Networking Event 2

Mishy Cass is a creative director in Seattle and he spent twenty years of her career working at different AD Agencies in the west coast. For the past three years she has been a group creative direction for a company called REI.

In this event she spoke about ‘creativity.’ Mishy says “everyone is creative and that is what makes us individuals but somewhere along the line we all are taught to believe we are not creative.”

Mishy realizes that she felt the happy, creative and where she shines, is outside the lines and not conforming to the norms of being creative.  The most random ideas are the best ideas that can be shared with clients and most likely they will be interested in. She says “the question is how do you take all the random thoughts and connect the dots and make it into something? How do you take random thoughts and bring them to life?” This is the trickiest part of being a creative in an agency or client side.

Mishy begins to say when working agency side it is more like a sprint. She compares it to a race. The processes has a beginning, middle and an end. Everyone in the group is all working on something the finish line. Working client side is like running a marathon, it is more slow paced sometime the path and leaders tend to change. Sometimes darning the process you are not sure if you are at the end because there might be another part to the project .

The creative directions that succeed in working client side are the type of people without an ego, very collaborative and open-minded. It’s a long term commitment. Every minute of the day is planned out with meetings. Most of the time the meetings had nothing to do with the work. It’s more of the business side of things. She realizes that the more you learn the business aspect of things, the better you are at coming up with creative solutions and problem solving.

I learned that things aren’t always what they seem. Working hard can only get you part of the way when you are working in a team. The team must feel motivated, excited, inspired and over all happy to get the best possible outcome. Team work is very powerful when the individuals work as a team to get things done. You do your best work when you are more passionate.