The “creative excellence” of the work agencies produces waxes and wanes. It’s a perplexing, but also an intriguing, phenomenon. What is the sweet spot for an agency? What does an agency need to produce really great work?

Micah Walker, chief creative officer & co-founder, Bear Meets Eagle On Fire

So much of it comes down to the real mission and culture of the agency. 

I know some believe you can do one special thing a year and the rest simply isn’t worth sweating over, but I’ve always seen that as the easy way out. I just think it’s harder to turn the care button on and off so deliberately, and that rollercoaster really takes a toll on culture and people. It’s also a bit like gaming the system, more than it is about creating a culture of great work.

From my experience, the best agencies are more conscious of creating an environment where everything you make matters – that you can always make everything better and are encouraged to do so, even if it’s just a bit.

It is harder than it used to be with so much timing pressure, but if a culture of great is what you’re driven by, then I think this ultimately shows across a body of work, not just on a one-off award entry. It’s the harder path, there’s no doubt, but I’d argue it’s also a much more rewarding culture to be a part of.  

Alex Derwin, chief creative officer, BMF

Creative excellence is an elusive creature. Just when you think you’ve trapped it, it ups-and-runs, ducks behind a wall of research, an ill-defined business problem, or just a well-meaning, but average, idea. And perhaps that’s as it should be. If it was straightforward, we’d get comfortable and that’s never a good place for an agency to be. We all know bands or artists who have found their comfort zone after years of striving – only for them to become staid and irrelevant. The exceptions are always the ones who risk failure, continue to experiment, and chase something tantalisingly out of their reach.

Agencies are the same – the chase is what inspires curiosity, sharpens skills, and keeps you relevant. The very real risk of falling flat on your face keeps you chasing. We’ll always need the insatiable appetite and nervous energy of creative minds to keep hunting down creative perfection, to make those invaluable emotional connections, to seek out difference, to reveal the implausible, and the inexplicable, but we should remember it’s the chase that counts more than the outcome. We should set our standards sky high, but not expect to necessarily attain them. As Salvador Dali said, “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.”

Imagine if creative success was guaranteed every time, you put pen to paper. If there was a formula for it. Or an algorithm. How boring. How uninspiring. How anti-creative. Our imaginations would quickly dull by a lack of adventure, discovery, and revelation. 

As a creative agency you’ve got to love the journey as much as the result, so my advice is to keep chasing, and if you never find the sweet spot, perhaps that’s for the best.

Amy Weston, executive creative director, CHEP

As an industry, the work we create should be a reflection of what is happening in society. Sitting at the edge of change. Stimulating and provoking debate, taking risks, being bold, and knowing when to sit tight and ride it out. 

There’s no exact formula to achieving that ambition, and while the creative process is never a linear or rational one, there are a few elements that I believe are core to an agency’s creative excellence. 

1. The work needs to come from the brand’s purpose. The idea can be brilliant, but if it doesn’t feel like it’s come from the brand, or that the brand doesn’t have the cultural cache to support the idea, consumers will quickly call it out. 

2. Trust – agencies and clients need to have strong relationships, fuelled by trust and confidence (not ego – those just get in the way) to ride together through the uncertainty as we attempt to create something new and different on the way to finding moments of creative excellence. 

3. The most important ingredient is the people. The success of the work any agency produces ultimately comes down to those creating it. Diverse thinkers given the space and support to nurture their creative process leads to agencies creating great work. 

As agencies, we need to celebrate our people when they succeed, support them when they don’t, and take a step back and give them room to do what they do best in-between. 

The unpredictability that makes creativity exciting makes it equally exhausting. It takes its toll. Creative excellence can result in a creative hangover – the energy, effort, passion and blind faith it takes to make something new, leaves clients and agencies both invigorated and drained, and to maintain excellence we need to make sure that we’re providing our people with moments to take a breath and take stock. 

The best, consistently excellent agencies have those three elements in spades, ensuring their creativity is applied with precision to build on a brand’s purpose, fostering relationships built off trust and confidence, and ultimately, providing its people with the space and support to enable them to be creatively excellent, something we should all do in the businesses we work in. 

Jim Ingram, national chief creative, Thinkerbell

Opportunity. For any agency to have a fighting chance at creating brilliant work, you need to eke out as many opportunities as you can. There’s no such thing as “an award-winning brief”, as often the best work comes from the most unlikely place. So the more opportunities you give yourself, the more potential there is to unearth the magic. So what does opportunity look like? Well it’s certainly not sitting around waiting for the big brief with the big budget. Sure, they come occasionally, but the opportunity lies within the cracks. Having an agency with stretchy skills means clients come to you for different reasons, and somewhere in and amongst all that, the next bit of creative excellence will emerge. A brand strategy project can lead to a rebrand, which can lead to a beautiful design opportunity. An earned media opportunity can lead to a partnership that can lead to a TV show. A sponsorship conversation with a client over text can lead to hi-jacking the Ashes. They’re all opportunities that can come when you have an agency with a truly open and diverse offering. The trick then is helping the opportunity grow, and knowing just when to pick it and eat it. Mmmm, yummy.

Emma Robbins, executive creative director, M&C Saatchi

The planets aligned in a 1000-year event in April. 

Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the moon.

Rare and magical shit. 

Just like when a business problem, brilliant strategic insight and killer brief, the timings, the creatives on fire, and the client, (they’re the moon) all align. 

Add in some interplanetary most extraordinary craft, and there’s your sweet spot.