What Creatives Need To Do Their Best Work — with Luke Sullivan

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What Creatives Need To Do Their Best Work

July 21, 2022 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Design Leadership Mentorship Strategy

Guest Speaker

Luke Sullivan

Author, consultant, trainer, speaker

After 32 years in the ad business at elite creative agencies like The Martin Agency and Fallon Worldwide, Luke Sullivan spent 10 years as the chair of the advertising department at the Savannah College of Art and Design and now works as a consultant, trainer, and keynote speaker. He’s the author of the popular advertising book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Advertising, and the blog heywhipple.com.

Creatives need good leaders to do good work.

A leader can be a lot of things, but a leader of creatives needs to be a special breed. Fostering successful creatives requires a balancing act of authenticity, empathy, transparency, and vulnerability — skills that rely on an investment of time and patience.

In this Real Creative Leadership episode, advertising legend and author Luke Sullivan opens up his toolkit to share which practices best serve creative leaders and teams. He also explains what it is about the soft skills that allows creative leaders to have the biggest impact.

Join now to discover:

Why good creative leaders start with “why” instead of “how”
What it really means to lead by example
When encouragement matters most
Where teams get tripped up by demotivation

mentioned in this show:

Adam Morgan

Creative Leader and RCL Host

The Stoke Group

Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency

Transcript

Adam Morgan:

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Real Creative Leadership. Our topic today is how to lead your team and get them to do their very best work. And we’ve got a legend of advertising here to help us understand this topic, and I’m super, super excited. Yes. Yes, legend. You can shake your head, Luke, all you want, but in my mind, you are.

Let me give you a little background. After 33 years in the ad business at elite agencies like Fallon McElligott or Fallon Worldwide, and the Martin Agency, Luke became the chair of the advertising department at the Savannah College of Art and Design for 10 years. He’s the author of the book. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Advertising. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more later. And then he’s got a blog, heywhipple.com. But right now he’s a consultant and lives in Savannah with his family. Luke, welcome to Real Creative Leadership.

Luke Sulivan:

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah. That was just my little blurb on who you are and your background, but maybe if you’d like to give us a start of your relationship with creativity and your perspective on it, where you’re going, maybe some history, whatever you want to give us.

Luke Sullivan:

Well, I coach my students that when they’re in their interview, they should not be quiet about this part. Typically in interviews, we adopt the thing that we were … Most people are raised not to talk about themselves, right? Not to brag about themselves. And it always feels a little weird when you sell yourself, but you have to get good at that. You have to be able to tell somebody who’s going to hire you, “Well, here’s why you should hire me.”

So if I’m going to talk about myself, I have been writing my entire life. I remember I still have the stuff I wrote in third grade and won a thing at the elementary school. I wrote for my high school paper. I wrote for my college paper. It’s what I enjoy doing more than anything else, except maybe reading. I also got into doing cartoons. And then after college, I continued to write for alternative weeklies and regional music publication. Writing, writing, writing.

It took me a long time to earn my degree, Bachelor’s of arts for psychology, into a paying gig, and I actually never did. I simply had to figure out how am I going to get into this advertising business? I studied the work of two local geniuses, Tom McElligott and Ron Anderson. They were credited for basically sparking the ‘Outside of New York advertising can be good’ growth in the ’80s. They were my first bosses and I owe everything I am to them.

I went from there to I did one miserable year in New York City. I’m just not a New York person. I just want to push everything back about six feet, just get back. Too much for me. Then I went to the Martin Agency for five of the best years of my career. Just loved it. Mike Hughes was the guy then. And then I went to Fallon for 10 years, and then I decided to sell out. You get to sell out once. And I was hired by a very, very bad agency, whose name will remain unmentioned, and I was there for five years and I was killed in a palace coup.

Yeah, yeah. You’re just sitting there and suddenly you go, and you turn around and your back. “What’s that? That’s a knife. What?” And I was killed in a palace coup by two people who I really, really quite liked until then.

