Each creative person is different.

For instance, you might see a designer with a button-up shirt and khakis working away on a crisp, white Mac.

Or, you might see someone and go, “Is that a hobo? Nope. He’s wearing great shoes, must be an artist.”

Put different creative personalities into a professional setting and the creative process is going to be an interesting dynamic to say the least.

What’s really interesting to me is that, from a creative standpoint, we pretty much use the same tools. Every designer I know uses Adobe Creative Suite on a Mac. Every writer I know uses a keyboard. (We don’t get fancy software.) And truth be told, every creative department works with the same types of clients. A maternity clothing store is pretty much chasing the same audience as every other maternity clothing store. Our job is to make that store stand out and look better. My point is that, when you boil it down, there are only two variables of advertising output: creative process and the client.

Clients are way out of my control and realm of expertise. The creative process is not.

In the past two weeks, I’ve met with some mentors who left agency life for academia. Both individuals, unprovoked, said that my shop is the place where their student creatives want to work. That’s a huge compliment. Absolute has an enormous range of great clients, but at this point, none will be running a national Superbowl ad. Why would these students aspire to work on local or regional accounts when other shops are working on national and international accounts? Both of these mentors cited our creative performance.

After those conversations, I decided to get all Freudian on our creative success – not “what does the aftermath of chili-night really mean?” Freud as in, “what internal dynamics have made us successful?” Freud. Here are what I believe to be the five truths about our creative team and the reasons why we are, pound-for-pound, the best creative shop from Minneapolis to Missoula.

1. There are No New Ideas on Google

Google is a lot of things. At the end of the day, Google is a search engine. In other words, Google only shows what it’s able to find. New ideas must come from the team. That’s not to say our team doesn’t use Google, but we use images and video as a way of explaining our ideas, not as the source.  Instead of “look what I found,” the conversation goes “I’m thinking about something kinda like this, but it would be this, that and the other.” Good ideas come from finding the uniqueness in what your selling. If it’s truly unique, it won’t exist. In fact, there have been countless times where we’ve had to veto a concept because we found the same thing online.

2.  Our Department Cheers on a Concept Cage Match

Rarely is one idea alone on the table. This means that each concept needs to fight it out to make the final cut. I wasn’t aware of how many other shops have a Caesar-like figure that ultimately decides the fate of an idea. Our shop is much more flexible. It’s in the client’s best interest to have creatives who A, care enough about the product to fight for it and B, who work in an environment where they can feel free to vocalize their opinions. True, someone has to make the final call. But when your leadership is willing to concede their own ideas for the team, good things happen.

3. We Try Not to Fall in Love

Creatives tend to get married to their own ideas. As I just mentioned, it’s great to have a forum where it’s safe to engage in conceptual combat. The flip side is that the fight needs to be idea versus idea, not ego versus ego. We’re all guilty of this. As the lone writer on a staff of designers, I probably fall on the copy sword more than I ought to. I probably should say that I fall on my copy pen more than sword because the pen is mightier. (Pun for the win!) The key takeaway is that marrying an idea is dangerous. Advertising creative is very subjective. Hopelessly committing to a concept eradicates any objectivity, and that can spell disaster for an ad’s success.

4. We Use Client Ideas

Just because we come up with hundreds of ideas every week doesn’t mean our volume of creative trumps one really good idea. Sometimes a client will walk us through a concept and we say, “that’s pretty darn good.” We always include client ideas in our brainstorming pool. Once in a while, the client idea wins out as the best idea on the board. That’s great. We want to put the best product out there. As long as it wasn’t copied from a Google search, it doesn’t matter where that idea came from.  The key is to listen and embrace outside input.

5. We Think of Campaigns

In the biz, the best ideas have “legs.” That means that any single idea can be turned into a full-blown advertising campaign across any media. By looking for “legs,” we’re able to think about the bigger picture. Some ideas are great as one-offs. They may have a great punch line or a really cool visual element, but if they can’t be replicated and placed in other applications they’re sacrificed for the greater good.

At our shop, we’re still working to get better. If the I could call this column the 6ixes instead of the 5ives, I’d throw that in. The best never think they’re perfect. Neither do we. Sure, we’ve got swagger, but we know there’s a long way to go. We want to remove the “pound-for-pound” statement from “pound-for-pound the best creative from Minneapolis to Missoula” and simply be known as “those guys who do cool stuff.” It’s something to shoot for. With luck, our process will continue to be successful, our clients’ businesses will grow as a result of our work and the top creative students will still aspire to join us.