Enabling creative leadership to thrive in a remote world.
- emily4478
- Mar 13
- 4 min read
By Stephen Corlett
I’m working from home this week.
We’re moving buildings so we’re all working from home for a few days before we reconvene in our new abode. It’s a bit of a 2020 throwback without the tiktok dances or family quizzes, but still with all the unnecessary visits to the fridge.
And this throwback has been a reminder that full-remote for a creative agency isn’t easy.
Trying to get a 50-odd agency of creative people to connect over 15 different workstreams, internal projects and an office move - all remote…urgh.
As one of our ECDs said earlier today: ‘I’m spending all my time trying to find people’.
Since the pandemic we’ve probably been more in than remote working. However, it’s still very different from how it was pre-pandemic. I would say that some 80% of our team are in three days a week but we’re in Amsterdam where it’s easier to be in each day. Across the industry the shift to hybrid working presents a profound challenge to creative leaders who know that creativity thrives when people are literally and metaphorically together.
Captive vs Captivate
There was one very simple advantage the creative leadership of yesteryear had for their leadership to succeed. Their audience was captive.
But today creative leaders don’t have a captive audience. It’s an audience that comes in some days. Perhaps most days. But the security and reassurance that your people are just simply ‘there’ is not there anymore.
Today rather than having a captive audience, it’s incumbent on the creative leader to captivate their audience - their team, their people - in a way that brings people together even when they aren’t.
To captivate means, quite simply, commanding attention.
And that’s something that works in advertising should know all about. That’s the job. Grabbing attention for our client’s brands.
And, so like any great campaign, the way they go about captivating their own team’s attention has to have the same principles…
Audience Insight AKA empathy
Any great campaign ‘gets’ the audience. Today the modern creative leader understands the human needs of the team. It takes time to understand them, their life and their motivations. They don’t bark orders from a golden chair, they are human, authentic and they listen. Really listen. They understand the ‘what’s in it for me’ for each member of the team. They realise that today’s employees are not ‘company people’ in the way they might have been early in their careers. They want and expect different things be it in terms of working environment, flexibility, opportunities or just simply financial trajectory.
Clear and Memorable Idea
They say clients buy words. So does your team.
Creative leaders need to be able to articulate their vision and their expectations with a clarity that can be repeated, remembered and shared without missing a beat. It establishes the way forward and maintains standards. Even in the dark days of client changes and squeezed timings it can be held up as what the hell are we all doing here (in the office or at our kitchen table).
It has to be something powerful enough to be said outside the room. And it’s sticky enough as a set of words to lodge in the mind. And, of course, Ideally, it’s visual too. In simple terms, what’s the poster idea that everyone can carry around in their head?
Consistency Is a Competitive Advantage
If you think you’ve said it, shown it or talked about it one too many times, you haven’t. Like the public haven’t got bored of your ads before you and the client have, your message needs to be repeated. Especially with people moving between home and the office.
Consistency also matters with expectations and behaviours. Things can slip. Extra vigilance on the part of the creative leader to their own behaviours and what they accept from others is critical. In the old world, a team’s behaviours were there for all to see. Today it’s less easy for the group to police itself and its own behaviours.
Sufficient Media Exposure/Visibility and Reach AKA - You Show Up
This is the toughest one. And feels like it runs counter to the context of everything else. But, ‘presence’ is vital. In both a literal and metaphorical way - you gotta show up.
You have to be seen. And yes, in the office. Because it’s there that those people will ‘feel’ your presence more than on screen. And of course, it means you cover off the people who come in occasionally too. Remote working yourself should be done judiciously. It’s good to show you do it. But as one famous creative leader said to me about those creative directors who work consistently remotely - ‘You can be good - no doubt. But you’ll never be great.’
The creative leader today is really writing their own playbook as employee expectations, technology and society are rewriting the rules. Whatever happens though, the shift from a captive audience to one that is hybrid and open remote means the fundamental job for a leader is to captivate their team. So,go grab their attention.
Go treat them to the finest ad campaign possible. The most insightful, clear, memorable, consistent and visible one they’ve ever seen. And you just might make one because of it.
Stephen Corlett is CEO at global creative boutique 180 Amsterdam which boasts clients including
DHL, Pepsico, adidas, COTY, Club Med and OMEGA. Stephen began his career in London at Saatchi and Saatchi where he worked on the British Army and NSPCC accounts – before moving first to Amsterdam with Wieden+ Kennedy to work on the Coca-Cola business, then to New York for Anomaly where he worked on Converse. After a spell back in the UK as global communications director at Nike-owned
Umbro, Stephen returned to Amsterdam to join 180 Amsterdam in 2011 and has been MD, COO and now CEO of the award winning creative shop.