And so Wendy Ludlow Clark was one of my clients back then, the Wendy Clark, the CEO of Dentsu now, and she said come down to where she was at GSDM in Austin. So I had the last eight years of my career were at GSDM in Austin, a wonderful place. And then I went to teach for 10 years at SCAD, and now I’m done.

Adam Morgan:

Oh, that’s awesome. Well, I’ll have to say, backing up, I know you said there were some people who were pivotal in your career, and I just have to say you were one that I owe some gratitude to. Because I remember, I don’t know when it was ’94, ’95, somewhere around there, when I got ahold of your book, Hey, Whipple, and it just really solidified my dream to become an advertising copywriter. And that’s where I started off and there were a lot of great insights and it just seemed like such an exciting career.

Luke Sullivan:

If I toot my own horn, I’ll say I made it sound fun.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah. There are just moments of kicking back and putting your feet up on a table and talking with your art director or writer or partner. That’s what it was. I mean, you captured the majesty of that era of my life, for sure.

Luke Sullivan:

Well, that’s great. I’m so glad you liked it.

Adam Morgan:

Well, let’s tell us. So now, I mean, this is a book that, like I said, I read it way back in the day, but now you’re in the sixth version, sixth edition. Just kicking it off or is it already out there? Tell us more about the book.

Luke Sullivan:

Yeah, well, the first one actually came out in 1998 —

Adam Morgan:

Oh. Then it was ’98 when I first read it. Fair enough.

Luke Sullivan:

Yeah, ’98.I look back on that edition. Yeah, I don’t cringe because it still was one of the better books out, even at that time. But I figured a whole heck of a lot out since then, not by being brilliant, but just by listening and studying and being curious. It takes generally about a year and a half to revise one of those things, partly because I write the whole thing anyway. I just keep seeing things to improve, as any writer does when they look at their own work. And I have to update all the work, too. I just don’t want to have last year’s case histories as examples. A few classics I keep.

But then in addition to just updating and rewriting, there’s whole new things to start talking about. I mean, I had to start talking about social media in the fourth edition. I decided I would bring in a coauthor, Edward Boches in the fifth edition, because while I was keeping up I thought pretty well, I wanted to bring in somebody with some real chops. And so Edward really made the fifth edition what it is. But I had to add entire new sections on social media. Had two great interviews with people like Andrew Keller from Crispin. You remember that name? When they were radioactive. He’s now at Facebook. So I had a good interview with him. And as well as another guy from Facebook, who’s down in Auckland, Andy Blood. These guys really opened my eyes about social media and about constructing campaign architecture in the social media space.

I added an entire section on what some people call creative technology. Some call it user experience, UX, whatever. Some of that stuff I learned from my own students. I have had a couple of pretty smart students who said, “Dude, you’ve got to have this in there,” and they were right. And then I improved the copywriting chapter vastly.

I put off really writing the copywriting chapter, rewriting it, because I did that for 34 years, and I never thought that I could actually teach a class in just copywriting with just 10 weeks. I just thought there’s no way I can put it in there. There’s no way I can put it in a book. But I finally decided that, “Screw it. You have to do that.” And so I vastly improved the copywriting chapter, and then vastly improved the very last chapter, which is called Starting World War III: What It Takes to Get Into the Business.

Adam Morgan:

Well, and now, I mean, the fact that we’re talking here is not just about the book, but you’ve been moving on to a new topic. Because a lot of what the book was about was getting into the business and the day-to-day and getting going. But now you are moving on to more of a focus on creative directors and how do we help creative directors improve, and how do we help them learn the right skills? And I think there’s a big appetite out there for a lot of people to do that.

Luke Sullivan:

Now that I’m a consultant, that’s one of the things that I can help agencies with. My old boss, Mike Hughes, rest in peace, told me that just being a good creative doesn’t qualify you to be a good creative director. It just doesn’t. I know some brilliant creatives who could think rings around me, but they just have no sense for managing people — some of the soft and tangible skills that are part of being a creative director, that are vitally important, especially if you’re leading teams and brands. So I did a lot of research for this one presentation that I gave. It was a good year and a half of work just on basically one chapter, if I may, reading Todd Henry and many other good books on managing creatives.

