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"Why, you may wonder, would the IPA look to reintroduce the copy test (www.ipacopytest.co.uk) at a time when the industry is struggling to keep hold of its best talent and the bean counters try to discard everyone who doesn’t bring in the revenue?

First, let’s just examine the whole structure of the creative department. It never used to strike me as particularly odd that we hire creatives in teams. One does spelling, the other colours things in; two heads are better than one, and all that. It’s worked well for years, hasn’t it?

Yet when you look at the identikit teams that the art colleges and advertising degree courses turn out; teams who haven’t even decided who is writer and who is art director, you might begin to wonder if the industry is pulling in the diversity of talent that it used to - and should be now - especially given the radical shifts in media and channels that we’re working in.

Not that I’m a big fan of bankers – who is these days – but I make no apologies for borrowing some of their new phrases in order to make a case for “facilitating a spot of quantitative easing” in the creative department.

Now, this is not about money. It is about injecting some of what Mervyn King called ‘conventional unconventional’ and ‘unconventional unconventional’ thinking in the way we hire and use copywriters.

‘Conventional unconventional’ thinking has it that the creative team is already dead. (Leave aside the fact that there are still a lot of conventional creative departments out there.) I know that some agencies have already loosened the structure of the traditional copywriter/art director team to better embrace new media opportunities and the skill sets they require.

But in general the conventional unconventional approach involves the addition of ‘digital designers’ or ‘online art directors’. What interests me is the possibility that the addition of more ‘rounded’ and roving writers can bring a greater level of diversity, skill and life experience into the mix.

Then there are the inherent inefficiencies of the conventional creative team to consider. Once a creative concept is ‘cracked’ the labour intensity of the art director’s task means that writers are often left under-utilised.

So I’d like to suggest an ‘unconventional unconventional’ approach. Why not go for something different and hire writers from a different graduate background? Someone who has studied law perhaps, or politics, chemistry or philosophy? You can be sure they can write as they’ll have been writing essays and dissertations etc for at least the last three years. And this is one of the key reasons behind the reintroduction of the IPA Copy Test – to encourage new and diverse talent into the industry.

Where different tones of voice need to be employed, why not get different writers to draft the constituent parts? Some writers are better at writing dialogue than others. Some are better at long copy than others. Having a pool of writers who can rove between different art directors and designers might improve the creative output, as well as provide a quick way to improve productivity levels.

Who knows, if we see more writers being hired from a greater diversity of academic and vocational backgrounds maybe we’ll see the beginnings of a huge programme of “quantitative easing” from creative departments – pumping more ideas into the economy in order to stimulate our collective recovery."

Neil Francis is Creative Partner at Stephens Francis Whitson and a member of the IPA Creative Forum.

For more information about the copy test, please click here.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.