Strategy‘s Creative Report Card is back – this time with fresh perspective. We’re diving into the minds of the CRC’s top creatives and strategists to explore how they work within their craft and think about the future of advertising. Over the next week, we’ll spotlight the Top 5 individuals across the CCO, CD, AD, CW, Designer and Planner lists through bite-sized Q&As that reveal their creative processes, industry predictions and working philosophies, among many other things.
Today we’re looking at this year’s Top 5 Creative Directors. Yesterday, we shared insights from the Top 5 CCOs. Visit our CRC website for all the lists and check back tomorrow for more.
#1 CD: Xavier Blais, Rethink
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch,” “Heinz Can’t Unsee It,” “Smack for Heinz,” “Slow this ad,” “Heinz AI,” “Heinz Tattoo Label,” “Heinz LVII means 57,” “It Has to be Heinz,” “Heinz Ketchup Fraud” and “Philadelphia Bagel Wholes” for Kraft Heinz; “See My Name” and “Coors Lights Out” for Molson; “Sport Your Period” for Knix (image below); “Living Stories for Penguin Books”
As a CD, what’s a habit or instinct that you had to kill in yourself to make room for better ideas from others?
“This isn’t an original one by any stretch of the imagination, but for me, the hardest thing has been to just let go of things. As a creative, you’re taught, trained and pushed to control every detail of every idea. Every line, every image, every frame. And the second you become an ACD or a CD, you’re almost coerced into doing the exact opposite. You have to let go. So it’s not so much something you have to kill in yourself, but something you have to un-learn. It took me a long time to understand it and it feels like I’m slowly getting there.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“I think the ‘Heinz Ketchup and Seemingly Ranch’ project – where we injected new life into an unsuccessful Kraft Heinz product – really pushed us as a team in the best of ways. And by team I mean Rethink and Kraft Heinz as a unit. Because we had to move fast and do it at scale. The project went from a late night deck share, to a whatsapp text, to an actual bottle in a matter of hours. Making the right creative call can be daunting in these moments because there isn’t a lot of time. But at the same time, it forces you to focus on what matters and prevents overthinking. Once we aligned, we had to get scrappy. We shot the visual ourselves with a bottle from the store that we retouched, aligned on the final look of the label that was going to be printed on thousands of bottles, and off we went. Credit goes to our wonderful partners at Kraft Heinz – I think one of the things that wasn’t necessarily apparent from the outside is how much moving and shaking you have to do internally to get a thing like that made at scale.”
Rethink’s “Sport Your Period” campaign for Knix
#2 CD: Sean O’Connor, Rethink
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Branding Awards” for RGD; “Heinz Ketchup and Seemingly Ranch” for Kraft Heinz; “Living Stories” for Penguin Books (image below); “Concussion Story” for YWCA; “KitKat Ramadan Iftar Bar” for Nestle; “Tampon vs. Tiger” for The Gist; “Fear Windows” for La Maison grise de Montréal
What’s a habit or instinct that you had to kill in yourself to make room for better ideas from others?
“At Rethink, we ask people to ‘love it for a minute.’ Sometimes, as CDs, we have knee-jerk reactions to ideas. We see a lot and sometimes we need to move quickly. But move too quickly and you miss things. You miss nuggets you didn’t even know were there. Slowing down to understand what someone sees in an idea is important, even if the idea ends up being a dead end. Honestly, I’m guilty of not loving it for a minute. I haven’t killed this habit yet, but it’s something I’m working on.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“I didn’t lead the campaign, but I was lucky enough to be in the room when Thom Peters and Mustaali Raj were concepting “Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch” for Heinz and I was able to play a small part in it. The thing you don’t get to see from the outside when it comes to timely, reactive work, is just how many people rally around an idea to make things happen at breakneck speed. There’s no egos, or ‘that’s not my job.’ Everyone just rises to the occasion to do whatever they need to do to get the idea out there.”
