A traffic department is made up of people whose sole job it is to keep everything ticking through the various stages of conception and production on time.

It may not be immediately obvious, but traffic is a very important institution if you want large-scale ongoing creativity. Without it, every project is an endless sequence of leapfrogging and people become too busy to think.

Production is by panic, which means there's no time to have an idea in the bath, because you don't have time for the bath. Panic also legitimates bad work, because "that's all we could do in the time" always makes a good excuse.

The process is always dominated by production; the end part of the process, so work never gets enough conception time. The best creative departments always have traffic departments behind them.

In France and Italy, where marketing creativity isn't too hot, creative departments have never heard of traffic. In Switzerland, which famously was supposed only to have created the cuckoo clock, there are also no traffic departments.