The Three Hats Of The Communications Business.
How Many Do You Wear?

When I left the ad agency business, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (ie last century), I was, thanks to the creative people I worked with, the people who mentored me and the account guys I did freelance work for, a fair bit more than a copywriter.  This was very much part of the plan, which I spent a couple of years hatching before I actually pulled the ripcord and left the business.

Over the years I developed the skills that allowed me to be a complete communications entity, which consisted of being able to simultaneously wear three different hats.

: The Strategist Hat  

Some famous dead guy once said, “All things spring from the written word.” And after many years of creating words from which all sorts of things sprang, I understand where he was coming from.  Every piece of communication, big or small, starts with a collection of words that give focus to the communication. Back in the 70s and 80s that wasn’t always the case. In some of the agencies where I worked, we would just crank out ideas ad nauseum until we found one or two that seemed to embrace the points we were trying to make in our communication and somehow include the product.  
We used to call this “concepts in search of a strategy”.  

In retrospect, it seems like quite an arcane notion, but the times were what they were and the game was defined by the players. And we were all, for better or worse, cowboys and gunslingers.  And then I arrived at a real ad agency, where people who were much better dressed than I was, laboured on the far side of the building to create things called communication strategies. The collections of words that gave purpose, meaning and most of all focus to the creative we were developing.  
At first I thought this was kind of limiting…it certainly wasn’t the gunslinger style that I was known for. But I got straightened out, and rather quickly, as I was informed, that in no uncertain terms, any creative idea that was not derived from these strategies, would be considered a waste of time, effort and money, so I would be wise to avoid trying to ‘foist’ anything on anybody.  


After this relatively short period of creative culture shock, I realized that these strategies, as boring as they seemed on the surface, were the key to positioning the client’s products or services and moving their business forward. And as I progressed, I started to see just how my natural creative instincts were being channeled and guided by these collections of words.  Over the course of time, I mastered the art of analyzing and sometimes even improving on the strategies I was given, and very quietly developed what’s known in the business as ‘creative discipline’.  This is something I thank my last agency for, almost every day.


: The Disciplined Writer Hat  

When you talk about creative development being in synch with strategy, it sounds more like science than art.  But in actuality, once you have embraced the notion, you start to see that it is really a potent combination of both. You actually have more freedom to create within the strategic envelope than you do having no boundaries.  


Certainly there are a number of brands that have a mandate to simply come up with the best creative ideas possible. But these are brands that have earned that right by having established themselves firmly in their consumer world. And they are a very small and exclusive club. Plus, they also have a nuts and bolts side, but mostly what consumers see is all the flash.  The fact is that the majority of businesses in the world have extremely well developed strategies and the creative people who are tasked with implementing them are highly disciplined.  


I know quite a few of these people, and they never fall for the bullshit notion of ‘thinking outside the box’.  Mainly because they are smart enough to realize that the box is there for a reason, and their job has nothing to do with what goes on outside it. Their job is making the box into a bright shiny thing. Period.  So discipline, for the good communications writer, is not restrictive in any way. In fact, if you don’t provide them with strategic focus, they will bug you and question you until you do. And if they’re really disciplined, they will help you do that.  Why? Because they don’t want to waste their time or your money.  

The Art Director Hat  

Once the writer has an idea an idea flow that is in synch with the strategy, he/she needs to be able to actually turn that into a piece of communication. In the agency world, writers have creatures called art directors to help them do this.  
Some of them are brilliant visual thinkers who can take a very succinctly expressed idea and turn it into something great. A few have ideas of their own and a smart writer working with one of these art directors will be wise to consider them. But the majority of them are people who will basically ‘pretty up’ whatever the writer is thinking.  


After you leave the agency world and exposure to a very high calibre of art director, you very quickly realize that there are very few good art directors out there and available. That’s because most  of them are ‘nesters’ and really like the idea of working in an agency or corporation with all the bells and whistles that they don’t have to pay for themselves.  So what do you do?  Well, if you’re like me, you start doing it yourself. It was actually my wife who pointed out that I was always scribbling out layouts to show clients what I was thinking, so why not just get some desktop publishing software and teach yourself how to do it digitally?  
My wife is a pretty smart cookie, so I took her advice.  
This is not something I recommend for every writer, because some people are just not built that way. 

Fortunately for me, I am. And I was also a fairly accomplished photographer so I have a pretty solid visual imagination to start with.  Like everything in communications there is always a learning curve. So the writer needs to be patient with himself or herself. A designer friend and associate, named Keijo Tapanainen, helped me learn the basics of the program I was using at the time, which was Quark Xpress. From there it was just a matter of practice. For the first year, I didn’t charge my clients anything for the art direction I did for them. After all, they were subsidizing my learning curve.  


Today, many moons later, I have a pretty good handle on InDesign and Photoshop, and have found that writing within the creative framework of my own layouts is very efficient way to get the structure my copy/content. And, of course the clients appreciate the economies of scale that this represents to them.(I still have a networks of web and Graphic designers, programmers, photographewrs,  illustrators, and film people I like to work with to actually get the stuff finished. I’m not superman.)  

The Advantages Of Being A 3-Hat Communicator  

Not every writer wears three hats. And even if you don’t it’s really good to, at the very least, understand how the other two hats work.  For me, the 3 Hat Principle is advantageous for the following reasons:  

1. Most of the clients I deal with are entrepreneurs who really like the idea that they have a single go-to guy for their communications, because that’s how they roll.


2. These same entrepreneurial clients appreciate the economies of scale, that one multi-hat-wearing guy represents because, well that’s also how they roll. 

3. The graphic designers I work with like the fact that I have a well-developed visual imagination and get where they are coming from.  

4. The digital marketers I work with like the fact that I have come from what they call ‘the far side of the digital divide’, because my writing is more creative than most of the ‘content’ writers out there. And my grasp of strategy helps them in a number of ways. 

5.The strategists and consultants I work with like the fact that I can see and appreciate the work that they have done to get their clients’ strategies figured out and on track, and they are confident that I totally get what’s going on in any given set of circumstances. 

POST SCRIPT:  I know that the whole idea of writing about myself, my skills and experiences, all seems a little self-serving. But it’s really not about that, because I’m not looking for business here. 
No, the overriding purpose of my blogging in the first place is to give people insights they can wrap their heads around, and in this case, maybe understanding the approach that has served me well, having been on my own since1989, may give them some ideas that haven’t occurred to them.