Project Managers and Producers in the 2012 Agency

On this site we try and identify the key steps in process and workflow in a typical agency. However, agencies are anything but typical. Part of what makes an agency special (besides the characters that work there) is the agency's approach to how they create work. We use to identify agencies by either being account or creative driven. Now we identify agencies in dozens of different ways including creative, account, digital, data-driven, interactive with varying 360° experience or general agencies with varying degrees of interactive experience to name just a few. This fragmentation has lead to a greater variety in workflow paths...

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Crafting a Creative Agency Environment

While advertising is a business, it is still in the business of creativity. Your account team, your creative department, producers and project managers all need to have a sense of what that statement means. A by the book, strictly business-oriented account or project management centric agency might very well be productive, but the end product may never win awards. Mediocrity doesn't get you to the next level, mediocrity doesn't attract creative talent -- great work created in a great environment does...

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Don't Dread the Monday Status Meeting

I know what you're thinking. Its Monday, 9 a.m. and the whole team is gathering in the conference room. People are talking about what they did that weekend, but the looks are restless. Trains are running late and everyone is waiting for the creative director or head of account services to arrive. Status reports are still printing and people are looking at their watches. The warning signs that this may be a long meeting are already there. Do you start? Do you wait? Do you dread this is going to be another wasted morning? Honestly, it may be time to reset the way you approach the weekly meetings...

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Time is Essential in Fostering Creativity

If you want ideas to evolve, you can't rush creativity. As a project or creative manager we need to be creative in how we manage the creative process. In this site, you will find many tools and articles on how an ad agency needs to and how it does track time. Time is such an important part of the business. We charge for our time, we have limited time and we track time. In the agency world it seems we are all a little too time obsessed. However, unlike our nice and neat SOWs and time estimates, the time it takes for a creative idea to happen doesn't work in neat 4 or 8 hour blocks of time. Creativity doesn't happen in the continuous linear fashion that a project manager's Gantt chart would suggest...

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Managing the Drop Dead Date

The Drop Dead Date. In this day and age, the gravity of the phrase, "drop dead date," is lost in translation. Just what does this phrase mean? As any salt-worthy project manager and producer knows, it can mean just about anything. However be savvy when examining deadlines. Just because someone give you a rush date, you still need to do a background check to ensure this is the real due date. Its up to you as a project manager to find out if the date is fixed, flexible, past-due or just plain made up. In some cases, there may be other due dates prior to the final deadline that are even more important. For example, quick deadlines can mean very short client approval times. Your client may have very restrictive approval dates and times. It's essential for you to find out up front. Why is this important? (Click read more to find out.)

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Listening & Team Communication

In my last entry, I spoke at length about the importance of developing a sound creative brief. One of the most important aspects of developing that brief is the gathering of information from various teams and compiling the information into an easy to read and understand working document. However, let’s face it, do our teams really read through the entire brief? As we stand up to present the brief to the group do we make sure that everyone is engaged and really listening? As team leaders, it is our responsibility to make sure that everyone on the team accurately understands what they are expected to accomplish. And as team members, it is also our responsibility to make sure we understand what is expected.

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What's in your Creative Brief?

One of the most neglected steps in agency process is the creation of a solid starting brief. The brief should be more than just the basics of a general background document. A well-prepared brief is one that not only has input from the client, but includes a well rounded set of input from many internal partners, including account management, strategic planning, media planning and your creative department.

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New Print Studio Resource Chart

Typically, I pull revenue stats from the accounting system, but I still like to have a quick chart I can update myself. The excel file I'm adding is one that I have been playing with for ages, feel free to adjust it. This chart tracks time for studio staff and other studio related income. You can download the file, Studio Resource Allocation, by clicking here.

New Yearly Client Budget Chart

I placed a new file called "Master FTE" Chart in the file download section. This chart can calculate total costs for all departments for client budgeting purposes. Each staff member's hourly rate can be changed individually. Adjust the total full-time equivalent (FTE annual hours) per your agency's own hour breakdown. To find more about setting hourly rates, check out the accounting section of this blog.

This chart includes interactive line items.

Need some inspiration?

Check out the new tab called "Twitter'd." on the right. It's a visual archive of my favorite creative twitter posts.  

Enjoy. Ed