And one of the first things that I noticed is that I say to people who are trying to get good at this, “Think back and remember what you were like as a young creative. Let’s just start with that. What were you like?” Now, I can only tell you what I was like, but I was a pain in the ass. I was all energy and no direction. I was full of opinions. “This sucks and that sucks.” And more than anything, I was a cynic. I was a cynic.

Here’s the thing, though. I think most creatives are like me. I think there are some nice people who have different lives than I did, who don’t have this ruthless cynicism at their heart. But I think most creatives do. I think most creatives are vandals, the really good ones are vandals. They’re nose-wrinklers, they’re eye-rollers. And I think that’s good because when you have cynics on your staff, number one, you’re trying to create work that’s going to be seen by a nation that is full of eye-rollers as well. Everybody’s so skeptical about everything, so how do you get a brand to show up in this world of people that don’t believe shit? How do you do that? So creatives with a high dose of cynicism in their soul are really good bullshit detectors.

And they’ll call bullshit on a brief that’s kind of trying to cheerlead its way into making some claim. They’re more authentic than somebody who just takes the orders from the creative director. We have to say, “This is the best flight you’ll ever have.” Well, it’s not. I don’t care what brand of airline you’re talking about, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s flying, and flying sucks. So that’s how creative I think the kind of creative I would want to hire thinks. We just don’t start with the, hey, cheerleading. Yes.

I remember working on United airlines back at Fallon. And the hallway brief was basically, flying sucks, but it sucks less here. That’s an authentic sort of approach that allowed us to, I think, write and create advertising that didn’t look like clueless cheerleading. So that’s one of the first things I suggest is to look at who you’re leading. Who you’re leading is a group of pirates and vandals. And pirates and vandals don’t go with cheerleading, and they’re going to second guess everything you tell them. That’s just their nature. It’s their nature. So how do you get a team of pirates to behave like a Navy is really what’s at stake here. How do you do that?

Adam Morgan:

Well, you’ve also mentioned that the way that we used to manage people has changed. The role of the creative director, the way they used to do it, the brutal CD. Tell us more about that and how that’s changing over time.

Luke Sullivan:

Oh my God, my God. I fortunately never had a brutal CD. If I had that, sparks would’ve really flown because I wouldn’t have taken that, even as a clueless young kid. But they are out there. They are out there. And imagine they’ve gone down in number a little bit, but I think during the eighties and nineties they probably were at their high-water mark when the salaries started to explode up there. And it’s kind of like the tour director sort of syndrome, where if you have one hit and suddenly Hollywood’s giving you tons of money and you just think, “Oh, everything I think is great.” But the brutal creative director, I think, and I did my own best pocket research for a presentation on being creative director.

And I asked all my followers on Facebook to do this poll. And I put up four different kinds of creative directors that you’ve worked with, which ones were the worst? And the one that got 37% people saying, “Wow, that’s the worst.” I called it the person who’s working out their childhood issues in the creative department, because that’s what they’re doing. What they’re doing is they’re working out issues from their childhood and abusing people and swinging their power around. And I’m amazed that they can last as long as they do.

The reason why brutal creative directors can last as long as they do in a job is the same reason that we forgive misbehavior of rock stars. We forgive crazy behavior from creative people. But they don’t last. They’re not sustainable. They’re going to burn out their troops. The troops will leave to go with somebody who they respect this brutal creative director and say, “Yes, he did great work.” But it’s not sustainable because they don’t respect him as a person. So I just think it’s out. Schmucks like that are out.

Adam Morgan:

No, I totally agree. I mean, I think just everything from Me Too and so many other trends that are finally helping out.

Luke Sullivan:

Yeah.

Adam Morgan:

But it’s just like, we’re not tolerating crazy rock stars as much, so that’s a good trend.

Luke Sullivan:

Yeah. Yep. That is a good thing.

