Creativity Shouldn’t Be Isolated

For a long time, I thought that was just how things worked.

At agencies, creative sits on one side and account on the other. Different rooms, different conversations. You get the brief, you go away, and you come back with the idea.

And then the tension starts.

Feedback turns into defense. Conversations turn into negotiation. The work slowly becomes something everyone can agree on, instead of something everyone believes in. I used to think that tension was part of the process. But it isn’t. It’s what happens when people are too far from the work.

When I moved to the brand side, I started to see where the work actually takes shape. Not at the end, not in the presentation, but much earlier. In the conversations, in the trade-offs, in the small decisions that never make it into the brief.

That’s when it clicked. If creative shows up too late, it reacts. If everyone else shows up too late, they judge. And that gap is where good ideas start to fall apart.

So I started doing something simple. Bringing people closer to the work.

At Realtor.com, that took shape as something we called Creative Gym. A space to look at great work together and practice coming up with ideas. Not just creatives. Everyone.

Looking at ideas, talking about why they work, letting people react before things are polished.

Because everyone can have good ideas. They just need to understand the process.