As Regional Sales Manager, I’m in a position where I get to speak with creative leaders on a daily basis about their goals, processes, challenges, etc. Without fail, conversations keep coming back to the same goal: producing more projects with fewer resources. That is, until I spoke with Mel Jensen, Creative Director at Digital Insight, a NCR subsidiary.
I knew something was different about Mel’s goal from the start of our conversation. He began our conversation emphasizing the talent of his team. “JT, workflow impacts quality,” he said. “Our problem is ensuring that we enable creatives to be creative. They shouldn’t have to deal with the day-to-day. Every minute away from creative detracts from the quality of work.” He left no room for misinterpretation as to why we were speaking… it was about how he can better equip his team.
In Mel’s view, doing administrative tasks takes away from his talented team finding sources of inspiration. Limiting the administrative interference increases time for inspiration, yielding higher quality output.
“Our team is required to do the job better, faster, and cheaper than the agency down the street,” Mel explained. He then proudly rattles off a plethora of reasons as to why his team can do just that. “We are in-house, so we’re familiar with the product offering, we’re familiar with our clients’ personal likes and dislikes. Agencies need onboarding – a ‘get to know you period’. We are way ahead of that the second a project kicks off…waaay ahead from the very start.”
Almost all of my conversations with creative leaders seem to stem from the directive of increasing the quantity of projects. Creative workflow solutions can certainly help with that. But it is refreshing to see the other side of the coin – someone so passionate about protecting his team, ensuring that they continue to remember and realize why they got into the ‘creative world’ in the first place: to deliver awesome creative! And when quality is the focus, creative workflow solutions can help with that as well.
JT Rimbey
Regional Sales Manager