Chapter 3: Our Manifesto for Creative Pros (or is it a love letter?)
As a creative pro, here’s a situation you’re definitely familiar with
Client loved the creative | ☑️ Chemistry
You delivered excellent work | ☑️ Creative Rigor
Client needs 20 more versions for 7 different platforms | 🅇 Double the Budget
You are but a mortal human who needs to buy and eventually eat food so the client relationship got strained because you couldn’t meet the need for scale. This is both a situation that often happens to us individually, and is a microcosm of what's happening to creative pros as an industry.
The solution isn't to wait for the good 'ol days to come back, it's actually way less dependent on quantam time travel. Here's the formula as we see it, free for a limited time:
Chemistry (what gets you hired)
+
Creative Rigor (where new and differentiated things come from)
+
Custom Tools (the thing you don’t have yet, but it helps you capture that rigor and deliver it at scale)
=
The Creative Services ®evolution
The ®evolution (yes, with a ®) is about building creative services businesses that
Cultivate and Protect Chemistry
| Still essential | Still the entry point | Still what clients remember | Can't be automated by AI |
Ensure It Translates to Valuable Partnerships
| Not one-off projects | Long-term relationships | Ongoing value delivery | Compounding trust |
Always Look for New Ways to Deliver MORE
(but not just "more" as in volume, though that’s where it begins)
| More as in Capability | More as in Outcomes | More as in Provable Value |
Use Customized Tools as the Mechanism to get there
| Not generic SaaS | Not off-the-shelf templates | Custom-built for your specific creative rigor | Leveraging YOUR differentiation |
In the coming weeks and months I’m going to unpack this whole thing in short, little bite size chunks and I’m just gonna give it away. Here’s what you can expect:
- Why this matters to your clients, RIGHT NOW
- A framework for value creation that puts AI in it’s place
- Some practical examples from the world of Custom Video Automation featuring real case studies and real numbers.
If you stick around and follow along, I invite you to roast what I’m claiming here and give me better data in the process, or if you have layers or anecdotal experience to add I’d love to hear it. If you want to chop this up with me in a podcast style conversation fill out this form and let’s get a date on the books.
I’m serious about fostering this conversation with fellow Creative Pros, because I believe that there’s never been a better time to pour a love of the craft of commercial creativity into uniquely styled extensions of ourselves, for the ®evolution of all involved.