ZAK: GUIDED BY PURPOSE

What’s the key when it comes to leading creatives?

As a leader, the key thing is to motivate your team to reach creative heights that they may not have believed were possible. To achieve that, you need to inspire them to believe in themselves. We need to lift people up, set clear expectations and define what great work is to our entire agency and clients.

To instil autonomy, you first need to instil accountability. The entire team needs to be empowered to speak up and have conviction in creative presentations. Otherwise, you’ll soon find the definition of a “good meeting” becomes less about creating category-defining work for your clients.

How have you changed the way you recruit, train and mentor?

As a fledgling CD, I used to recruit based on a portfolio. But over the past 20 years, I’ve discovered some amazing creatives who weren’t classically trained at an ad school. They had ambition, enthusiasm and an inherent creativity. It just hadn’t yet been harnessed in the form of a portfolio. Starting out in the ’80s, it was hard to get my foot in the door, especially since I didn’t have any personal connections into the business. It’s one of the reasons I launched the 20Doors scholarship fund with a mission to train, mentor and give BIPOC talent that all important “in” to the industry. We’re always on the hunt for new talent with fearless creative spirits who aren’t afraid to the push the boundaries, because bravery is part of our founding DNA.

How important is it to take creative risks?

Taking smart, calculated risks is important. If we only deliver what’s expected, we’re not doing our job. Clients hire us to take their business to greater heights, but a lot of shops are structured to kill work before it ever gets to them. To make it easier for brands to get behind riskier ideas, we work closely with our clients to build mutual trust, which paves the way for braver concepts to flourish. For more “out there” ideas, I’ll challenge my team to conceive something that the brand would never buy. Sometimes this leads to a groundbreaking idea that the client actually loves.

How would you describe your own creative style?

Most creatives aim to think outside the box. Creatively, I like to think inside of it. The “box” or limitation may be the budget, timing or category restrictions. Whatever it may be, limitations force us to be truly creative. I don’t believe in imposing a particular style on a brand we work on. The brand should impose itself on us. We like to describe it as “inside the box” thinking. Or, as Orson Wells famously said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

What makes an agency great?

It starts with your founding purpose as a company. When you know what you stand for and what you’re trying to achieve, it becomes much easier to achieve it. Many shops change their stripes every time a new client comes in. To be great, you must have well-entrenched values and stick to them, even if it means turning away business. At our agency, everyone knows why they’re here, why we exist, whether they’re in finance or creative. And every client knows what to expect. It’s about having a clear vision, articulating it, and repeating it. Like any successful campaign, you can’t just say it once. It’s something that must be consistently reinforced.

How do you avoid complacency – the expectation that accolades and greatness are the default setting for a successful agency?

You must always be moving forward. At the start of every year, we set our sights on what we want to achieve collectively. We reflect on the successes. They should be celebrated. And the failures should be learning opportunities. It’s important to never settle once you’ve achieved a milestone. Start dreaming of what you’ll do next.