Long live the mighty artisan!

Phil Lynagh is regional director at Tag:MENA

I’m bored of celebrating creative directors and their game-changing ideas, so this column is a tribute to the people that take that big idea and then transform it into something resembling a commercial solution. Imagine the scene: “I’ve cracked the VW brief, Hamed, three kittens swinging from trapezes from the Burj Khalifa, they sing a cheeky song, do a little belly dance then a deep VO says something nice about the car”.

“Brilliant!” cry the art director’s team. “WTF,” whisper the creative team. By the creative team I am, of course, talking about the studio managers, the production team, the artworkers and the desktop publishers, the illustrators, the copywriters and even the good old-fashioned account management. Every day these unsung heroes take the clunker they’re handed from upon high, give it a little polish to resemble an actual idea, then bring it kicking and screaming into the public domain.

I’ve been interviewing recently and through meeting some good, old skilled people, I have rekindled my fondness for the communications professional. The ones that know the difference between typography and typing, the people who clearly see the benefits of the layout rather than mere placement. These people are often forgotten about during awards celebrations and nearly always taken for granted. Yet they make up the engine room that powers our industry forward.

There is more art in artisan than people may think. Too often I’ve worked with creative heads who are incapable of turning on a Mac, never mind skillfully producing thousands of marketing assets through an in-depth knowledge of all things Adobe. Can you imagine what the Sistine chapel would have looked like if Pope Julius II, the top ecclesiastical chap at the time, had decided to take that painting job on himself? Instead I am delighted he got an artisan named Michelangelo.  Who would be considered the more creative of the two I wonder these days? The originator of the big idea or the chap who did the artwork?