In Part 1 of our interview with Pete Heid, Creative Director of Edelman in Atlanta, he talks about making the jump from a long career in advertising to a PR agency, how to spot a great idea and how to build a modern-day creative department.

Hey, this is Rudy Fernandez from Creative Outhouse, and on this episode of Marketing Upheaval, I talked with Pete Heid, the Creative Director of Edelman in Atlanta, and actually we made this two episodes. He had a lot of insights and I love talking about creative. In his first episode, he talked about making the jump from his long career at ad agencies to now working at a PR firm. He also talked about what he looks for when he's trying to build a modern creative department in this crazy changing world. Check it out. Welcome to Marketing Upheaval.

Welcome to Marketing Upheaval. My guest this episode is Pete Heid, Creative Director at Edelman. He's had a great career in advertising in traditional ad agencies and three years ago decided to go the PR route. Thanks for being on show, Pete.

Rudy: So first I got to ask you what made you decide to go from Ad Agency to PR Agency?

Pete: I actually get that question a lot from my advertising buddies. This is basically my answer. Advertising agencies were starting to act like PR agencies and I found that PR agencies were starting to act like advertising agencies. And when Edelman reached out to me, I felt like they were somewhere in the sweet spot in the middle. And it was from this space that I was seeing a lot of creative energy that was happening. It was producing all kinds of really cool work that really got me excited. Advertising didn't feel like advertising at Edelman. They had done some really good work. They had won a recently a Cannes award. So I saw that and I was like, God, if they're winning Cannes awards, I want to be part of that.

Rudy: Which one did you see?

Pete: So that was for a work that a San Francisco office did for Adobe. Okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was pretty, it was pretty smart. And I'd never seen anything like that before. Yeah. But I didn't know I don't to was doing that kind of work. I was like, damn, I've been wanting to do that kind of work since I started, but we never really quite had the right opportunity. So that's kind of what brought me here.

Rudy: So we, we both grew up in advertising. So what is the difference, do you think right away when you came here, was there a difference between a creative department at a PR agency and let's take the creative department in an ad agency?

Pete: Oh yeah, most definitely. I think what I was seeing is that creative I'm in a PR agency was more of a support function. What do you mean? Well, uh, when I first got here and what I was told how things used to be was that, uh, the PR function, the PR practice would require, they would have ideas that were, requires some level of creative production and they would reach out to, they're almost like an in house agency at a company and a brand. And uh, of course they, that didn't interest me because that's not what I wanted to do here. Make this. Yeah, yeah. No, it's exactly, they would tell you how to think and you are just basically either hands. Yeah. And I remember when I first got here, uh, someone who told me just get used to not making things. I was like, what do you mean?

Pete: And they're like, you make a lot of decks, PR decks. And I was like, no, I, I'm not here for that. I'm here to make things.

See the full transcript here: https://creativeouthouse.com/2019/08/14/pete-heid-on-building-a-

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