Diary of a Creative Director – David Droga

Posted: August 27th, 2010 | Author: Dana Pascu | Filed under: Advertising, [EN] | Tags: Advertising, droga, interview, interviu | No Comments »

My planning sister, Alina Buzatu, recently pointed me to Diary of a Creative Director.

The site’s been around since 2005, and I really wish I’d known about it sooner.

But now you know about it.

So start watching.

First thing: check out a David Droga interview by Heidi Ehlers. My snippets below:

“But if I’m going to tell someone to work a weekend, or expect them to work through the night, you can’t do that and then say, “See you I’m going for dinner.” They just don’t believe in it. They should see you working your *ss off. They should see you sweating things. They should see you taking things personally. I believe that. I just don’t think the higher you go, the cushier it should get.”

People remember the boss and that’s the thing you know. If you’re going to expect a lot from your employees they should expect a damn lot from you.”

“What are three things you can do to create the culture you want? DAVID: Be straight with your agency, your goals – don’t feed people the same old bullsh*t. Don’t stand up and give them your token, “Well it’s been a great year and what we’re going to do is this…” speech. Find out what they want. Get a clear vision of what their expectations are. Celebrating victories. Taking the blame for when it all goes wrong. I like to make decisions. I feel I’m decisive. But if I make the wrong decision, it’s on my shoulders; I don’t go looking for a scapegoat. And culture is about that. And culture gets to the point where it’s the superficial things as well it’s also environment in your office. It doesn’t mean you have to have a wacky office but you can’t be in these heinous environments where it affects your mood.

“But I believe in doing stuff together, and sometimes you have to force people to do stuff together, show people you want to invest in them, celebrate them, they don’t want to know that all the money goes into the flash car you put into the car park.”

“I think you have to be decisive. I think it doesn’t help anyone to hum and hah around things or to not give someone an answer and say, “Well I’m not sure, let’s do some more work.” I think that just throws people into a spin. I think if you want solutions you have to be practical about stuff. You have to be ruthless about things. Like I said as long as you give justification for your opinion, but that’s one of the few things I believe in myself is my eye for ideas. That’s what I trust anyway, I’m flawed, but that’s got me where I am, seriously, all the other flaws and weaknesses and foibles I have are tolerated because I’ve got an eye for ideas. People will forgive you for anything if you deliver work.“

Danadol