It's Time To Kill The Art Department

Let me be clear.  I'm not saying we shouldn't have a "creative" group, or a strategy group or a tech group etc.  What I am saying is that the "department mentality" needs to go away—like permanently.  If you watched the series "Mad Men" then you got a pretty insightful view into the creative process as defined by hierarchy, departments and politics.  I always get a chuckle when an episode shows the "art department" slaving away on print ads in a remote part of the building.  I guess it worked back then.  For the creation of messages and ads, this may have been a pretty efficient system.  And though not "science" as one of the main characters puts it—the output could be somewhat replicated even though an amazing advertising campaign is rare to come by.  But having an "art dept", a "copy dept" and high ranking big cheeses who called the shots was the nature of the business back in the day.

Now by contrast, take the famous "IDEO shopping cart" video and compare.   I've seen this video many times and it always inspires and gets me thinking.  Sure there are senior people calling the shots, there is hierarchy—but there is something very different in how this creative process works.  It starts with research, not an ad hock brainstorming session.  Teams go out into the world to discover insights for themselves.  Roles blur and ideas come from everywhere.  Practical ones.  Whacky ones.  Debate happens, but at the end of the day teams begin quickly visualizing and building concepts based off insights + observation.  Prototypes aren't talked about, they start coming together at light speed.  The only thing that resembles a "department" in the video is the "shop" which actually built the finished prototype with real materials, wielding some heavy machinery.  It was organized chaos and collaboration under a shared purpose.  It's a classic example of innovation.  The team set out to design a better shopping cart, but in the end took a decent stab at solving a much bigger problem:

Designing a better shopping experience.

Problem is that many of us are still hooked on the "department" model even though we really want to be more like the "shopping cart model".  If you work in the digital design space, the shopping cart model is more relevant that the "department" model.  We have the potential to create meaningful experiences which influence human behavior—how we shop, connect and do business.  Need proof? Think E-bay, Craigslist, Amazon, Dell, Citi, Apple, Netvibes, Google, et al.  But we have lots of work to do to incorporate this style of working in an industry that was built on departments, messages and making promises.

If agencies genuinely desire to innovate, then it's time to kill the "department mentality".  If they just want to make money, then keeping the department mentality alive and well is OK.  But at some point, the ability to innovate won't be optional—and that's when the department mentality will become a liability.

Comments

[Greg Verdino]

Hey David - I can think of at least one large digital agency that still has an art department that works with paste and exacto knifes. You (and I) may have worked there...

Great post.

[Michael Wagner]

HI David,

I've shown the IDEO video to many clients and it continually inspires. Sometimes it causes quite a stir when people see the obvious divide between the way they work and the way they saw to folks at IDEO work.

It make sense to move past the Art Department for lots of reasons not the least being that many of us long for same sort of shared learning and difference making we saw in that Nightline segment so many years ago.

Keep creating...a daring adventure,
Mike

[Todd W.]

I want to banish the term "Creative" from our vocabulary as a noun describing a member of one or more design-y departments. The implication is that the other departments are something else, ie non-creative. If it takes hold, it's only a matter of time before the term "Suit" crops up to define the other non-Creative people.

[davidicus]

.

mad men is excellent.

you're right about the desire to innovate, but it's currently optional. even in video games, where i currently am. every studio varies, but the political imperative to silo things is alive and well. "pipelines" go from department to department in an only slightly modified old school assembly line fashion. it is about money first, and protecting power second. innovation? synonymous with risk.

kill the fear instead.

.

[Matt Dickman]

David -- You're right on the money here. This is something that I've experimented with on a few projects here and there. It's amazing what happens when you truly blur the lines and put designers, strategy, technical, media, et. al. on the same level thinking about the same challenge from day 1.

I think it's possible to do this using the dept. structure at the project level. When a challenge is laid out and everybody is working in cohesion amazing things happen. Technology folks think about the experience, designers think about technology for usability and everybody thinks about the strategy. I think the project may be where the potential is for this to happen. It's less of a system shock and a bit less risky short term.

[Jon Campbell]

David, great post! Banish departments. Encourage/allow anyone to have ideas, not just the creatives. Take risks. Innovate. Or risk irrelevancy. As Gen. Eric Shinseki said - "If you don't like change you're going to like irrelevancy even less."

[steve cunningham]

David - great stuff, and I totally agree. What we need is for that same show to happen again, and instead of a shopping cart we need IDEO to work on the "agency 2.0" model. Or better yet, we could do it for ourselves.

The only way it's ever going to happen for the masses though is if a model is developed that can prove that this "un-siloed" way of working makes more money. Because that's how we keep score, and that's how we will always keep score (until somebody comes up with a better economic theory than Adam Smith).

Without proof, we will have to wait for an agency full of integrative thinkers that can make that model work without the proof. And as everybody is pointing out - that's a risky proposition.

[Jeffrey Simons]

Interesting topic, there's an interesting post on conversation agent that discusses a strategy to breakdown barriers through a new form of social networks.

http://www.conversationagent.com/2007/12/seni-thomas-200.html

[Christopher Fahey]

Hey David, you should try working at a small agency. No silos or departments here!

Funny you mention Mad Men. Yes, for those lower on the totem pole at the Mad Men agency there are definitely segregated departments. But for the senior executives, in fact, there is no distinction: the creatives are required to bring in clients and sell, the account reps are required to devise creative strategies. I was surprised to see that. It may be an anachronism. But honestly I think it would be hard to argue that the American advertising agency in 1960 was a less creative institution than the agencies are today. Back then, designers like Rand, Glaser, Chermayoff, Noyes, etc were integral to entire brand and ultimately business strategies, and these people were considered, ultimately, "ad people" not "creatives" or "designers". In a way, I wonder if things haven't gotten worse, not better, cool agencies like IDEO notwithstanding.

I'm always surprised when I hear about people who get inspired by the IDEO video. Is there another way or working? Do people actually work on design projects without brainstorming, sketching, prototyping, revising? I guess it's like the design thinking discussion -- I find it hard to understand what it's like to not think and work the way I and my peers and colleagues (and, frankly, most of my clients) think and work, hard to imagine what it's like to be among people who have no creative or innovative ideas.

[DA]

Thanks for the thoughts everyone. Clearly this is something lots of people are talking about.

Greg, I have no idea what you're talking about. ;-)

Christopher, you bring up some great points. But I think you may be more used to a smaller environment which does tend to work more like the IDEO process. However, noticed that I stressed the point that in the video the team did not go directly to brainstorming. They took the time to poke at the problem from different angles before attempting to solve it.

That's a big difference between their creative process and how some agencies do it which is to go straight to brainstorming. Or of research is done, it gets done by a research or planning "dept" which doesn't always include designers and technologists.

That's the danger of the department mentality. You can get really good at producing a "deliverable" but when the dots need to connect, things can get lost in translation.

Appreciate the great comments here everyone. This is a topic I will be addressing in 2008. And it might not be on the blog. ;-)

[See-ming Lee]

Forget killing departments. Let's kill titles altogether.

/SML