Art director for huge clients?
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- qbner
When someone works for an ad agency as an "art director" with clients like Toyota, Amex, Pepsi or other huge clients, what exactly do they do? Does this mean they help pitch TV commercials or magazine ads?
- doesnotexist0
generally i think they actually do the creative work while the creative director says, "no."
- benfal990
huge cli...
- lol hahah thought the same thingsureshot
- :Pbenfal99
- lolohhhhhsnap
- Weyland0
snort coke and eat sushi
- zarkonite0
It's a lot more organized than with smaller clients.
There's usually a pretty detailed strategy, there's a lot of research to read, and the targets are well defined. You have to take stock of all the past brand equity, you often have to know what the previous campaigns looked like (esp. if it was by a competitor because you have to do "better"). There's always a detailed media plan too, so you know where you'll be advertising. Depending on how your agency works, there's usually some leeway for you to add to any of these if you can sell your idea to the internal team.
Depending on your creative director, you might already have an umbrella concept and you have to come up with tactics to hit the strategic objectives. Or maybe you'll have to think of a big idea and show how that would play out with whatever the media plan is. All in all you make a lot of mockups to sell your ideas, the CD destroys most of them, you try again and eventually you have enough that you can pitch to the client.
- and by "you|" I mean the pitch team pitches to the client.zarkonite
- GeorgesII0
depends how high you are in the umbrella,
often you get to only decline international campaign in the local languages, while pitching some facebook contest,that's pretty much it,
very very rarely do you get to have the creative lead with a big client like that,
so mostly you'll resize and paste some text on top someone else work,
- this, really.zarkonite
- I can't believe Georges made an actual, proper post.
http://www.ripcityba…Peter
- monospaced0
At one agency I worked at, the ADs did almost all the hard work leading up to the pitch. Coming up with entire campaign directions, executing the pitch visuals, overseeing the commercial illustration storyboards, staying up all night to get the package together, all to hand off to suits to pitch the next morning. After that, the regular designers took over to execute the chosen campaign.
- <doesnotexist
- <<OSFA
- They didn't have designers to finalize anything?!?zarkonite
- breadlegz0
Does any of this make you want to work for huge clients?
- cannonball19780
Does any of this make you want to work as an art director?
- GeorgesII0
so how huge is that clit?
- freedom0
Toyota?
- pinkfloyd0
While preparing for a pitch and the production department is hard at work into the late hours of advertising, the AD's are hired to play soccer in the hallway.
- hahaha, so true... I was one of those freelance production guys mounting boards all nightmonospaced
- mmmm, the smell of Super 77!monospaced
- did you have the good ventilation or those air vent station? we had onepinkfloyd
- Hopefully you got free dinnerpinkfloyd
- yes, vented spray booth, lots of free food and booze, it was good times, even smoked weed with the ADs at nightmonospaced
- lol @ mounting boardsdoesnotexist
- haha, yeah, funny, but you gotta start somewhere when you're fresh outta schoolmonospaced
- There's a pro "mounter" in NYC named Charlie, some short bald dude with a moustachepinkfloyd
- He was one of the hardest person we ever worked withpinkfloyd
- Hard worker or hard to work with? Haha... pro mounter.monospaced
- Very hard to work with, a massive ego who fell behind because of computerspinkfloyd
- never used mountin boards personally. seems like a strange world.doesnotexist
- Maaku0
well this AD right here is going home at 5:15 while you suckers keep doing your thing till late after 7:00
- Isnt given work for a month. let go later.cannonball1978
- freedom0
Get paid good money to feel powerful and actually do very little.
- rabbit0
Every AD I know as always a hard working person.
They pitch ideas yes, they concept, work with a CD to develop ideas further, or trash them.
They concept but also approve and guide QA the art that is produced before it goes out the door to ensure it meets their (clients) vision.
- mekk0
My last CD was a total dick, neckdeep in the managing directors bums while not able to lead a team. Also a crap designer, was just on huge photoshootings, letting photographers and post production studios do all the work and took credit for it.
But that's how it always is in bigger agencies.
To answer your question: an AD (I was talking about CD before) is the CD's monkey, doing mockups and moodboards, looking for examples and does scribblings. Prepares data for final artwork or postpro/cgi studios.
So AD's do actual design work, but only on a ver rough level by submitting hundreds of compsings etc. to have something on the table to discuss further. Repeat.