What is creative management?
Creative management is where the creative director's job meets the operations of a studio. It covers who works on what, how the team is structured, how work is reviewed, how standards are held and how the people who make the work are developed, hired and kept. It is distinct from creative direction, which is about the idea itself, and from project management, which is about the schedule and the budget. Creative management is the layer that makes a group of talented people into a team that can be relied on.
In a small agency it is often one person: the executive creative director who also runs the studio. In larger ones it is a structure of creative directors, heads of department and traffic managers.
Why it matters
Why creative management matters
Talent without management produces brilliant work occasionally and chaos regularly. Good creative management makes the brilliant work repeatable: the right editor on the right film, the review that catches the problem early, the junior who grows into the role because somebody gave them the stretch job. It also keeps the standard. Every piece that leaves the building either raises or lowers what the agency is known for, and someone has to be the last eye.
Badly done, it shows as burnout, turnover and work that is competent and forgettable.
In practice
How creative management works in practice
- 01
Day to day, creative management is casting and reviewing. The creative lead decides who is on each job based on fit, availability and development, then runs the reviews: concept, rough, fine, final. They give notes that are about the work rather than their preferences, and they decide when something is done. They also run the rhythm of the studio: the weekly look at what is in play, who is overloaded and what is coming.
- 02
Over longer cycles it is building the team: hiring for the gaps, pairing juniors with seniors, deciding which freelancers become regulars, and protecting time for the work that is not for a client, the experiments that keep the studio sharp.
At RIOT
Creative management at RIOT
RIOT is run by its founder and executive creative director, so creative management here means the person setting the standard is also the person in the edit. The Major Tuddy mascot reveal for the Washington Commanders and the Making the Mascot documentary about it were one creative team carrying a reveal and a film about the reveal. The SoulCycle instructor documentary series, seventeen films, is what creative management looks like at scale: a consistent standard across a run, with different people on different films.
Watch out
What people get wrong about creative management
Confusing it with approving. A creative manager who only shows up at the final review is a gate, not a leader; by then the only options are expensive. The other mistake is managing creative people like a factory. Output per hour is the wrong metric for ideas. The right ones are whether the work is good, whether it was on time and whether the people who made it would do it again.
