Caped Creatives: Superhero comics and making it in an agency
While donning a cape and wearing your underpants outside your trousers thankfully isn’t a pre-requisite for working at a design or digital agency, working in this industry does have some similarities to the lives of superheroes from American comics. William Battle, from Smack discusses three big similarities between caped crusaders and creatives.
Reboots
When the superhero the Blue Beetle was first created in 1939, he was the son of a policeman who got his superpowers by taking a “Vitamin 2X”. Since then, the character has undergone many transformations, from archaeologist to teenage crime fighter, all helped in some way by a scarab.
While very different, all these characters are still the Blue Beetle, just the Blue Beetle of different eras. The changes made weren’t arbitrary, they were attempts to bring the character up to date and make him more relevant to the audience of the times.
In the world of digital marketing there is always a new technology, a new social networking site, a new change to a popular website’s system. Things never stay the same for very long, but unless you change and adapt, you are going to be left behind. Those who do “reboot”, on the other hand, have a chance to thrive in a strange new world.
Spidey Sense
Alongside the improved reflexes, enhanced strength and (sometimes) ability to produce super strong webs, Spiderman has one other very valuable talent in the battle against crime, the spidey sense. This alerts him to problems before they happen, tells him when danger is nearby and has saved his life an incalculable number of times.
Aside from being bitten by a radioactive spider yourself (which we wouldn’t recommend) there is no real way to get a spidey sense of your very own. However, with a little preparation, a little planning and a little luck you can make it seem like you have spidey sense by anticipating where the sticking points could be and preparing for such eventualities in advance. The best marketers are the way they are not because they don’t encounter problems, but because they have ways to deal with any problems that might come up.
It is always safest to assume that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Don’t let this scare you, prepare for it and you will have everyone around you treating you like a superhero.
Avengers Assemble
Iron Man is a genius in the greatest wearable tech ever created. Captain America is so strong he survived being frozen since World War Two. Thor is a literal god who commands the power of lightning. Yet, rather than simply being happy with their own powers, they work together as The Avengers.
A good superhero never works alone. From the Fantastic Four to the Justice League of America, from the X-Men to the Challengers of the Unknown. No matter how incredible, how uncanny, how amazing an individual hero may be, there are few superheroes who have never been a part of a team.
When superheroes work as a team they can solve problems that they would not be able to tackle individually. Thor may be physically strong, but he doesn’t have Iron Man’s technical know-how or Black Widow’s stealth and subtlety. Each hero has their own strengths, but a superhero team is always stronger than the sum of its parts.
Agencies work the same way a great superhero team does. They bring in the best and the brightest from a wide set of backgrounds and skills and get them to work together to solve problems. Working at a great agency should feel like you have been given an invitation to join the Avengers, that your skills are valued and that you matter to the team.