The insight: suits as creatives

Now there's a frightening thought. You're thinking: 'As if we've not got enough trouble with cantankerous creatives, now they're turning our best friend in the agency against us as well'. Of course, the opposite is true.

At Grisdale Lesniak Swann, we want everyone to be creative. And we don't believe the account handler's role should be restricted to merely managing the process. We want our account guys to give more of themselves to the cause. And this is where what we call the 'insight' comes in. You see, we like to go that extra mile. To us, a proposition complacently extolling product benefits goes nowhere near far enough. And it's our account guy's job to apply his or her creativity to translate the proposition into a unique insight identifying a fresh slant on the brand that will ultimately deliver an unprecedented response.

But what of the creative function? Here at Grisdale Lesniak Swann it's one big role-reversal. We expect our suits to be creative. But, conversely, we expect our creatives to be more suitish as well. You see, once the crucial insight has been arrived at, it's the creative department's task to deliver it in a form uniquely relevant to the intended recipient. And, of course, to make our message relevant to our audience, it must be entertaining, and utterly appropriate. Mining the appropriate seam of entertainment, finding the audience's funny bone, if you will, is where the creative function comes to the fore. But all the while constrained by relevance. We believe in keeping our creatives on the tightest of leashes. Personal pipedreams and tangential streams of consciousness are actively discouraged. (We believe a creative ivory tower is an elephant's graveyard).

At this point in the process our creatives really do take full responsibility for guardianship of the brand within the agency. It's their job to make sure that every nuance and detail, every pen stroke, every key tap, every word, every comma and full stop, colour values, typeface, graphic identity and tone of voice are all perfectly attuned to the task of connecting brand message to consumer needs, wants and desires. Why, we almost thought of calling our creative department 'the relevance department'. After all, delivering the insight in a way that's totally relevant to the audience is, in a nutshell, the creative's job. In fact, you might say we give cross-dressing an entirely new meaning.