A junior art director was showing his parents around the office. I was doing something extremely important in my office befitting my position as creative director, although I no longer have any idea what it was. As the art director led his dad down the hall, his mother pulled me aside and said, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

Uh-oh.

"Now, we're not an 'advertising' family," she said, putting her fingers up in the air and hooking them like little claws as she said the "A" word. "So when Sandy told us about his new job, we were a little confused. But I think I'm beginning to understand what it is he does here." She smiled at me uncertainly and said, "He's in charge of what everything looks like, right?"

Well, all right, I'll give Sandy that. I mean, as a junior AD it was the kind of exaggeration usually reserved for Professional Football players and Presidential Press Secretaries - Sandy was more in charge of what the coffee looked like than what any of the work looked like - but, hell, this was his mom, so, sure, he was in charge of what the stuff looked like.

"And I understand he works with a very nice writer who's in charge of all the words." Yes, yes, that's right, more or less. "And he mentioned an account person who tells them what the client wants, yes?"

I nodded stupidly like the six-foot bobblehead doll I am.

"So what exactly do you do?"

Ah yes, the dreaded question. Just what exactly does the Creative Director do? It's something I've often asked myself.

This is what I should have said.

"Lady, there are only 2 things a Creative Director, a real Creative Director (not just 'the Art Director with the biggest office') should do.

"The first thing is "Be Articulate." Every once in a while this is easy because the client knows what they want, or because the problem is just easy to solve. But most of the time it's really hard. Because most of the time no one knows what they're talking about. Clients, Account people, Focus Groups, friends, neighbors, mentors, even Creative Directors.

"So maybe today you have to partially listen to this guy (who yesterday wasn't making any sense), and not listen to this other guy at all (who was really smart yesterday), and listen to this other one instead, and figure out what the hell the right answer really is, regardless of what everyone is saying. Usually this is based on some feeling you have in some part of your body.

All in quest of being able to articulate what needs to happen.

"Being articulate also has to do with figuring out how you're going to explain this answer to the highly suspicious, egotistical and often psychologically unstable creative team in order to get them to do what needs to be done. And lastly, it has to do with figuring out how you're going to explain all of it - including the feeling in your body part of choice - to the account team, so they can sell it and protect it (or understand when they have to bring you in to protect it) to keep that revenue rolling in.

"That's the first thing - Be Articulate.

"The second thing - and these are not in any particularly sequential order - is "Get the hell out of the way." A real CD should spend as much time as possible keeping any idea whatsoever from climbing into his pointy little head before he sees what his team has done. This is harder than it sounds, because we all earned our stripes thinking up really good answers, really fast. It's also harder than it sounds because, most advertising to the contrary, we are not a legion of empty-headed morons. If we were, we would probably produce better work.

"This is important because the Creative Director who consistently has the answer to the question he is posing to his team (and what's a creative brief if not a question?) is a CD who will only get out of his people what he himself can think of, and not one damn thing more. The CD who can stay focused and keep thinking in terms of the problem, in terms of the objectives, in terms of the real criteria for the work, is the CD who will produce great creative and, perhaps more importantly, great creatives.

"Sure, sure, being clever with words is good, and being able to draw purty pictures, well, there's always a place for that, too. But not when the client is pounding the desk with his shoe, or when the account people are handing you creative briefs that are gibberish, or when the creatives have the same look in their eyes that Chris Cooper had in "American Beauty" right before he snapped."

That's what I should have said, but I didn't. Instead I muttered something inane about vision, and made a lame joke about wearing bad clothes, drinking too much and playing video games. I don't think that answer satisfied her, because the next day Sandy asked me what I'd told his mom, because now she was telling everyone that he worked for a fat lazy drunk.

Fat? I didn't say anything about fat. Oh well. She probably wouldn't have liked my other answer either.