Totally talented Pyotr Mamonov asked himself more than once: "What will you do on Thursday if you die on Wednesday?" The coronavirus has raised a similar question for all workers in the creative industry. I tried to find an answer.

It is unlikely that any company will refuse the services of a cleaning lady. Even in a crisis, tire changers will mount tires. And the same layout designers will rivet calendars and booklets. That is, the craft will always remain the craft. Horse-drawn carriage drivers switched to Bolt, Uber, Uklon. The creative industry is more complicated.

I started preparing this article before the crisis. At the time, all creatives felt like kings. Now they are also kings, but more often naked. The market has changed a lot. Although he did not die on Wednesday, it is still worth considering: what will we do on Thursday?

Every creative must understand his real value to give an honest answer to himself and the "customer." Do you want to create because you are burning with ideas? Or do you only create because the current situation burns you? Can't you live without creativity or can't do anything else?

During the crisis, many musicians began to tax. At the same time, their other colleagues began to look for new options: writing tracks for stocks, giving online concerts, and tutoring. Who wants to convert into a taxi driver or courier can watch the tips on YouTube. We invite those who wish to stay in the profession to understand organizing a creative team. Some of these tips will help improve an existing company and others to create a new one.

The basic principle of creating a creative team

Of course, everything is individual, but most successful creative agencies consist of two categories of people. The first is the professionals, the keepers of the hearth. The second, those who want and burn. It is the synergy that can bear delicious fruits.

The problem with many pros is that they know everything and can do everything. They can quickly solve any problem, but this solution will often be formulaic. But the very concept of "creativity" implies the creation of something new.

The more experience, the more framework. Pros know that the video needs to be shot like this, the calendar needs this, this kind of packaging will work. They did it 1000 times. Just think, it will be 1001st.

Therefore, there is a problem with the pros who have found their own style. Moreover, many of them are no longer interested in solving the client's problem. If they want something, it's the Red Dot Award and the Cannes Lions. Yes, any customer will be happy to receive "lions," but is this a task initially? The project should be created not for "lions" but for people. The target audience of the client, for example, Ukrainian summer residents who grow potatoes. The global result should not be higher than the customer's task because it may not correspond.

That is why the team needs a second category of players, people who don't know how to do everything but want everything. If a person really burns, he and his team will soon deliver a better product, better than the stereotyped pros. Real creativity!

That is, "grandfathers" are bored without the young, but it is difficult for the young without grandfathers. This is why synergy is needed. And for its creation and maintenance, there are several rules.

Rule 0. We need rules

Each company should have its own "Bible" — an internal status, a set of rules, concepts. It is unreal to standardize creativity, but everything else can and should be systematized. Within reasonable limits, of course.

Rule 1. Motivation is a sh*rt

A beautiful office and modern technology, a set-top box, a ping-pong table, lunches, a gym, a high salary, and a full social package... All this can be called a good motivation, but based on the experience of IT companies — no, it is impossible. All this does not make sense if there is no main thing — ideas, opportunities to be realized, unleashing potential, and creating what you want. Goals, development, interesting tasks are significant for creative people. Everything else quickly becomes boring, and people burn out. Not that an artist has to be hungry, but creativity definitely needs an appetite.

Creativity for creativity's sake plus sports anger is a great motivation for team play. If a person needs to be motivated, he does not need to be motivated. You either want to do this and crave self-realization or go to the old post office and give out the parcels — this is also necessary and useful work. It is easier for some people to integrate into the system and work according to a template. For others, it is more important to go beyond the boundaries and create something. The latter are our guys. And girls.

Let's say, if people choose you for buns, often they will be finalized in buns. It's good when people want to learn something, develop professionally and come to the team for knowledge and new skills. It's worse when people want to play better. It's better to smoke.

Rule 2. Eternal flame

An experienced burn-out master is worse than apprentices who are burning and wanting. The ideal option is to have venerable specialists in your team ready to teach and mentor, getting a kick out of such self-realization.

We stepped on this rake more than once. Our team included very, very talented guys with a huge knowledge base. But when these talents burn out, their toxicity goes off the scale. There are no identical template tasks in creativity because if a person begins to hate everything he does, this very quickly affects all processes.

Rule 3. Everyone in a place

In creative, it's important to understand who is responsible and what for. If one person is in charge of everything, there will be a mess. Each of the team members should think about their task and the best way to solve it. Even an office manager is a member of a creative team. The designer doesn't need to know where the coffee comes from on his desk or why the printer didn't work an hour ago, but now everything is fine.

The young and the hot can bombard with ideas, but at the stage of implementation, everything will screw up. And if everything is in place, then one person will make a sketch, another will choose colors, the third — will "play with fonts." This is why we need a team in which the masseur, the coach, the goalkeeper, and the striker are important because they work for the same result.

It's like a football team that requires a mix of individual skills but only within teamwork.

Many solo professionals are walking around the market claiming to be human orchestras. But when they come to the point, these loners eventually form large teams because the "naked idea for a billion" is only in books on business motivation.

We have repeatedly come across brave guys who say, "what are your ideas?" "I will create hundreds!" And, waving a saber in front of the business owner, they gain points. But more often, it all fails.

All they can do is optimize marketing costs by wrecking it, trying to tackle everything at once. All this falls into emptiness because behind the seeming lightness of any idea lies a lot of work of a large team of people. After this miracle solution, they are either fired or bring in a new team. But the feeling of failure accompanies them and makes them toxic, and here you have to look at point 3.

