The 30 Most Creative Women In Advertising

How many amazing, world-class female creatives can you name? (Go ahead, post them in the comments section, I'm curious.) Not just good female creatives, but Cannes-jury-level female creatives. Off-hand, I can think of four or five. And a couple of them aren't really in the business anymore. I know there are more. But unfortunately, they don't come as easily to mind.

There are lots of women in advertising. But not on the creative side. At least not in my experience. If you're a female writer or art director, I hope you can change that. I hope you can put your stamp on the industry. Here's a list to get you inspired. It's The 30 Most Creative Women In Advertising according to Business Insider.

Go through the list. See how many of these women you already know. You probably already know their work. See what they do, and how they do it. Then, go do it yourself.

Guys, you may want to pay attention, too.

Highlights from the Maker Generation

Last month, I was in Richmond, Virginia for the recruiting session at the VCU Brandcenter. I saw a ton of books - copywriters, art directors, and creative technologists. I continue to be amazed by the Maker Generation. When I graduated VCU forever ago, I left with a suitcase-shaped black portfolio full of double-page magazine spec ads that had been trimmed with an X-acto blade and spray mounted to black mounting boards. But today, if students have an idea, they go make it. Here are three examples from the VCU Brandcenter recruiting session that stuck with me (shown with permission).  

banethatcher.com

After Margaret Thatcher died, Maddison Bradley and Jon Robbins were listening to some of her quotes and thought, "These sound like the kind of things Bane would say." So they created banethatcher.com. I don't know British Conservative politics of the mid-1980's well enough to comment, but I'm amazed that they pulled this together in a couple of days.

Harry Potter Ipsum

When Olivia Abtahi and Christina Chern needed some lorem ipsum, they thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if this weren't just gibberish, but Harry Potter gibberish?" So they created Harry Potter Ipsum. Feel free to accio your own text on their joint Most Auspicious.

Dragon Grips

Sam Cantor, Nick Marx, and Hunter Pechin didn't just go to portfolio school to make spec ads. They came up with Dragon Grips, an actual, functioning product. (That just happens to be surrounded with some well-thought-out marketing.)


"People's Choice Award" Winner: DragonGrips from Nick on Vimeo.

Mark's Principles

I was reading one.a magazine and came across an article on Mullen's CCO, Mark Wenneker. A sidebar to the article featured Mark's Principles. Worth sharing. Maybe even worth pinning up.

Sketch Your Heart Out

Here's a short presentation our friend B.Thibbs recently gave to the creative department of The Richards Group. Guaranteed to make you want to grab a fresh notebook. Enjoy.

Sketch your heart out. from B.Thibbs on Vimeo.

Creatives You Should Know

Creativity has released their annual list of "Creatives You Should Know." As a student, it's worth taking a look 1) because you might want them to hire you, and 2) if you want to make this list someday, it's worth seeing what they did to get on it.

GSP's 30 for 30

To celebrate their 30th anniversary, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners has put up a page of their best 30 pieces.

















Here's what Goodby does so well:

• They don't complicate their ideas. You can explain the premise of each piece in about 60 seconds.
• They execute their work really, really well. You can tell people care about making these great.
• Their ideas are unexpected. Who would have thought you could sell cars without showing cars, sell milk with obscure history, or make a new commercial for each day of your media buy?

Click here for a little inspiration.

Ira Glass on the Creative Process

I know these kinetic type treatments are a tired execution. But Ira Glass's wisdom is truthful and timeless. Enjoy.



(If you don't know who Ira Glass is, you are missing the best thing on public radio.)

The Kind of Creatives We Need to Be

Here's a clip I stumbled upon over the weekend. It's Chick Corea playing the drums.

If you're a Chick Corea fan, you know he's one of the most amazing jazz pianists ever. Who knew he played the drums? But it makes perfect sense. He's not just a pianist. He's a musician.



Look at how effortlessly he picks up the sticks and starts playing. Meanwhile, his bass player sits down at the piano and starts jamming just as easily.

That's the kind of creatives we need to be. Art directors need to be able to write. Writers need to be able to art direct. UX guys need to be able to understand media. We all have our specialties. But need to be more than specialists.