Adam Morgan:

Well, maybe let’s dig into it. And so you’ve done all this research. Let’s talk about, what are the qualities of a great creative leader, from your perspective? I would love to just hear as we go through a couple of them and you can just give us some good context on them.

Luke Sullivan:

Well, yeah. All right. Well, let’s talk again about what… remember you yourself as a young creative. What would you have liked? Which is, I think, what a creative director, a good creative director should imagine. It doesn’t mean to cow-tow to yourself as when you were a young creative person who’s probably all messed up like I was. But if I think back, the things that bothered me most that I wish that I could change if I could run this place, would’ve been clueless and timid clients, clueless and timid or brutal creative directors, and boring or clueless briefs.

Those are generally the big three that you have to kind of juggle in a creative environment. And so that’s all in the book, but those are the things that I continue to lecture on today, because that’s what creative people out there are thinking. If you could overhear them, and many times we can, whether you see it on their slack or you hear it about it, hear them complaining in the break room, they’re out there complaining. They have opinions. And it’s worthwhile to listen because it will make you a better leader if you know what they’re thinking, even if what they’re thinking is stupid or crap or misguided.

Adam Morgan:

Yep.

Luke Sullivan:

One of the things that I didn’t like as a junior creative, and I still don’t like to this day, is meetings, meetings. Meetings, our time sucks.

People, creative people get into this business to create, to create. But so much of our time in the business is spent in meetings where we’re talking about creating but we’re not creating. To me, the meeting is the creative’s ninth circle of Dante’s hell. To be in a meeting when you’d rather be creating. And my guess is that most meetings, 90% of them, aren’t needed. If you have a good strategist and a good account team, and they work well with a client, you come up with a sort of a direction and you hand that off to the creative teams and you give them a deadline and some parameters and you go. So my first piece of advice is fewer meetings, more conversations in the hallway. Creators will love you for that.

Adam Morgan:

But there are a lot of companies that are putting out models of, if you can solve it in an email, if you can solve it in a Slack, if you can solve it in a hallway conversation, that’s always preferred and better than a big, long pomp and circumstance.

Okay. So besides transparency, what else? You talked about red tape, removing red tape.

Luke Sullivan:

Well-

Adam Morgan:

Authenticity, there we go.

Luke Sullivan:

Authenticity is the word I use. And it’s because everybody’s an eye-roller, including consumers, people out there in the world, and especially creative people. Authentic leadership is key. One of the things that makes a leader authentic is vulnerability, vulnerability. I just read this thing from Jeff Goodby where in some interview he basically said, “I like kind of a department where all the creators feel free to make fun of me right to my face, right to my face because there’s a lot of truth in that.” That, being vulnerable means taking one and sometimes giving one. It means being in the scrum with them and not some person on a different floor who everybody’s afraid of.

For years, and I can send you some of these pictures, for years I had to think once I became a creative director, I had a thing called the wall of disrespect. And I just encouraged everybody to put pictures, make fun of me, and pin it up outside my office. I mean, it was given physical space. And it was delightful. There were no eggshells around. There was no, “God, I wonder if he can see that.” It was brutal, it was brutal. That is more than just I’m one of you. That is being there in the kitchen complaining as well. A lot of this stuff in this agency sucks. Some of our clients suck. Sometimes I suck. This ability to be authentic and not be a cheerleader is so, so important. And I think a lot of people, especially people who haven’t had much management experience with people think that they can just sort of, with a deep voice and a good vision, here’s how it works. No. There’s so many intangibles, leading these people who are eye-rollers, to get them on the same side as you, and get them pointed in the same direction with the same vision and some hope in their heart. That’s a big one. Hope in their heart.

Adam Morgan:

I love it. That’s good. All right. What’s another? You had several qualities. So we’ve talked about authenticity. What are other leadership attributes?

Luke Sullivan:

Authenticity — you know what it connects to? Now I remember. And you were right. You mentioned transparency. Authenticity requires transparency because if I’m really being authentic, I can’t hide some stuff behind, oh that’s not for you creatives to see. If I’m being authentic, I’m out there and I’m vulnerable. I’m giving you everything I’ve got.

