The ‘If Then Go-To’ for Freelance Creative Direction
“It is not where you take things from,
it is where you take things to.”
~ JEAN LUC GODDARD
About
Christian Matthews established his own design firm, Xian Matthews Design in 2002 and has clients ranging from the record industry to beekeepers. Christian Matthews.com is the result of years of experience creating advertising, in an array of mediums and has put value into brand valuation, package design, event creation & management, branding for and from the small shop to major corporations, providing world class analysis, insight to marketing strategy, good words, and sound vision.
Located in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, Christian Matthews can resource local talent and provide both in-house and remote Creative Direction services. Christian Matthews’ clients have enjoyed success from the schoolyard to the C-Suite have engaged his unique, prescient, reliable, respected and innovative approach to creative solutions.
There are many who deem
Creative Director as a blanket term for art guy.
“If you see it then that’s Creative Direction”
It’s not. Pull and stretch it out.
Advertising: It is here – your ad here. Here it is. It may be a lot like you.
You may find yourself here. The best, better and get it here or there. But the ad says you may want this because…
(A) You need or want it. You didn’t know you did – but now you do.
(B) It is different from what is not working well enough or not at all – highest quality.
(C) It’s prettier or cleaner or cooler or hotter or tastier.
(D) It is you and you won’t be anything until you posses it.
And/Or/Yet?
(E) An annoyance propagated by severe repetition, influence, or fantastical claims.
Advertising is as old as the first superlative and the hawking of pottery in the bazaar. Good advertising is difficult to do because its motives are so very obvious.
All three are cornerstones of an entity – a refined personality. The business/ID is the who and what of the Brand. The Brand is the Noun. Branding is a gerund. Decisions in Marketing and Advertising are business go-to’s that effect the Brand as much as services, outages, missteps, heroism, kindnesses, energy, timelines, optics, image and VALUE.
Now adaptation is most often linked with survival but in reality adaptation is a constant. The expression that there’s someone for everyone dovetails with Brand adaptation. And just because you can pivot doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Sometimes for a Brand to build it merely needs to strengthen its resolve to doing what it should do.
Is good the enemy of great? It’s a trick question: Good is a virtue. Great is a superlative. Advertising has far too long bent to power. Business is NOT war. War is war. As Great as Alexander may be I wouldn’t want to go to there. Better or best to be good. Good has staying power because inherent in the word is an ethos that connotes decency, honesty and virtue. Good brands, good advertising, good strategy and remarkable for its inherent value to the company, advertiser and the customer. Good is the word. I strive to make good advertising that is remarkable for it success.
THE BEST FOR YOUR BRAND
Revisit what you know about what a Creative Director does.
They are the pro who see your brand from the outside in. A conductor who is a balance of a clients ego and id. The Creative Director is the shaman, the overlord, the generator and/or superego for that critical identity. When you hire a Creative Director you are choosing a denomination or sect.
The Creative Director’s business is a movement intersected with experience, guidance, talent, skill, and interlocution and there to conjure or awaken the brand and understand its following.
Not kidding – Branding is a discipline. There are many paths you can take for your company but only a few will get you where you want to go.
Branding and Adaptation
Branding vs Marketing vs Advertising
Three very different things.
Branding begins with an identity. How a company, business, personality or service identifies itself is a starting point and is measured as it grows, matriculates or evolves through a protean process. The thing that a brand starts out as rarely stays the same throughout time and capital. So when building a brand it is imperative that an assessment of a brand’s peregrination to destination is thought through. It is an evolution and where a brand ends up is determined by behavior and choices and imperatives.
Marketing is sales. It has all ranges of nuance but is essentially marketing strategies are vastly interchangeable and my best advice is to tread cautiously with the panoply of schemes, promotions, placements, propaganda, click or tricks. No one likes pushy sales. They may fall victim to it but a good brand sells itself.