Otherwise, we're just the drummers who throw in a little extra cowbell.

The latest batch of inspiration

Used to be, you had to wait for the One Show annual to come out for some mind-blowing inspiration. Now you just have to wait for someone to compile it and tweet it.

Here's some pretty fascinating stuff. Not necessarily advertising. But worth delving into.

Enjoy.

Cannes Young Directors Showcase

Yesterday I went to the Young Directors Showcase here in Cannes. Some very inspiring work. Here were a couple of my favorites.

Take the Plant Tour

1. Know your product.

2. Know your audience.

These are two of the first things you're taught in ad school. All great ideas come out of the brand/product, and all great ideas speak to the audience.

Years ago, the brilliant Mark Fenske wrote the "14 anti-laws of advertising." Here's #9:

Skip the plant tour. Stay as ignorant as the audience. Otherwise you'll be as useless as the client. Clients know too much about their own products to be able to write a good ad; all they can do is shill. Though clients may not realize it, they're hiring us not because we're part of their company, but because we're part of the audience. When you know too much you always have the answer. You sound like an infomercial.

While I understand Fenske's point, I would say that you absolutely should take the plant tour. You should be doing whatever you can to learn about the product. Immerse yourself in it. Watch it being built. Talk to the designers or chemists. Read about its history. Travel to the corporate headquarters to understand the company's philosophy.

And then do the same thing with the consumer. As Fenske suggests, be the audience. Walk into the store, find the product. Look at the other products around it. Buy the product if you can. Use it. Use competitive products. Listen to consumers if you have the opportunity. Talk to people who love the product and people who hate it.

Insight and ideas can come from all of that stuff, and you should know all that stuff. The key, and what Fenske is really warning against, is to not get bogged down in it. Just because you now know all of this stuff does not mean it should all be included in an ad. What are you trying to communicate? What will move your target? It won't be a plant tour, but it might be something you learned on a plant tour.

So, by all means, take the plant tour.

How I got unstuck

About a week ago I was in a serious rut. I was down on work. Down on our clients. Down on co-workers. Needless to say, it was a pretty unproductive few days.

Then I started listening to this podcast called The History of Jazz by Georgia State University professor, Dr. Gordon Vernick. (Look it up. Wish I could link you to it directly.)

I also started reading my co-worker's copy of Paul Arden's book It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be.

And on a bright sunny day, I accidentally took the bus too far and had to walk through a couple of neighborhoods I'd never explored on foot.

And suddenly, things were awesome. I liked work. And I've been very productive since.

If you're stuck, frustrated or down on work, it's not enough just to take a break. A walk around the building or a trip to the burrito joint across the street can sometimes help. But you really need to change your routine.

Looking for inspiration

“Ideas are all around you. They’re everywhere. If you spend your time looking at award annuals, all you’ll ever do is repeat what other people have done. But if you open your eyes and observe what’s going on around you all the time, the humour and the charm and the fun of things, then you will get ideas that really do surprise, and charm, and are fresh. You can’t invent some of the things that happen.”

– John Hegarty

Dave Packard

In Jim Collins's book, Good to Great, he outlines the commonalities of companies that made the leap from good companies to great ones. He talks a lot about leaders and leadership, about the importance of humility and selflessness. This is one passage that I found particularly inspiring:

Shortly before his death, I had the opportunity to meet Dave Packard. Despite being one of Silicon Valley's first self-made billionaires, he lived in the same small house that he and his wife built themselves in 1957, overlooking a simple orchard. The tiny kitchen, with its dated linoleum, and the simply furnished living room bespoke a man who needed no material symbols to proclaim "I'm a billionaire. I'm important. I'm successful." "His idea of a good time," said Bill Terry, who worked with Packard for thirty-six years, "Was to get some of his friends together to string some barbed wire." Packard bequeathed his $5.6 billion estate to a charitable foundation and, upon his death, his family created a eulogy pamphlet with a photo of him sitting on a tractor in farming clothes. The caption made no reference to his stature as one of the great industrialists of the twentieth century. It simply read: "Dave Packard, 1912-1996, Rancher, etc."

SIDE NOTE: Packard and Hewlett famously started their company in a garage with $538. Here's an HP ad about the "Rules of the Garage."