Detroit’s mantra for the creative community - It’s the work.
We are in the process of launching a great new interactive site called the Detroiter Online. The site is in beta test now, and is not even available at it’s planned URL, detroiteronline.com, but that hasn’t stopped some impressive content from being added by the site’s early adopters. The headline above is from a post by Tim Smith that sums up the feelings of many in the existing creative community these days. It is really nice that some of the communities leadership are willing to put up some significant funding to attract new creative talent to the Metro Detroit area, but it is confusing that they would need to spend money on research to figure out how. In essence, Tim makes the point that the focus should start first with support of the incredible amount of creative talent that already exists in the region before worrying about how to bring more this way. And to do that, he recommends hiring local. Here is his post -
Tuesday, 08 April 2008
It was recently announced that a new initiative is underway to study how to attract new creative people to live and work in Detroit. What a wonderful idea. But before we do that, shouldn’t we look at how we are treating the creative talent that currently live and work in the area. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical that we talk about new ways to attract new creatives, while our behavior seeks creative services outside our region? I found myself 729 miles away from Detroit recently in a hotel at 3 a.m. unable to sleep. I was unable to stop thinking about an article that appeared in local business publication titled “Catching creatives: Detroit get grant to attract 1000 design pros.” As I am in the design business, I love the idea of attracting more creative talent to our region. I love even more that The Knight Foundation would care enough about the well-being of our city to invest in this concept. The cause of my insomnia, however, is the premise that we need to spend even a nano-second thinking about a question for which we already have the answer. The answer is so simple, so obvious and so undeniable to those in the creative community, that it makes very little sense that we would spend any time or even one dollar seeking the answer. Here’s the answer: It’s the work. Just as simple as the other Clinton presidential campaign mantra of “It’s the economy, stupid.” This should become Detroit’s mantra for the creative community. It’s the work. We can talk about The D Brand, The Creative Corridor, The New Economy Initiative and all these well-meaning studies and efforts as long as we have breath and time to say “let’s take another meeting and form another committee”. But folks, for the creative mind it is always about finding great work to challenge ourselves. Give a creative soul a challenging assignment, mix is the knowledge that the client is willing to take a risk and really get outside the “safe” zone of pedestrian thinking and then you will have a stampede of creative people. And here’s a real surprise for you: Detroit already has world-class creative talent that live and work here. If you want other creative talent to join them, then we must unleash the talent we have. Let the world see our talent. And if we really want to unleash that talent, then here’s an assignment for Mr. Rick Wagoner as CEO of General Motors Corp, as well as the CEOs of the other major automotive manufacturers. In fact, this can be an assignment for the CEOs of each and every organization of any size and type in the region. When you finish reading this, stop and find the mobile phone number of your chief marketing officer, marketing director, advertising manager or communications director and ask them the following question. “Who do we use for our key creative thinking and execution, and where are their offices located?” I know the answer to that question already for many of the major automotive companies. And guess what? It ain’t Detroit. If we are going to get serious about attracting and retaining creative talent, then we had better stop exporting the work to cities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Because guess what happens when GM awards its creative work to a shop in Boston? The creative talent packs their black t-shirts, breaks their lease for their tendy, ultra-cool loft apartment and moves to Boston. When they get there, they start doing creative work for a firm headquartered in Detroit! Ouch.