Creatively Directing: Jordan Chlapecka On Being A Creative Director
This Creative Director at Momentum Worldwide explains what a CD is, once and for all.
Finish this line. No cheating.
Art Directors direct art. Copywriters write copy. Creative directors _________.
Your brain just filled in the line with “direct creatively,” right? Well, that’s not exactly the right answer. Yes, Creative Directors create. Yes, Creative Directors direct. And, big surprise, yes, they technically direct creatively. But being one of these shot callers is more than just the title that sounds like one of the biggest flexes in the industry.
Explaining what they do is hard when you aren’t a Creative Director, so I spoke with one who not only excels at his job, but knows how to put what he does into more words than “direct creatively” like I did up above.
Meet Jordan Chlapecka. He’s a Creative Director at Momentum Worldwide on the Amex account, focusing on experiential advertising and making cool shit that ties into culture when he’s not helping to develop creatives into their best selves.
“I would say that at the top level it's problem-solving because that's what our roles are as creatives in this industry — to solve problems and consult clients on the problems that they have,” says Chlapecka over a Zoom call, clearly in deep thought. “But I do think that there are some subsets that come with that.”
Before we get into those subsets that Chlapecka’s talking about, let’s dive into who he is.
Chlapecka, first and foremost, is someone who solves problems. From a small rural town, with a self-professed “farm boy mentality,” his creative journey kicked off at 12 years old when he got introduced to Photoshop. He’d sharpen his skills and go on to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Advertising from South Methodist University. Afterwards, he’d moonlight as a Freelance Art Director before becoming full-time at Deutsch in 2012 where he’d work on accounts like Microsoft, Outback Steakhouse and PNC Bank.
Seven years later, after stints as an Art Director and Senior Art Director, Chlapecka became an Associate Creative Director at Vayner Media before being promoted to Creative Director a few years later. Now, he’s nearly two years into the gig at Momentum Worldwide and he’s got a really good understanding of what it takes to be successful in the role.
“There's craft, there's a bit of community building, and there’s making sure that I hire the right people that understand culture as well as I stay in tune with culture and understand what's going on in the world,” he says.
Here’s Chlapecka on his story, what comes with being a Creative Director, and more.
What moment made you realize that advertising was for you?
I think that, first of all, I'm a problem solver and always have been. I think of myself as someone who likes to fix things and maybe it's the farm boy, do it yourself mentality that I was raised with. Consider it a symptom of growing up in a small rural town where my parents were really great at everything and I learned to help solve my own problems from them.
Back when I was 12, we got Photoshop on my home computer and I became a pro. I got fast at figuring things out. I loved solving design problems with it, and I think that advertising is not dissimilar to needing to do that in fun and creative ways. You get a little bit of a dopamine hit from it. Advertising felt right early on because of this.
It’s important to have mentors on your journey. Did you have any? If so, what did they teach you that’s helped shape your journey?
They taught me to keep things really tight, to stay focused, and to have a vision. Then, they taught me how to remember that it's just advertising. We're not curing cancer. We're not saving lives. We're making ads. Ads can be beautiful and powerful, but we're still just making ads. At the end of the day, we're selling something, so don't fret over it.
Being a Creative Director seems like it’s a hard job to explain what you do. To someone that doesn’t know what a CD is, how would you describe your role?
I would say that at the top level it's problem-solving because that's what our roles are as creatives in this industry — to solve problems and consult clients on the problems that they have. But I do think that there are some subsets that come with that.
There's craft, there's a bit of community building, and then there’s making sure that I hire the right people that understand culture as well as I do and stay in tune with culture and understand what's going on in the world. So I then can apply that to those problem solving skills that I implement for my clients and for solving those creative problems and making sure I can communicate and disseminate that to a team of people who I hire to also do very similar tasks and objectives.
But that means I also have to be good at all of those tasks and objectives that I assign.I have to have some sort of understanding of art direction and copywriting as well as culture and know how to make sure of a concept at whatever level that it might be. It could be a very highbrow concept, it could be a very base level concept, and then making sure that it comes to life.
I have to also be a steward to that problem that I'm solving and whatever solution that comes up. I have to be lead the creative across the finish line and ssee how it affects culture.
Creatives spend years in front of concepts as the people that bring them to life. What’s it like to take one step back as a CD?
It requires a large amount of trust in the people that you hire. I would also say that it feels not that distant, really. I think that even though we're a little bit away from it and have other people generating ideas, we are still crafting them and making sure that we are part of that process in some sort of way. It doesn’t feel like a full removal — it’s more of a transition of understanding that you don't have to solve every problem, that there are people that will help you solve them.
Do you ever second guess your creative direction? How do you overcome that?
All the time. I'm constantly paralyzed by indecision. But I would say that what I do in any sort of, not just creative problems, but in any time that I feel like I'm paralyzed by decision, I go on a listening tour and I talk to people. I really enjoy getting other people's perspectives on things and it actually makes me have an opinion, which may not be the healthiest thing. But when someone tells me something bad often, or if someone shows me a bad design, I want to fix it, I want to redo it. So I think that sometimes hearing or talking to people about things that you're working on and having something to push up against is always a way to make it work or make it make sense in your head.
How do you define success as a CD?
I find success in making sure that the people I work with are successful — making sure they have opportunities and that they’re growing. I was on a shoot with someone and they didn't know what the frame rate was and I got to show her. I feel success when impacting creatives’ careers by helping them evolve and change. The work and trophies are important, if you’re really into that kind of stuff — but that’s what has the most meaning. It’s helping people learn their craft, hone it, and become better at their work.
When you’re presenting to a client as a CD, how does the relationship change from when you’re a creative on the account?
As you rise up the chain, there is a different relationship with the brand. When I was working on Chase when I was an ACD, I could tell you the hex code because I was typing it so much. That’s sort of a memory relationship with a brand. That’s a hard skill that you are applying that determines your relationship. Whereas now my relationship is more strategic and is thinking about what the brand stands for on a larger level versus some of the minutiae at lower levels.
You still have to think strategically, but I think that the directional additions that you add as a creative director, you start building strategy for a brand and herd your creative team's ideas through those fences. In doing so, you make sure that they do work for the brand that speaks to it — or if we are going to break through the fence that we actually do it the right way or for the right reason.
As you climb the creative ladder in advertising, are you still learning as much as you did when you were a junior?
I would say it's a little bit of you're relearning things that you're told to do, but you're understanding why you tell someone to do it. Or in my case, I feel like sometimes I have to relearn things in order to teach them. But I think that this is why the current structure exists, right? It's very similar to most capitalism work structures in that at some point, you start as a busboy and level up to working at the bar. I think advertising is structured very similarly to that.
Bonus question. What’s your take on AI taking over creative jobs as someone who directs creative?
So, I watched someone build an ad earlier today via ChatGPT. Not just an ad, but an entire commercial with a voiceover. It had shots of a coffee shop, coffee beans, and roasting — all built with AI. It was impressive. What it doesn’t have though, is craft — which is what I think is the shortcoming. There’s no point of view.
I think that if Chat GPT can come up with an idea, it’s not a good enough one anymore. I’ve tried it out a few times and the ideas it comes up with are always very expected. What's going to get scary is because of the way that AI works and the way that we use it, it's going to learn from us. If we feed it enough information, it will get good at our jobs. It’s like when Photoshop first came out. There are studio artists and illustrators who have lost their jobs.
I think that creatives are going to become more and more like consultants. We’ll rebuild together just like we did after Photoshop came out, just like we did after the internet age and evolve. Rebuild is an intense word, but we've evolved through all of those ages.