The first time I ever saw a creative department I was 22. I walked out onto the creative floor of TBWA in 2000. An agency so hot you could fry an egg on it. There were no skateboards. No graffiti. Nobody rode a motorbike out of an elevator. (Actually, that might’ve happened). The place was full of people who looked like best friends, making each other laugh. How was this a profession? It just looked like mates. And more importantly, how could I get a job in a place like this? As a creative, you’re lucky if you hit one mega-hot department in your career. I’ve managed to hit a few. And now I’m lucky enough to be building one. I don’t know how technology may or may not change everything. I don’t know how we’ll keep entertaining an ever-widening gap in society. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, next week, or next year. No idea. But I know exactly where you’ll find me, sleeves rolled up, in our creative department trying to figure it out.

When the creative works, everything works. Brands get famous. Our clients enjoy working with us. Our employees go home happy. Profits go up. And the public gets the kind of advertising they actually enjoy. But to make that work, we have to look beyond the Creative Department. Even having a Creative ‘Department’ feels archaic. There’s one big table in the Flower Shop and we all sit around it - planners, account managers, creatives, social specialists, and Clients; whoever is in early enough to grab a seat. What the Flower Shop can be is determined by the talent that sits around that table, and every conversation is a chance to make the work better. All we have is our talent and our environment and today, creative alchemy takes a village. At the Flower Shop I like to think we’re ‘Total Ad People’ (I want to trademark that but Al thinks it’s dorky)