The Creative Director is Dead. Long Live the Cult Leader.
The Creative Director is Dead
You can smell it.
The faint rot of a once-mighty title.
Creative Director.
Executive Creative Director.
Chief. Global. North Star.
Whatever version of the badge they pin to your black t-shirt, it’s starting to smell like middle management.
Once upon a time, the title meant something. It meant you were dangerous. Visionary. A risk. A taste-maker who could walk into a room and bend the aesthetic of a global campaign with a single raised eyebrow. But somewhere between the fifth feedback round and the seventh stakeholder alignment meeting, the archetype lost its teeth.
Now it’s all process decks, OKRs, and “creative excellence frameworks” that drain the lifeblood from the very thing they claim to protect.
“Don’t be weird. Be on-brand.”
That’s what most ‘Creative Leadership’ is now — brand cops with Pinterest boards.
We didn’t sign up for that.
We didn’t come here to manage.
We came here to start fires.
So let’s say it out loud:
The Creative Director is dead.
And good fucking riddance.
Because what we need now isn’t management.
It’s madness.
It’s conviction.
It’s cult leadership.
Enter the Cult Leader
So if the Creative Director is dead, who rises to take their place?
Not a manager. Not a deck jockey. Not another blazer-wearing, brand-safe taste-tester who plays politics better than they play with ideas.
What we need now is something wilder. Hungrier. Less corporate ladder, more rooftop sermon.
We need the Cult Leader.
This is the creative lead as firestarter. As evangelist. As the living embodiment of a dangerous idea. Someone who can look a CMO in the eyes and say, “I’m not here to optimize. I’m here to convert.”
They don’t direct from above — they infect from within. Their job isn’t to make the work better by 10%. It’s to make the team believe in something so hard it hurts not to make it real.
The Cult Leader doesn’t need headcount. They need followers.
They channel the spirits of creative prophets who came before: Bowie in Berlin. Raf Simons in Antwerp. Harmony Korine filming kids in Washington Square. BLESS making hairbrush bags no one asked for. They’re not here to chase the market. They are here to change the temperature of the room.
“Leadership is not about consensus. It’s about conviction.”
Anyone can manage a project. But only a few can spark a movement. Only a few can gather people around an idea and say — with eyes wide open — “This is what we believe.”
And the people listen. Not because they have to. But because they want to.
How to Lead Like a Cult Leader
This isn’t about charisma. Or confidence. Or god forbid, “networking.”
Cult leadership is a creative survival mechanism — forged by those who refused to dilute their ideas just to fit into the pitch deck. It’s how visionaries stay sane in rooms full of risk-averse optimizers.
So how do you lead like a cult leader? You follow a different code.
1. Build belief before briefs
You don’t wait for alignment. You infect your team with conviction. You talk about the work like it’s already real — like it already exists in some parallel universe and your only job is to drag it back into this one.
“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
2. Protect the weird
Every room will try to sand off the sharp edges. Your job is to protect the weird. To shield the idea from premature compromise. To carry it like a smuggler — hidden under your coat until it’s too late to kill.
“I put my hand into the crack and I feel this electricity… it’s very dangerous.” – Björk
3. Create language, not just work
The best cults speak in tongues. They invent vocabulary, iconography, mythologies. As a creative leader, you build culture by creating language. A phrase. A rhythm. A mantra that becomes the gravity well the work orbits around.
At RIOT, we don’t say “brainstorm.” We say “break the world and rebuild it.”
“You only have to change something 3% to make it feel new.” – Virgil Abloh
4. Make it feel dangerous
If the idea doesn’t scare someone, it’s probably not worth making. Fear is a signpost. Unnerving is good. Confusion is fuel. The cult leader doesn’t chase comfort — they chase combustion.
“Nothing happened. And everything happened.”
5. Preach through action
You can’t just talk it. You have to live it. The cult leader makes work that converts people — not because they’re told to believe, but because they feel it. The idea bleeds through every frame, every sound, every choice.
They don’t ask for buy-in. They cause it.
“Didn’t I do it for you?” – FKA twigs
Inside the Temple: How RIOT Builds Belief
We don’t have a corporate playbook. We have scripture scrawled on post-its. We don’t run meetings. We summon rooms.
At RIOT, we build belief by making the work feel like a world — not a campaign. Everyone who touches it becomes part of it. Everyone who enters the studio is stepping into something larger than themselves.
We protect ideas like relics. We speak in shorthand that sounds like prophecy to outsiders. Some of our rituals are obvious. Others are hidden in plain sight.
Our altar is the work.
We don’t worship awards. Or process. Or credentials.
We worship the idea — the one that keeps you up at night. The one that’s too raw, too risky, too “off brief” to be safe. That’s the one we kneel before.
Everything we do is in service of that idea. We bleed for it. We argue for it. We protect it like it’s sacred — because it is.
If it doesn’t change the air in the room, it’s not done yet.
This isn’t decoration. It’s devotion.
The work is the altar. And we show up every day to make offerings.
Our briefs are broken on purpose.
We don’t follow instructions. We follow instincts.
The brief is a starting point — not a set of rules, but a collection of loose wires, client anxieties, and half-seen ambitions. Our job isn’t to check boxes. It’s to blow the doors off what the brief *thought* it was asking for.
Sometimes we rip it up before the kickoff. Sometimes we rewrite it mid-project. Sometimes the real brief only reveals itself deep in the edit — when something *clicks*, and suddenly everything else feels like a lie.
This isn’t a mistake. It’s the process. The idea is alive, and we follow where it leads. Even if it doesn’t have a folder name yet.
The best work doesn’t come from what was asked.
It comes from what was needed — but couldn’t yet be named.
We’re not disrespecting the strategy.
We’re listening to the ghost inside it.
We don’t do kickoffs. We do openings — like a stage play or a portal.
We don’t do “ideation sessions.” We do mood possessions, where we binge references like witches reading bones. If the room doesn’t feel creatively haunted by the idea by the end of the hour, we go again.
We don’t “sync.” We summon.
Our process isn’t clean. It’s obsessive. We chase goosebumps, not gantt charts. We light incense. Blast weird Japanese jazz. Pull references from 1997 anime forums and Norwegian funeral typography blogs.
We are unapologetically ritualistic about inspiration. Not because it looks cool. But because it works.
Inspiration is not a luxury. It’s the engine.
Most studios optimise for speed. We optimise for possession — for those moments when the room goes quiet, the idea takes over, and everyone feels it at once:
“This is the one.”
Our clients are initiates.
This isn’t a service relationship. It’s a creative rite of passage.
If you come to RIOT, you’re not just here to buy a campaign. You’re here to cross the threshold. You’re here to get uncomfortable. To burn your buzzwords. To let the idea pull you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go.
We conjure visions to spark conversion. We don’t chase “alignment.” We build belief.
The best clients don’t just approve the work. They become possessed by it. They defend it in boardrooms. They quote it in meetings. They send us voice notes at 2am because they’re still thinking about the opening shot.
Once you’ve seen the idea, you can’t unsee it. Once you’ve felt it, you can’t go back.
This isn’t a transaction. It’s a transformation.
If you’re not ready to believe in something, we’re not the studio for you.
Belief Is the Brief
You don’t need another org chart. You need a cult.
The kind that risks everything for the idea.
The kind that writes in strange symbols until the message becomes divine.
The kind that doesn’t just make work — it makes believers.
The Creative Director is dead.
Long live the Cult Leader.
