There was a time when it was enough to have a reasonable non-vocational degree from a decent university to make it in the advertising business – because you could learn the rest on the job. You’d learn about advertising strategies and ways of working, you’d learn about marketing, and you’d pick the rest up through some sort of process of osmosis. And on top of that you’d get a bit of training once every couple of years.
Things have improved a lot, not least thanks to the continued efforts of the IPA. You can now tell the agencies that take learning seriously. They’ll have gold or even platinum IPA accreditations which mean that they have identified how their own business has measurably improved by their deployment of a training and development strategy.
But all this still misses one thing: self-education.
Before the days of kindles and hot desks, there would be some account people whose offices (yes, they had offices) were lined with books, almost like a library – but they were few and far between. More often there would be a few standard books that had either been collected as they’d been chanced upon or had been given as gifts. The difference is that the libraries’ books were usually well thumbed and the few standard books were usually pristine.
Self-education seems to be something that comes more naturally to planners. In my experience planners are intrinsically more inquisitive and want to find the answers even when they know there aren’t any. But people in account management and creative departments, as smart as they are, seem to read a lot less.
Being smart is not the same as being smart AND well read in the business of advertising. The autodidacts who voraciously digest any new learning and constantly think how they can apply it – these people stand out in a crowd from those who don’t. As a friend of mine, once a creative director for one of London’s most successful agencies, used to say to aspiring account managers who asked him how they can succeed
“If you want to be really good at your job, just read 5 books about advertising. It can be any 5…I’ve got a bunch here you can borrow…and you will probably be better read on this business than most group account directors in London.”
When I ran a creative pitch for the Post Office in 2014, we used a question about self-education in the shortlisting process. We didn’t run a chemistry meeting where the client and agency traditionally show each other their well-rehearsed and well-dressed best selves, instead we ran a Q&A session. (This has now evolved into part of my pitch process I call The Acid Test.) We wanted to really test the mettle of the people who would work on the business. Among about 20 questions we asked each of five agencies about advertising, brand strategies and their businesses, we asked this:
“What interesting books have you read about advertising, marketing or human behaviour in the last year or so?”
There were no right or wrong answers about which books anybody might have read (except if they listed Ogilvy on Advertising we agreed that it shouldn’t count – everybody should have read that at least). We judged answers according to the appetites for learning they indicated. Those who struggled to think of one compared to those who reeled off a short list of books and could explain their benefits.
What interested me was that, although it was just one question, as a single test for the identification of talent it turned out to be highly illuminating.
The agencies that fared best overall all had hugely compelling answers about what their people had been reading. These agencies were seeking out and employing people with an insatiable hunger to learn more about their craft, people with a mission to be better tomorrow than they were today: and who simply tried harder and aimed higher. And quite logically by aiming higher they hit higher.
In the context of debates raging about pitch duration and investment – for a brave client who was ready to only ask one question of a prospective agency – I think this might just be it.
If you want to talk more get in touch with David Meikle just DM him on LinkedIn or drop him an email.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-meikle-6194405/