An exploration of Creative Ops for the overwhelmed, disenchanted creative professional and theorganizations that rely on them.
Ask yourself right now, at this moment, “am I proud of my work?”
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe “meh”.
But the answer should be yes.
And for far too many of us, it is not
Maybe you won an award
Maybe you earned a headline.
Maybe you got a raise.
But are you proud of your creation?
Humans now capture more than two trillion images and videos per year,
and generative algorithms are already responsible for billions.
Every business trying to sell or market a product today needs an ever-increasing amount of content.
People need to work with images and
videos every day during the work week.
teams,
content,
channels,
pressure on creatives
Phase 1 — 1990+Digital Professionals
AdobePowerPoint
Phase 2 — 2010+Democratized Creation
InstagramCanvaTikTok
Phase 3 — 2022+Generative AI Takeoff
OpenAIStable DiffusionDall-EMidjourney
We are responsible for shaping the brand,
but we no longer have the capacity to
influence it.
We need tools that allow us to scale our
judgment, and to distribute it into other
teams and processes.
Returning the time to think, debate, go on
a walk, or do absolutely nothing.
Clear your head, be totally unstructured,
free — this is how to generate something
truly original.
Creative minds need time to do
nothing
Every day, creatives head out into the unknown
in search of the new and powerful; in search of rare creative seeds.
And once a seed is discovered, these creatives aim to develop it into something original, comprehensive, and compelling.
But it all starts with the vast
unknown and the perennial appeal
of exploring it.
Today, the unknown is as magnetic
as ever.
We need a factory, a container
for our thoughts, ideas, and
priorities.
One that syncs across our
technologies, our teams, our
worlds.
A language that understands the
complexity of our work. Where
working files are as important as
the ones we publish.
In this world, there is no
definition of done.
Everything is expanding.
Everything is proliferating. Everything
is shifting. And we cannot be scared.
There are more sources of inspiration
than ever. There are more people
bringing ideas to market than ever.
More tools to help us do things better.
More platforms for our ideas to live.
This might feel
overwhelming but it
HAS to be understood as
empowering and enabling.
Culturally relevant art that achieves a desired goal.
Potentially, the single most difficult thing to do today.
It’s not art for the sake of art. It’s art for the sake of
impact. If you fail, well, back to the drawing board.
If you succeed, it is truly fulfilling.
Finding better ways of making decisions —
automated ways of orchestrating our influence
around the organization — will define our
capacity to be creative.
Our success depends on the ability to
efficiently scale the production and
distribution of high-quality decisions.
We must tie together the micro
decisions of the creative process.
Decentralized organizations sifting through the chaos of content,
iterations: all of this requires a
new way of working.
There will never be one tool that solves this but there can be a
unifying language that translates it — that can tame it, and
ultimately create that space.
“For us to be successful, we need to automate everything that can automated, in order to have the capacity to do the things we can’t. If you can create the capacity to be magical, then you might have a chance to do it. How can we create space?”
— Andrew Robertson, CEO BBDO
I don’t recognize you
anymore.
That potentially beautiful idea,
no matter how big or small it
may have been, doesn’t look or
sound like it used to. Like it
originally intended to.
Stripped
Butchered
Sloppy process, pulled in different conflicting directions without a
grounding centralizing force, takes our high-potential concepts (and our
human creative integrity) to the shed.
They don’t stand a chance.
Yes, these are our realities.
This future won't be created by the existing.
Orchestration is the future of creativity.
The need for speed, today, is real.
But managing speed is, mostly
poorly managed.
Bureaucracy is real. But,
bureaucrats can be managed. Managed
up. Managed down.
Uninformed opinions are real.
The helicoptering professional-
parent is a staple of the process
that needs to be understood and
considered.
Feedback loops are real… but
vicious. How do you keep it
constructive and committed to
progress?
Uncertainty is real. Is human
creativity on the brink of a new
dawn or Armageddon?
It used to be that making content
was hard. Now it’s making *sense
of it* that’s hard.
Yesterday’s systems just don’t
cut it.
Orchestration creates space.
We need something new.
Not just new tools, but a reframing
of the problem itself. We need to move
from thinking about how to organize
our creative assets to thinking about
how to orchestrate them.
This shift from organization to
orchestration is at the heart of a
new category: Creative Operations.
Creative Ops is the process, people,
and tooling that channels creative
assets into productive use. The tools
that enable orchestration will become
the new center of the creative
tools universe.
If every company is a media company,
and media companies are creating more andmore content
and more and more content has to beevaluated by creatives,
and creatives need this work to be original,
and creating original work requires space,
and space requires automation,
and automation is only possible throughorchestration…then
and media companies are creating more and more content
and more and more content has to be evaluated by creatives,
and automation is only possible through orchestration… then
Creativity is a deeply personal process. A process that is
claustrophobic and averse to encroaching forces that,
intentionally or unintentionally, kill momentum and potential.
These forces aren’t all external. Sometimes they lie within us.
Sometimes it is our own doubt and skepticism of our work that
needs a minute to sort itself out.
Ideas need to breathe. They need to scream a bit.
they need to get stretched and twisted. They need to be added to.
Trimmed down. Stress tested. Hated on. Loved. They need a good
night’s sleep. Because maybe that small idea can be a huge idea.
Or maybe that one good idea, said differently, becomes
an iconic idea. The idea is only as good as our ability to put
it through a process. A fair process that is truly and honestly
aimed at helping it realize its potential.
Process that provides the space.
All the thankless, manual parts of the creative process are
usually where it all breaks if not managed well.
It is where great feedback is lost.
Where bad feedback gets overvalued. And creative walks
the line between memorable and forgettable.
Towards a system record.
Not just new tools, but a reframing of the problem itself. We need to move
from thinking about how to *organize* our creative assets to how to
*orchestrate* them.
This shift is the heart of a Creative Operations system: the process,
people, and tooling that put creative assets into productive use.
The objective of this system is to automate decision making so
that creatives can focus on high level work... or nothing at all.
Creative Ops is asystem of record for the creative process:
an automatedorchestration tool.
Think about all the powerful automation that surrounds Salesforce.
Think about how much more productive sales teams are thanks to this automation.
As with sales, the creative process has common patterns.
But none of the existing tools have invested in data structures
that can really support them, instead settling for flimsy concepts
like “tags.” “Tags” might help you organize your content, but they’re
not nearly structured enough to enable process orchestration.
We need to standardize on much more robust concepts — Approvals,
Versions, Campaigns, Boards, and so on — before we can
automate key parts of the creative process.
Today is the future ofCreative Ops
In a world of endless content the only thing that matters is the real-time
understanding of how much content you’re building, where all it’s going,
who’s using it, and how it’s performing.
Creative Ops is not an idea, it’s a system, and it’s built for your ideas.
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