Rethink’s “Living Stories” for Penguin Books
#3 CD: Andrew MacPhee, FCB
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Runner 321” for Adidas; “Inployable” for the Canadian Down Syndrome Society (image below); “Business Carols,” “NXT NXT Level” and “BMO Goes West” for BMO
What’s a belief about leading creative teams that only makes sense once you’ve lived it?
“The belief that a creative director’s job isn’t to give the answer; it’s actually to build problem-solvers. It sounds obvious until you realize how easy it is to do the opposite. In the rush to move faster and ‘get to great,’ it’s tempting to hand your team solutions. It feels efficient, but over time, it creates a crutch: you. Without realizing it, you become the bottleneck, the safety net, the reason the team hesitates instead of leads. Instead, invest the time to guide them. Explain what’s working, what’s not, and why. Point them in the right direction. Nudge, challenge, and stay responsive and forgiving. It takes more effort, but the payoff is greater – stronger, more confident teams that own their work. And when they own it, they push harder, learn more, and bring back ideas that surprise you. That’s how you don’t just get great work – you build brief-crushing monsters.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“We won the SickKids account last fall and were immediately tasked with their 150th anniversary – a milestone for a brand that has one of the most iconic legacies in advertising. The creative bar is so incredibly high, and living up to it is daunting, to say the least. At the same time, the cause is as real as it gets, making the work super emotional and motivating. It’s easily the most intense and high-stakes client I’ve ever worked on, but also the most rewarding. The responsibility to do it justice pushed us in every way – creatively, strategically, and emotionally. And this campaign (soon to launch) embodies the mantra that it takes a village. Internal teams, clients, and vendors have come together in ways I’ve never seen before. That’s what made it work. You don’t see that from the outside, but without that level of collaboration, nothing ambitious gets made.”
FCB’s “Inployable” for the Canadian Down Syndrome Society
#4 CD: Geoff Baillie, Rethink
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch”, “Heinz Can’t Unsee It,” (image below) “Smack for Heinz,” “Slow this ad,” “Heinz AI,” “Heinz Tattoo Label,” “Heinz LVII means 57” and “It Has to be Heinz” for Kraft Heinz
What will future writers need to do differently to stay ahead?
“I think you have to become more than a writer without forgetting how to write. Throwing yourself into other aspects of a project, like the presentation, the edit, the press outreach, will sharpen your writing. Because it helps you to see the full shape of an idea. But you still need the fundamentals of wordsmithing clever headlines and scripts.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“‘Can’t Unsee It’ – a collaboration we did between Heinz and Deadpool & Wolverine – gave us a great opportunity to scale up. But we had to maintain the Heinz tone within the broader worlds of Deadpool, Marvel, Disney, Ryan Reynolds, all that. So it was a balancing act to nail the tone, keep it entertaining and cut through the clutter.”
Rethink’s “Heinz Can’t Unsee It” For Kraft Heinz
#5 CD: Zachary Bautista, Rethink
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch,” (image below) “Heinz Can’t Unsee It,” “Smack for Heinz,” “Slow this ad,” “Heinz AI,” “Heinz Tattoo Label,” “Heinz LVII means 57” and “It Has to be Heinz” for Kraft Heinz
What part of the creative process do you secretly love, and what part still tests your patience?
“To move at the speed of culture you need to move at a breakneck pace. As hectic as it is, I love making reactive work – it’s fast, a little jazzy, and you have no time to overthink it. Oftentimes with culturally relevant ideas you run the risk of being late to the party, if you wait for everything to be perfect and launch a month later the world would’ve moved on. At Rethink we embrace a “go-then-grow” mentality – get the thing out there in the world and extend from there.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“The ‘Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch’ campaign was a testament to the trust the Kraft Heinz team and Rethink have together. We launched with a limited number of bottles to test the waters of the name change and by the time WalMart reached out we were ready with enough bottles to put on shelves nationally – essentially becoming a soft relaunch of an existing Heinz product, Kranch.”
Rethink’s “Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch” for Kraft Heinz
