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.What is notable about these `relaxed' cultures is theway they connected to established forms of masculine culture.In otherwords, creative directors, in many instances, encouraged creatives to expressthemselves in the workplace through activities derived from young maleculture outside of work.The over-exuberant manifestations of this ± such asthat evidenced by Teresa Walsh and Paul Holt, for example ± were gener-ally condoned since what creative directors were looking for was anenvironment in which these practitioners could create great work.Otherrituals of of®ce life directly orchestrated by creative directors in order tostrengthen the social bonds of the department also tended to draw,tangentially at least, on the stock of young male culture.Weekly or monthlydepartment meetings, for example, were lubricated by beer and pizza.There were other features of the way departments were run that wereeven more important in helping to shape the culture of masculinity thatdeveloped across creative departments.These were the management prac-tices that formed the corollary to the emphasis on relaxation that I have justdescribed.In setting out to motivate their charges, the creative directors Iinterviewed also recurrently emphasised the role of intense competition asintegral to how they built the necessary pressure on teams to get them toproduce good work.This emphasis on competition was allied to robuststyles of management.Andy Hanby, creative director at Paul and Rogers,was more explicit than most in elaborating on how he motivated teams.Heremarked that:creative people are generally incredibly lazy up until the last three days before thework is needed.And then they work like idiots.And I try and create this last three-dayculture ± which is basically, everyone is given a chance to work on a brief.I will goround each team, look through the work.Teams get eliminated as the process goeson.So, if one team cracks the brief, I leave two teams out in the cold.[They] will ®ght110gender, creativity and creative jobsit out amongst themselves to try and be better than the one team who've cracked it.Iwill take them off it, which is a kind of psychological trick to say `you're work isn't goodenough'.That will generally make the teams stay behind later and see if they can getsomething better.And it works on some occasions.This ruthless system of competition over briefs was given added piquancy bythe fact that Hanby and his partner were also involved in the competition.Explaining the reason for this, Hanby argued,The creative department consists of 5 teams (including myself ).That's one of myphilosophies.If thecreative director isn't seen to be producing work that everyoneelse wants to have done, then there's no sense of competition.The departmentbecomes terribly lethargic.I want them to get my job.I want them to beat me!Mark Stephenson, though he ran a slightly larger department consisting ofeight teams, placed similar emphasis to Hanby on competition over briefsand used the fear of losing out on a brief in order to motivate teams.Theaim, as he succinctly put it, was to `get them staying an extra two hours atwork' in the hope of coming up with the goods.Geoff Rowlands againdeveloped a similar approach.He felt strongly that creative people neededcompetition and recalled one of the forms he had used in the past to fosterthis:We (GR and another creative director) oversaw between 12 and 20 teams.And weset them against each other.We hothoused them.It was called the `playpen'.Part ofme thought it was cruel and a very negative system.But they didn't.Every Christmasthey used to take me and Mark out.You know, it was a bit like Uriah Heep.It washard in that it expunged people who.were not as good.But I found it reallyenjoyable, working with them in that hothouse atmosphere.So I feel creatives needcompetition.They tend to need competition.They manifestly need competition.Thepeople that are the [foot] soldiers, the writers and the art directors, will tend tocompete and will be very aware of what the others are doing.I've even had ®ghts.Creatives literally ®ghting over briefs.It's like school [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]