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The Mars-Venus divide's got nothing on
the mile-wide chasm that separates "creatives" and
"suits."
An accomplished and
relatively senior media executive once admitted to me that he had no
$%#&! idea how to evaluate the creative work presented by two
competing graphic design firms. Subjective elements like style,
tone, emotion, and voice were totally lost on him.
"If you weren't here, I
guess I'd pick the blue one," he said matter-of-factly.
Before that day, I
firmly believed that my more quantitatively-oriented colleagues
understood creativity and design but, relative to operational and
financial concerns, simply considered "soft" elements secondary. In
a moment, it became painfully apparent that many otherwise savvy
business thinkers have a creative blind-spot the size of an H2.
The same is true for
creative thinkers who have spent years dodging anything with decimal
points, charts, or footnotes. It doesn't take long for business
muscles to get flabby and weak.
The time has come for
both sides to drop their long-standing and overly dramatic
antagonism, hostility, and resentment. The future of the media &
entertainment industries depends on visionary and proactive creative
+ business collaboration that draws inspiration from the senses as
often as it does spreadsheets.
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