For as long as I can remember, “creative” has been one of the top 2 or 3 most important criteria for companies when selecting an agency. All the studies that Jupiter and Forrester put out on the topic of what companies look for in an agency talk about the importance of their “creative”. And rightfully so. Hard work and dedication are great, but without the creative thought behind it the work will be average at best.

I’ve been trying to determine what exactly breeds creativity in an agency. You’d think I’d know considering that Spunlogic as a whole is one of the most creative groups in the interactive playing field. Our work speaks for itself (shameless plug for our recently launched Crunk!!! Energy Drink site), but I’m constantly reminded of the creative power that the company has overall. By the way I should note that I have no problem whatsoever bragging about the capabilities of our team, since I can’t do a lick of what they do. In fact the last “actual” production work I did was some programming in 2000 on one of our earliest websites - Simmons Manufacturing. Please, hold your applause.

For example, Stephanie mentioned in a recent post our involvement with Junior Achievement and the fund raising we’re doing on behalf of the organization. One of the teams had a bake sale and Stephanie made cookies that looked exactly like our Creative Director, Wade. Check these bad boys out:

If you know Wade, you know these things look just like him. They don’t, however, work like a voodoo doll as advertised, though not for a lack of trying. But I digress.

The point I’m trying to make is that creativity comes from a culture that you can’t force or even for the most part plan. We’ve been very stringent on our hiring philosophy to make sure we bring in people that are the best fit for the culture we’ve created over time, and creativity is a huge component of the hiring criteria. And that’s across the board, from Client Services, to User Experience, to Development, etc.

Maybe the best known example of a truly creative group is Apple, but I prefer to point out what Google is doing. The Google Guys have been immensely successful hiring the best of the best in both technology and creativity. And you see that by the products they launch seemingly weekly. Take for example Google Moon. It’s the freaking moon. They’re even creative with their logo, an entity that usually only stifles creative thought because of its “hands off” and corporate guideline requirements. I mean, how often can you work with a client and say, “We’d like to take your logo and play around with it a little.” Right.

And yes, there are steps you can take and processes you can implement and purple cows you can strive for, but in my opinion it all starts and ends with a culture that breeds creativity.