Sometimes they'll already have it on the walls. Ask them about each piece - who worked on it, what the process was like, what they wish they could have done better.
When you're interviewing, don't take the agency's word for it that they're committed to doing great creative. Ask to see what they've done recently and make them prove it.
Not everyone is going to be interviewing at Goodby, Wieden, Fallon or Crispin.
If you are, don't consider that a success. Blasphemous as it sounds, those agencies have turned out some bad work, too. (And they usually put the juniors on those assignments.)
If you're not, don't consider that a failure. There are a lot of unsung, unheralded and undiscovered agencies who are just waiting for fresh talent to take them to the next level.
In 1502, in Florence, Italy, an enormous block of marble stood in the works department of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore. It had once been a magnificent piece of raw stone, but an unskilled sculptor had mistakenly bored a hole through it where there should have been a figure’s legs, generally mutilating it…So, despite the money that had been wasted on it, it gathered dust in the dark halls of the church.
This was where things stood until some Florentine friends of the great Michelangelo decided to write to the artist, then living in Rome…Michelangelo traveled to Florence, examined the stone, and came to the conclusion that he could in fact carve a figure from it, by adapting the pose to the way the rock had been mutilated. Soderini [the mayor of Florence] argued that this was a waste of time—nobody could salvage such a disaster—but he finally agreed to let the artist work on it…
Weeks later, as Michelangelo was putting the final touches on the statue, Soderini entered the studio. Fancying himself a bit of a connoisseur, he studied the huge work and told Michelangelo that while he thought it was magnificent, the nose, he judged, was too big. Michelangelo realized that Soderini was standing in a place right under the giant figure and did not have the proper perspective. Without a word, he gestured for Soderini to follow him up the scaffolding. Reaching the nose, he picked up his chisel, as well as a bit of marble dust that lay on the planks. With Soderini just a few feet below him on the scaffolding, Michelangelo started to tap lightly with the chisel, letting the bits of dust he had gathered in his hand to fall little by little. He actually did nothing to change the nose, but gave every appearance of working on it. After a few minutes of this charade, he stood aside. “Look at it now.”
“I like it better,” replied Soderini. “You’ve made it come alive."
If you aspire to be a creative director, you’ve got to have expertise outside your own discipline. Because when you become a creative director, to the teams underneath you, you are the expert.