Transparency is one of them. Radical transparency is the way I actually put it. And there’s a new book out called Radical Candor …

Adam Morgan:

Kim Scott.

Luke Sullivan:

Which has some really good points in it. Along those lines, pretty much should be candid about everything, transparent about everything, but maybe salaries. Other people will say no, make that transparent too. It’s a different conversation.

Here’s the thing. Let’s say we have a famously bad client at this agency, but we got them a long time ago, they’re grandfathered in. They’re keeping half the lights on. If we lose them, we’re going to have to lose a third of the creative department. So this is one of those big clients that occasionally wakes up from a slumber and asks everybody on a fire drill to do something really terrible, some terrible brief or some terrible idea.

I wouldn’t trust a creative director who says, “What we’re about to do is terrible. I don’t agree with it. It’s really bad to say, “Yeah, I know guys, listen. We’re going to be in here Saturdays and Sundays for probably the next month. This is going to suck. Here’s why we’re going to be in here for the next month.”

And you go through it. I just said, “Well, this is a big client. We’ve done good work with them before but every once in a while, they just ask us to do crap. I think I’d like to keep this client. I think we should. I wouldn’t want to lose a third of you or whatever the numbers are. I think that if we can …” and the metaphor I use is, I don’t know if you ever saw the version of “Chernobyl” on HBO? There is a really good book too, “Midnight at Chernobyl.”

When that thing first blew up, the most important thing they had to do was to get the most venomously radioactive material off the roof of a nearby building from where it exploded, but it was so bad. They brought in Russian volunteers, but they didn’t let them be up there for more than 45 seconds. They put on these really kind of poorly made lead suits and they had a shovel and they ran out onto the roof and they shoveled for 45 seconds and they left the whole place and never came back. That’s what I would say to juniors having to work on some piece of shit, is grab a shovel.

Adam Morgan:

It will end soon.

Luke Sullivan:

Yeah it’ll end, grab a shovel. I have done my share of shoveling. It’ll be over soon. If this continues with this client, well, then we’re going to renegotiate and see, because we can’t do this over and over. It’s not sustainable, but if it’s a one off, well, I would be transparent. And let your people know, there’s this amazing thing, bad creative directors tell people how you know, no I don’t. You do it like that. Do it like this. Good one tells people why — here’s why we’re doing this. Not just handing you the marching orders, okay, go work on some radio. And I want you to do the Twitter feed. Well, why are we doing Twitter? Why is the radio? And you’d be surprised how much tortured we created. People will take it ff we’re told if we know why we’re being tortured.

Adam Morgan:

And is that really your way of motivating them? Like just by telling them why. How do you get them motivated?

Luke Sullivan:

Well, I’m convinced. I know from my own experience of telling them authentically. Now, sometimes you don’t have to complain about the client and you can motivate them. Any good creative person handed a decent brief for a decent client, the motivation is built in. And if they’re not motivated with that, I may have made a mistake in hiring.

But most advertising, I don’t think, is a great client with a great brief. It’s just not sometimes it’s not a bad client. It’s a good client, but the job is just kind of something. Eh, I want you to work this weekend and next weekend I’m doing all the banners. I want the banners to be better. It’s hard for some people to get up about that. Well, you can start to number one, sell them, but the banners can be more than just a banner. Banners are, yay big, but they’re this deep, they’re dynamic and you can encourage them that way.

But generally I think the most important counseling that we do as creative directors, the most important encouragement we give is when things are tough. When things are tough, when the client killed something — like I had a campaign killed 13 times once and you know, going back up on that roof, it gets tough and they need encouragement, which is interesting… the word means to give courage, the courage to really try, try hard. Even though, you know, it may not probably sell, even though you don’t even like these people, you’re trying to do it for, even though you may disagree with the brief. That takes courage to just put yourself on a shelf and just grab your sharpest pencil and go in there and try to kick ass. That’s courage.

