Everyone and their Dog Friendly Office – Differentiation in Design City

I’m a VP of Strategy at THE full service firm in a city full of artists.

It’s not just the arty kids in ill-fitting pants that design in Austin- you could walk into the gym, the free clinic, or the back of a 7-11 and come away with 20 custom art covered business cards.

So among all this talent, how do you manage to fish out the one person that can really take a corporate marketing attitude into their work?

I don’t mean the rote ‘Banks = blue, Restaurants = warm palate’ kind of corporate attitude- I mean the kind of professional that can put their creativity to work for the client, and not themselves- the designer that knows that arrows aren’t the answer to everything, and above all doesn’t have that ‘artistic temperament’ that only gallery groupies bother tolerating.

So how do I go about procuring such talent? I make them blog.

Seriously.

Before anyone gets in the door here, even down to the intern level, they have to put something in the RCM Burn Book, and what I glean from that is this-

If they don’t have anything bad to say, they’re too safe.

If their writing isn’t critical but just condescending, they’ve got god complexes.

If they’ve got something funny, incisive, and true at it’s core, they’re in.

When you’re running a company in any art friendly area, a full portfolio is no longer any indication of the work you can expect.

I give my clients the best because I know how to weed out the dilettantes and template addicts. I don’t have time to get lost in a crowd where everyone’s different in the same way.