Years ago, at DDB New York, Bernbach broke down the walls between the copy department and the art department. He put writers and art directors together in teams. (Except of course the legendary Avis-Volkswagen art director Helmut Krone, who damn well wouldn't work with anyone!)
The concept worked brilliantly when you had a great writer teamed with a great art director. Like David Abbott teamed with Ron Brown, or Tony Brignull teamed with Neil Godfrey.
They were mature personalities, gifted craftsmen in their own right, and they shared mutual respect. Unfortunately, Bernbach's vision got derailed.
Mostly, today's creative teams are forged through expedience not experience.
Result: a grumpy writer enslaved to a grumpy art director. Or two grumpy art directors, one of whom has been suckered into being the copywriter, poor sod! They sit in a room and stare at each other, convinced of their own invincibility, waiting for inspiration to strike. Some creative teams come unstuck on the issue of equality. ("Why do we always do your ideas, not mine?"). Others share mutual hatred. I've seen many great creatives strangled by overbearing, witless partners. In one instance, physical abuse ended the relationship.
David Droga, the thirty-something worldwide creative head of Publicis, is a self-confessed loner. He called the traditional creative pairing "a dangerous scenario". According to Droga, "sometimes similar personalities clash, sometimes somebody won't want to voice an opinion because it might sound foolish. If you're stuck with the wrong partner, it can be an awkward situation, especially if your partner has been thrust on you." At Australia's seminal OMON agency, where Droga cut his advertising teeth, the writers did the ideas and the art directors art directed them.
For my money, the best team in the world is a team like the Neil French team. Writer: Neil French. Art director: Neil French. Being brutally honest, in advertising it's individuals we remember, not teams.
The great creative names need their own space. Their own isolation to perform their own private magic. Booker Prize-winning author Peter Carey, himself a former copywriter, nailed it perfectly when he said: "I need time and solitude to work out what it is that I think."
So instead of teams, let's have teamings. The random harness, as opposed to the cast iron marriage.
It's a system that works superbly at agencies like Fallon Minneapolis where teams are shuffled, where different people work with each other, so they can experience new partners, new things, and rise to new challenges.
There, a writer and art director take a brief, then work on it independently.
Why? Simply because writers and art directors see things from different perspectives. So when they come to pool their ideas, all kinds of surprises hit the table - none of which would have been possible had the writer and art director spent a week staring at each other.
The best creative directors (call them puppet masters, if you like) know perfectly well how to pair their people for particular projects. It's horses for courses. Like so much else in advertising, the concept of the creative team has become a convention; one that's outmoded and all too often creatively crippling. Besides which, there's something special about loneliness and creativity. The great writers, painters and composers didn't work in jolly little teams.