Adam Morgan:

Oh, Nice. Well, we talked about, you talked a little bit about how to encourage them and give them courage when it’s a tough situation. I love that. What are things that demotivate creative teams like, what are you, what should we tell people to avoid when they’re, when they’re leading creative teams?

Luke Sullivan:

Those are pretty easy. I just thought of one more thing. The last question you asked was telling people why really that important and there’s this old saying, and it may be biblical. I don’t know where it comes from. You know where I’m going with this one. It’s quite beautiful. And was it Jesus, this is so apocryphal. Even if this didn’t happen, it should happen. It’s so cool. So the wise man’s walking along the road, and he sees a laborer peasant labor on the side, working the side of the road, looks like he’s building something and yes. And what are you doing? And this person who’s just says, I’m laying bricks. Doesn’t look that happy. He’s laying bricks, blah, blah, blah. He comes upon another person who seems to be a little more happy with his job.

And he asks, what, what are you doing? What do you do? And he says, I’m building a wall. He knows what he’s part of, and he can see the end of this job, and he knows why it’s needed. And the last one, when he asked this person, what are you doing? And he said, I’m building a cathedral to God. When you tell people why, and if you can get them excited about the possibilities for a client that even heretofore has not really proven itself to be creatively driven, when you can get your team believing, believing that it is possible.

One of the last things I’m going to say before we move on, is this comes from basketball. The coach’s first responsibility is to love his team. Now I know plenty of great creative directors that say David at BBDO I can remember the head of B B D O creative. He probably can’t get to know everybody there. He’s a chief creative officer of a huge multilevel organization. I was never in that position, but I did lead many teams. They know if you give a shit my students knew that I loved them. And I told my students that, and I would stay late for them. And I would cry with them and I would feel bad with them. And I was shoulder to shoulder with these students. And I know I was loved. I know it because I loved them. It’s a soft and tangible thing. It matters to love your team. If you can’t, I don’t know what to tell you.

Adam Morgan:

I love that. I literally love that there was something else. I saw some article recently of like what, you know, and this wasn’t creative leadership, but just leadership in general. And basically the message of it was like, you can give them all the assignments you can give. All of the work. You can try and give a vision, but if they know you don’t care, nothing’s going to happen. So showing that love, and it is really about relationships. When I’ve talked about the nine steps to becoming a creative director, the top one is relationships. That’s absolutely the most critical thing.

Luke Sullivan:

Yeah. And I would add, I’ve heard recently, and it’s just one of those things that didn’t surprise me, because I’ve been living it for a long time. They say a top leadership skill is empathy, to be able to feel what it’s like to be that kid building a brick wall. “Why am I doing this?” And to let them know, “You’re building a cathedral to god, here’s why,” and it matters.

But it starts with empathy, and empathy may mean agreeing this sucks, or it may mean… Oh, boy. Mike Hughes, he told me this one once. It is really hard being a creative. It is. We have so many defeats, and those wins really keep us going. So what Mike made sure to do was he wanted to give some little victories to all of his people. And he would sometimes just give them soft pitches on some easy peasy client because they just suffered a lot of defeat at the hands of a more brutal client. Those little wins mean a lot to the creative.

Adam Morgan:

Well, bringing it all back around. So we work with a lot of cynics, but the way to get to their heart is with love and show them that you care. I think that’s a nice, interesting story there.

I guess my last question now that we’re kind of coming to an end here is, any last advice beyond that, just showing empathy and love? Any last thing that you would give to others out there who are trying to be better creative leaders, what else should they try or do?

Luke Sullivan:

You asked me about demotivating. These are easy peasy ones to do, but I’ve actually had creative directors do this on my watch and on me. Don’t cherry pick assignments and do them yourself. That happens a lot. That just should be illegal. They should just be no. Put that cool job down and give it to that poor kid who just had five campaigns killed. Even if you think it’s too big for him or her, shut up, just put that brief down.

