Guest · Creativity and creative effectiveness
Tom Murphy
Chief Creative Officer, VML
Decades in creative advertising, from the art room to Chief Creative Officer at VML, Murphy argues that work without a point of view is invisible and that advertising always outlives its obituaries.
About
Tom Murphy is Chief Creative Officer at VML, where he leads the agency's North America creative work. He is known for insisting that creative work now succeeds only when it carries a point of view, and for a level-headed optimism about the future of advertising in the face of AI and constant doomsaying.
Murphy came to advertising as the kid who never left the art room, pointed toward the business by a father who worked tangentially in marketing and who, in Murphy's own words, was an uncreative man who nonetheless saw something worth putting to use. He came up through the Photoshop era of the early 1990s, when purists argued that ideas not drawn by hand had lost the soul of the craft, and he has since worked through mergers, rebrands and heavy organisational change on his way to leading creative for one of the industry's largest networks.
As Chief Creative Officer at VML, Murphy leads North America and served on a Cannes jury last summer. He speaks with pride about work he did not personally make, from the pro bono Beat Cancer Off to Coca-Cola's The Last Coke in the Desert and Thanks for Co-Creating, and he watches the next generation form through his daughter's film school and its scrappy young makers. Away from the office, Murphy describes himself as an avid taker of photographs happiest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, camera in hand, watching the people who watch the art.
Career28 years
- 2024 to now VML Chief Creative Officer, North America
- 2022 to 2024 Wunderman Thompson NA Chief Creative Officer, North America
- 2020 to 2022 McCann Chief Creative Officer, North America
- 2012 to 2020 McCann New York Chief Creative Officer
Show earlier roles: McCann New York, DDB
- 2011 to 2012 McCann New York Executive Creative Director
- 2004 to 2011 McCann New York Group Creative Director
- 1998 to 2004 DDB Creative Director
How Tom thinks3 convictions
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The pull of the irrational
Murphy believes the industry became too rational for its own good, and that the illogical, emotional ideas are the ones people actually remember. He warns against mistaking scale and efficiency for impact. For him the return to the idea is a return to the things that connect with people.
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Ideas come from the world
Murphy argues that the best ideas still come from people, not from feeds, and that letting scrolls become your only cultural input is a real danger. He pushes creatives into museums, films and real life. His own happiest place, camera in hand, is watching people look at art.
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Enthusiasm is half the battle
Murphy says the young people thriving at his agency bring an infectious energy that every creative director wants on their accounts. Talent, taste and vision all matter, but he places unbridled enthusiasm above them as the thing you cannot manufacture. Once he sees that energy, he says, the rest can be built.