Rule 4. A creative person is always good, but his ideas are not always good

Many, especially young creatives, are afraid to seem like "morons," they say, "I will propose an idea, and it will spit." But it's not McDonald's, where you need to pass the potatoes clearly according to the rules, but in our industry, on the contrary, it's worth producing new ideas and options.

First, every team member needs to feel that their ideas are exciting and vital, even if they are not accepted. Secondly, criticism should be constructive — if you don't like something, you need to expand it, explain why and offer another option.

Often people grow attached to their idea and feel that if it is bad, so I am bad too. But this could mean that it may not work for various reasons. And everything needs to be explained. If you do not speak and explain such moments, the person will quickly burn out, close, and offer only stereotyped options so as not to blurt out too much. But often, it is in this superfluous and ambiguous that the very creativity lies.

And, of course, all creative people need praise. Honestly, you can feel it. Both criticism and approval must be honest and reasoned. By the way, you can read more about filtering and evaluating ideas in our article on Hitler, the naked king, and the Pope.

We have a great example where an employee of another company, just going out for a smoke break, came up with the idea that became the annual communication idea of ​​a large brand. Coincidence? Accident? We checked and brought him into the discussion several times, and he showed a result of 3 out of 5.

It is important to understand that it is the generator that is important and the receiver. There are no bad creatives. There are squeezed ones. To complete the picture, I will continue: we invited this guy to work, he refused, but he always comes out to smoke.

Rule 5. Freelancing is bad

Working with freelancers is an extreme option for a creative team. You never know what is in the head of a particular person. Often, this kind of collaboration creates more problems than positives. Quarantine clearly showed that freelancing is not so good.

Rule 6. The team is good

Teamwork is essential. When you work alone, you fall in love with your product. You don't have a fresh look from the outside. In addition, if the team has 5, 10, 15 people, they don't want to let their colleagues down. Personal responsibility to the team often becomes more important than a responsibility to a customer. The team also encourages and supports.

On my own example, I will note: as soon as you personally fall in love with an idea, failure is close. Firstly, love is not given away or sold, so you will fight for an idea, even if it does not fit in principle. Secondly, an idea is just part of a larger process. When you are alone, you believe in your genius, and the idea becomes above everything, ultimately burying it in unrealizability.

Rule 7. Fewer frames, more creativity

It is necessary to weed out people with extra cockroaches. A good creative person must be able to depersonalize. The purpose of advertising is to show a product or service and present the viewer with a choice. His decision is his responsibility. The customer has a request; the team must find a solution.

If a designer says he won't work with cigarettes, the copywriter turns out to be a strict vegan, and the marketer is against plastic packaging, such a company is unlikely to be able to work normally. Or you might have to narrow the market down to advertising organic halal vegetables. Unless, of course, the art director is a prano-eater who is against killing tomatoes.

I.e:

• You don't need to take people with frames.
• We need to explain to them the meaning of the work. It is important that the whole team is on the same wavelength.

Perhaps this is cynical, but we must discover the world, be its vanguard. If we are already in captivity of frame thinking and cannot be critical of ourselves, is there any point in trying to open the door to the future with a frame on our shoulders that will not fit into this future?

Rule 8. Need personal goals

Each team member must understand why he/she is here and where he/she is going next. For example, we have a fellow who said: "Guys, in three years, I will be working in a top studio in Germany." Of course, there is no need to turn your agency into a forge of personnel, but it is crucial to answering the question, "Where are you going?" If there is a goal, then there will be movement, there will be growth and development. Therefore, some control points are needed.

In addition to money and the ability to go to work, you need to have aspiration. Creativity is an industry in which all the criteria for evaluating results have not yet been formed. It seems to have created something, but tomorrow you should know what you will create better and how it is better. Therefore, it is important to give yourself a new challenge each time and respond to it.

Rule 9. Develop your control technique

Process standardization is hygiene for creative spaces. If you ignore the mechanics, you may find that a creative idea crumbles after a week of painstaking work on it. For example, we have 3 required points:

• When you accept the task, you need to understand if everything is there to get started.
• Set up frames. This is a huge problem: if you need to do “something”, the creatives start thinking “with something.” It is important to outline the frames of the canvas and only then start creating.
• Outline the idea we are broadcasting and understand the visual techniques for implementing that idea.

Rule 10. Break down and create rules

Each team plays its own game, so it is definitely worth studying the experience of others, but not necessarily taking everything as a dogma. That's why we have a creative industry to create something new, something of our own.

No matter how anyone tries to repeat Apple's cases, nothing will work. And this is the coolest thing: as soon as you realize that you have just started copying, pack your things and go to work on the copier. There, in the end, they will pay more.

Not a conclusion yet

One hundred seventy years ago, Dostoevsky was sentenced to be shot, and preparations for execution began. And he started his preparations… for death. He did not know that Nikolai I personally issued a decree: "To announce a pardon only at the moment when everything is ready for the execution." This dramatization left a powerful imprint on all further work of the outstanding writer and philosopher.

The nobleman Hrygoriev was placed at the same wall and made preparations for the execution. He was pardoned by sending him to hard labor. If Dostoevsky survived catharsis, becoming stronger, but Hrygoriev went crazy.

Coronavirus and crises are weaker than shooting, but in principle, there are also two ways out of the situation. We hope that the majority of creatives will follow the path of the genius Fedir Dostoevsky.