The next thing to do is don’t assign 50 teams to a single brief. Now, this happens during new business, and we could talk about new business pitches, another whole conversation But I see why people do it. “We got to win this thing, and I want as many brains on this thing.” Yeah, maybe for pitches, fine, a couple of teams on a brief. But just because you’re worried about a big client and you don’t think somebody can do it, you can throw the teams on it, it just simply says, “I don’t trust you.”

Adam Morgan:

Yeah.

Luke Sullivan:

“I don’t trust you at all.”

Adam Morgan:

It’s like a Hunger Games with creativity.

Luke Sullivan:

Oh, it’s just terrible. Those are two easy things. No cherry picking, and no… I mean, I have this image of 400 people on a rope, and each are pulling one of those big blocks. That’s what it feels like when you’re competing against your friends down the hallway. Ah.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah.

Luke Sullivan:

Terrible. Now, they did this at Crispin with some success though. So I could be wrong. Crispin had briefs on the wall, and you came up and you ripped one off. “Yeah, I’ll do this one.” So I may or may not be right about this, but I hated it.

Adam Morgan:

I did too. I-

Luke Sullivan:

Personally, myself.

Adam Morgan:

I don’t think it’s good at practice. And to be honest, I mean, it finally… Well, I think it kind of bit them in the butt as well, because there were a lot of people out there like, “I never want to work there because of that competitive spirit.” Maybe it gets you some good ideas in the short run, but long-term…

Luke Sullivan:

It did. It was not sustainable. But for a while, it was radioactively creative.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah.

Luke Sullivan:

It really was. I had a friend leave from GSD&M to go be a creative director there, and that’s of a higher level, which is even going to be tougher than being a junior. Thomas Kemeny told me a story about, yes, sleeping at the office. He just slept at the office when he worked at Crispin, and he spent one night sleeping on top of an old Burger King costume that was kind of fluffy, that was underneath this desk at Crispin. And the deal was, what they told people at Crispin was, “You’re going to do the best work of your career here.” And they did. They did. I think they could have made that model sustainable with maybe pumping the brakes a little bit, but they never did. They never did. And the wheels started to go like this.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah. Well, Luke, thank you so much. This has been such great advice. We’ve heard a lot of great things from authenticity and transparency and how to motivate and what demotivates creative teams. I think it’s been super helpful. So thank you, thank you for sharing all this wonderful advice. And for those who have just met Luke here on the show, go out and get his book, Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This. It’s a great read. I highly recommend it. But tell us where else people can find you if they want to follow up and follow you and your career, your writing.

Luke Sullivan:

Well, heywhipple.com. I used to post all the time on that. There are many old posts. Some, I’m very proud of actually. But in my last years, I’ve been writing the book more than the heywhipple website. I just released a series of five videos with the authors of five other advertising books, Thomas Kemeny of Junior, and David Baldwin with The Belief Economy. Nancy Vonk has two books. The ones called Pick Me, which is a staple at ad schools, and a newer title called Darling, You Can’t Do Both, which is something she heard from a creative director when she said, “I’m probably going to start a family.” So this is advice for women to ignore on the way up, that’s her book. And then good old Cameron Day, his new book called Chew With Your Mind Open. We did a book club, and we just all got together. And each episode is us talking, throwing questions. But just giving questions to each author in turn. So you can find me there.

Adam Morgan:

Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate the chat. I think this is going to be great. We’ll list those books out in the show notes. If anyone’s listening to this on podcast, you can always go to realcreativeleadership.com on the show, and we’ll list out all of those books, so you can click through and find them. Again, we’d love all of you to join us in the suggestions, suggest a topic, share with your friends, whatever you like to do, just help us get the word out on Real Creative Leadership, so we appreciate all your listening. You can always find me @adamwmorgan.com. And then the team that produces this show, The Stoke Group, you can find them at The Stoke Group. If you need help with any agency scaling, up your strategy, or your content, or your creative, they’re a great resource.

So thanks, again, for listening to this episode. Again, thanks, Luke, for being on the show. Classic legend. And we’re so happy to have you here, so thank you.

Luke Sullivan: My pleasure.

Adam Morgan: All right. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening.

Guest Speaker

Luke Sullivan

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