Nothing will accelerate your development like showing you care. Cliché, but true. Take time to understand the kit used, and ask questions! The more proactive you are, the further you’ll go. A piece of advice relevant to any role, but perhaps none more so than one in a creative agency.
If you have any downtime, ask your colleagues if they need any help. Even if you know that you’re not quite up to your colleagues’ speed, just asking on the off chance will mean a lot to those around you and breeds a brilliant team-spirit, knowing that you all have each other’s backs. A culture that is indescribably valuable in any strong creative agency.
There is always something to learn or someone to learn from. Again, that is true for any walk of life but particularly accurate in a creative agency. It is sometimes easy to become comfortable in your position but making an effort to upskill yourself will of course aid your agency but primarily yourself. You will notice your confidence and ambition naturally grow just by doing so.
If you’re ever stuck, just ask one of your colleagues. You are all there to help each other and they’ll be impressed to see you acquiring another skill. No creative agency will ever want to stagnate, so broadening your abilities will only gather support from those around you.
Another brilliantly cliché phrase, but one that rings particularly true to any beginner. THERE ARE NO SILLY QUESTIONS. Being inquisitive and asking questions others may be afraid to is a powerful catalyst in developing your skills. The more you ask, the better in our eyes. There is no place for ego in a creative agency or the creative industry in general. You will find that even people with decades of experience still routinely ask their peers things they’re unsure about. It’s a key philosophy to live by - your work will be all the better for it.
When learning a new technique or piece of information, write it down. Be as granular as you like to make sure you retain the knowledge as effectively as possible. Especially if there is a step-by-step process involved. Not only will it aid you in your own work short-term, but it will be a useful refresher if you are ever to demonstrate to someone else down the line.
Making mistakes is inevitable. Fact. What sets a good creative apart from a great one is the desire to understand why. Perhaps a lower-third doesn’t animate as you hoped, a video just doesn’t flow well or maybe your photos have come out noisy. People’s initial instinct is to disregard the work as ‘bad’ and be discouraged. By doing that, you will never learn. Working in a creative agency is a really unique experience and one that takes a while to adjust to given there’s technically never a right answer. So, try things out. Learn what works and what doesn’t.
You do not become a great filmmaker overnight. You do not become a great photographer overnight. You do not become a great graphic designer overnight.
Learning takes time. We all remember wanting to be up to pace as fast as possible when we started out, it shows you’re hungry to succeed, and means you’re in the right place. No matter what creative agency you walk in to, everyone you meet is at a different point in their journey. It is natural to compare your ability to others, so long as you look through it with the right lens... pardon the pun. Use others as a benchmark for where you want to propel your skillset, but never as something that will disregard your own ability. You are not part of the team to be a copy of someone else, but to inject your own ideas and abilities.
Some of the best pieces of filmmaking and photography are directly off the back of a spontaneous idea or even mishaps. This is particularly true when planning a project. If you’re discussing in a group, no matter how ridiculous you think an idea is, share it. You can always reel it back in to make it something more realistic or better still, it prompts an idea in someone else that you never even considered. Creative work is a collaborative experience from beginning to end, a strong creative agency will both understand this and nurture it as a key philosophy. You never know if something you consider ‘silly’ may actually be exactly what a client is looking for – or never knew they wanted.
Here at The Mill Group, we have a brilliant team with incredibly varied journeys into the industry. Some hold degrees, others are entirely self-taught, some have been in video their whole career and others came across a role by chance. The one great connector between us all is the desire to be here. You will find this applies to almost any creative agency. It’s actually a very necessary dynamic. By having a team with diverse backgrounds, it ensures that people can promote unique ideas as opposed to all being from the same school of thinking and reaching the same outcome every time. So long as you care about what you do and want to progress, there is no ceiling on the things you can achieve.
Trusting in your ability is easier said than done. It doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly important. In a creative agency there is rarely a wrong approach to a project. Although incredibly freeing it can also lead to feeling paralysed by indecision. Trust your instinct.
Learning to leave work at work and switch off can be a challenge. Especially in a creative agency because we all have a deep enjoyment of what we do. Finding the balance is hugely important to avoid burnout. In time, you will find your own limits but make sure you stick to them.
