What worldwide creative resources would you recommend?

Q: What 3 resources do you think would be most useful to a creative director, and why? Yes, I know it’s an ambiguous question. So go ahead and set your own criteria.

Comment by Farrukh Naeem on May 1, 2007 at 5:27pm: A coffee machine with Ethiopian coffee beans, a good looking secretary and a well-hidden archive of black books from other countries. Three things.

Comment by Farrukh Naeem on May 1, 2007 at 5:29pm: Why? The coffee for the mind, the secretary for looking important, and the black books for the black acts of 'inspiration' when the devil whispers the dirty word 'awards'...

Comment by Farrukh Naeem on May 1, 2007 at 5:31pm: Ok seriously - a good copywriter, a good art director, and a good chemistry between both... the right brains are the best resources ;-)

Comment by Farrukh Naeem on May 1, 2007 at 5:31pm: Actually, if you have the same guy who does copy and art, then the third thing would be a suit who knows how to sell that award winning stuff to the client

Comment by Farrukh Naeem on May 1, 2007 at 5:32pm: And if you as a CD have a guy who does copy, art and client servicing, and still have two wishes left, go for the coffee machine and the secretary.

Comment by Steve McNamara on May 1, 2007 at 6:09pm: Hay Farrukh, excellent point when you say, "a good copywriter, a good art director, and a good chemistry between both... ". I was thinking more in terms of online creative resources like AdRants ... but I obviously need to do some more thinking ...

Comment by Abdol Rahim Mirza on May 6, 2007 at 6:23pm: 1- Knowledge is very important for any director, but the creative directors are in real need for certain acquaintance in the field. I never mean an Academic award only as it is not enough.
2- Tools in common are second. His ability to find suitable tool for certain job is very important. Please note that, bad workman blames his tools. The creative director blames only himself before the others remind him.
3- The right team of work that can translate his instructions in touchable results.

Hope the above information will satisfy you. If you need more information, please contact me.

P.S. are you a relative to Mr. McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense in USA?

Comment by Mary Baum on July 18, 2007 at 10:16pm: This is assuming you have a suit who's gone out and found the client, of course.

Online or off, I think you have to have a sense of what's going on in the world -- what's relevant to the market in the countries you're targeting.

I'd be tempted to start with YouTube and search on the name of the country, then just sit and watch whatever comes up until certain themes started to repeat themselves. Then I'd check those out in that country's media to get a sense if those themes were real trends or just geek trends -- the stuff that shows up online out of proportion to its significance in the culture at large because it appeals to the folks who are online in the greatest numbers.

Once you have real trends, you've got a handle on what your audience cares about -- and you can make creative your audience will care about.

In turn, that should be creative the client cares about -- and that the suit can sell -- because it will actually sell the product it's supposed to sell.

What a concept!

(Otoh, I did suggest to one of the Big Three in Detroit that they sell a dealer initiative -- a mandate, really -- by mentioning a benefit the dealers would care about. They didn't go for it.)

Comment by Steve McNamara on July 19, 2007 at 3:30pm: Mary - that's an interesting idea. Aren't there companies that provide insights into social trends, stuff like that?

Comment by Mary Baum on July 26, 2007 at 1:22am: Tons. Many have blogs -- as I started to say two hours and fifty windows ago -- I have a whole toolbar folder of blog bookmarks I loosely categorize as trends. PSFK seems to be the purest example I can find without making a project of it; I could have sworn they were trying to sell a year-to-come trend kit, but maybe they took it down. The Pantone color institute does trend analysis from a color perspective, but they charge for everything (as we'd expect from a company that got rich on colored paper rectangles ). I still would probably follow the sage example of my eleven-year-old and start everything with a tour of YouTube . . . he didn't get to be in seventh grade for nothing!

And the amazing thing is I'm not even kidding here.

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