unfamiliar with advertising, sheer time spent in other professions may seem as non-advertising-career-related experience. However, in advertising, this kind of experience is viewed as qualification for having "lived a life", and better enabling one to be in possession of an above-average understanding of human nature (if not the human condition).
Beyond mere experience as art directors or copywriters, and a track record of good advertising, a creative director's qualifications are more subjective. Communication designers lack well-known standards that telegraph and establish their training, experience or capabilities. Complicating the validity of traditional qualifications, many marketing communication have gravitated to advertising from the unlikeliest careers. Salman Rushdie, the novelist, was a copywriter, as was Lawrence Kasdan. Ridley Scott was an advertising film maker before he began directing films. Tarsem Singh still is a highly acclaimed television commercial director based in London, and he shot the very arty movie The Cell with Jennifer Lopez.
Function versus position
Creative director is more of a function than a status position. If employed properly, a creative director is given the proper authority which can equate to a higher position within that company. However, it is possible that members who hold the position of a creative director are (either accidentally or purposely) stripped of creative authority, in effect forcing them to function as mere art directors, copywriters or designers, while some one else arrogates to themself the creative judgement calls, regardless of their function or qualifications.
Sometimes, the principal driver of a business may not be a creative director - a particular client may have an excellent equation with a business head and prefer to deal with him, trusting his or her judgement. It can also happen that a client may disagree with a creative director's view of the brand, and pointedly makes his disapproval of the individual clear, sometimes threatening to pull the business out of that agency. Whatever the reason, there are many causes of a creative director ending up as anything but.
Very large advertising agencies have multiple creative directors, each taking responsibility for a giant brand, or a collection of brands, and they usually report in to an Executive Creative Director or a Chief Creative Officer. Some agencies have both, with the ECD reporting in to the CCO. There is no universal hard-and-fast pecking order that is followed, and instances have been known where a company featuring both positions has found that it gives the potential to strip functioning authority from either position.
Distinguished creative directors.
Many creative directors have distinguished themselves by rising to the ultimate executive office to run the entire agency. Many, having developed a keen idea of what kind of agency they would rather work in (perhaps dissatisfied with the agency they have worked at), have started one. Examples of these are David Ogilvy of Ogilvy and Mather, Bill Bernbach of Doyle Dane Bernbach. Others have come from careers far removed from advertising. Tim Gunn of Project Runway fame is now Chief Creative Officer for the Liz Claiborne fashion house. Neil French was once, among many things, the manager of the rock band Judas Priest and a bouncer
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