Jimmy Gilmore

Every cre­ative in the busi­ness has a portfolio.

It’s our call­ing card, our proof of worth, and our stamp of iden­tity all rolled into one.

Resume? Why do peo­ple even have those when a book says so much more about your abil­ity to work won­ders day in and day out?

It’s not just cre­ative peo­ple that help to make a project great. Besides us cre­ative peo­ple that carry books through­out our careers, great account peo­ple are also cru­cial to to get­ting bril­liant cre­ative pro­duced. Yet so few actu­ally have a port­fo­lio. Shouldn’t they? Don’t they love what they do.

I actu­ally worked with a few port­fo­lio car­ry­ing AEs in Cal­i­for­nia and Ore­gon. It wasn’t that many and I’ve often thought that as an indus­try we should try and acknowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tions of the entire team that touches a project before it exits the door. When every­one feels own­er­ship, every­one fights harder to make the work great.

When I work with an AE I want to know that she has the same pas­sion for the busi­ness that I do. That she’s equally proud of the results of the results of her hard work as I am. I under­stand the emo­tional con­nec­tion to the works isn’t the same with account folks — but shouldn’t every­one be proud of a job well done and be ready to show it off.