Lucas Fowler and Jack Burton: The Worst Year to Graduate AWARD School, Ever
A letter to the 2020 AWARD School Cohort from Ogilvy Sydney copywriter Lucas Fowler (right) and Ogilvy Sydney art director Jack Burton (left), graduates of AWARD School 2018.
Firstly, congratulations graduating class next week! They tell you it’s gonna be rough, but damn, it’s hard to put into words the cerebral round-house kick of that final sprint. As 2018 alumni, we still feel the sting.
To say you chose the wrong year to do AWARD School is a little bit of understatement. As a cohort, you didn’t even pull the short straw. You went to pull a straw, but you shifted your weight wrong and fell into a manhole.
In said manhole: No in-person tutorials, no in-person networking, no cheers-ing frothy ones at a graduation ceremony, and worst of all, you’ve been busting your book only to wrap up in the thick of a recession. Opportunities to break into this industry are scarce enough at the best of times, but 2020 really cranked it up a notch.
(That being said, outstanding job to this year’s AWARD School Heads, Tutors and Comms Council workers, they’ve nailed the #pivot to convert AWARD School into a hands-on online course, no easy feat!).
So you’re probably thinking, I’ve spent long waking nights trying to advertise a sleeping app for nothing. Fear not. We actually propose, despite the recession, global pandemic, isolation and horrors yet to come, that you have a better chance of being a successful creative than any previous year. More on that later.
First, a few nuggets of retrospective wisdom that we picked up along the way from our journey into adland.
#1 BREAK THE VIRTUAL WALL
It’s crazy to think that many of you still haven’t met each other in person. This poses a bit of a problem when your first objective is to pair up and find your forever penguin.
As you’ll find out, partnering up is a pretty intense experience that requires a lot of face to face time. You normally know you’re cooking with gas when you can comfortably tell each other that their ideas are shit and do it regularly. This won’t end well behind a screen.
So get out and get in each other’s face, from a social distance of course. Way back when, we met up over a boozy schnitzel, then proceeded to travel between Newcastle and Sydney over many weekends to complete work for our book. It was these trips that forged our partnership.
TLDR: While you should be desperately sliding into your cohort’s DM’s, make sure the next step is IRL.
#2 KEEP YOUR DISTANCE
Socially distance yourself from ECDs until you have a healthy book. The temptation once you have a combined book with your best AWARD ideas in there is to force it in front of as many employing eyes as possible, alas, chill.
You need to show you can have ideas as a pair, not just the ability to make a collage with your Tesla radio scripts.
It took us 2-3 months to get a handful of ideas that gave us a book worth interviewing with. So, in this time, make your website beautiful, scary and uniquely you. Get people you respect to view and critique it before pestering agencies. As you’ll find out, first impressions last and are often your only chance.
#3 BE UNPRECEDENTED
Even in these unprecedently unprecedented times, you need your book to be even more unprecedented.
Firstly, burn your print ads, unless they’re something out of Banksy’s AWARD Book they need to be part of a bigger idea. We didn’t have a single traditional ad in our book. In fact, most weren’t even ads. Just ideas. Ads are but pithy things that have their time on the side of a bus then dissolve into nothing. Ideas, on the other hand, live forever; capable of changing cultures, people and the world. So, you know, go with ideas.
We sought out solutions for agencies ‘darling’ clients (ones that agencies do great work for), but we also looked beyond to surprise ECD’s with work for their dry clients like Government. We even threw in an idea for UNICEF to show large-scale thinking. Show that range of ideas you can come up with.
Secondly, if you’re struggling to come up with ‘big’ ideas, that’s okay. Think about what non-advertising side hustles you can start up to flex your creative skills. We’re not talking about having to start up something like SpaceX, just a small whacky thing that gets across your flair, like being a hairdresser for your hamster or writing poems about pickles. Most ECDs are eccentrics so they’ll eat that stuff up like Vegemite.
Now, you may commence Operation Spam-a-lot.
#4 SPREAD IT
Now that you’ve reached Step 4, you’ve got your ammunition, it’s time to fire on all cylinders.
You’re about to find that for a communications industry, people are really bad at communicating.
Going through traditional channels often leaves you feeling unloved and demanding attention.
Jack’s hack was emailing agency addresses with a rogue twist. He’d target certain people’s inboxes by writing their email address as ‘first name’ full stop ‘last name’ @ ‘agency name’ dot com dot ‘au’. Surprisingly accurate.
Another way was cold messaging ECDs and CDs on LinkedIn. While you’re going to get ignored a lot, you’ll get some responses back and 1 out of 100 ain’t bad. Never take it personally, it’s easy to forget that these people are some of the busiest people you’ll ever meet, so keep up your resilience in the face of rejection and radio silence.
When you do break through to someone, don’t put the pressure on to make it an interview – just ask them for their sage advice on your book. Very smooth, very classy.
P.S. Don’t be afraid to be extra. We sent an ECD flowers for his birthday, and it got our foot further in the door. I mean, we forgot to put our name on them so he didn’t know they were from us, but we felt good about it.
#5 DITCH THE TRACKIES
You’ve probably done AWARD in your PJ’s because that’s definitely how we would have done it. When it comes to interviews though, it’s time to get out of the comfort wear and present yourself. Now obviously this last tip is optional, you can dress however you want but oozing dapperness helped us get in the zone to absolutely sell ourselves.
Another way to stand out in an interview and really sell an idea is think about how to pitch your ideas. We brought props along to one interview and that’s the job we have today. So at the very least, be presentable, at the very most, get crazy with how you present yourself.
But in the end, from making it through AWARD School this year, you’ve shown you’ve got the drive that is essential to making it in this industry, regardless of timings. Managing to complete 10 briefs with the absence of any form of normality is not only honourable but a kind of unspoken certification that you kicked AWARD School’s butt when it was in Boss Mode.
You: 1. The toughest year of AWARD School Ever : 0.
To tie this up, we learnt that sometimes the hardest part of getting off the ground is getting that initial feedback on your book. Hit us up on lucasjackteam@gmail.com with your portfolio and we’ll give you some pointers, praise and criticism.
To the most resilient cohort to finish AWARD School, show us what you’ve got.
13 Comments
AWARD School students really got the raw end of the stick this year.
And they still charged them the full fee (same as previous years) while only being able to offer a 5th of the experience.
They’re not even shouting them a Covid-safe beer at a graduation night in the States not in lockdown.
I’m sure the Facebook live event will be just as good.
Can assure you there will be ample Covid-safe beers and 5x the frivolities at the Perth grad night.
Missing out on all those aspects of AWARD School does suck and I would’ve liked to get a $$ discount.
Buuuuut, having nothing to do in lockdown meant I had no social life to sacrifice.
Good luck to the rest of AWARD 2020. I don’t know any of you at all but I’m sure you’re great.
It’s always hard. Welcome to advertising. You need to just be better than everyone else and you will get a role.
Great advice – particularly #4. I used the email hack 15 years ago, and it worked well then – still a great way to get around pesky PAs and hidden contact details. And if it’s not first name then it’s first initial. There’s plenty of email testing sites available to check before you send.
Don’t give up, get used to rejection, it’s not personal, but keep going. It’s the ones that keep trying that get in – and you don’t have to have finished in the top three. Just don’t give in.
Keep hassling (politely). If they actually want you to piss off, they’ll let you know. But listen to what they say. And just don’t give up. I landed my first gig after a bugging a shitload of CDs and word got around. And I was far from great, but I was consistent, and had a unique story/hook – find yours.
There’s been more than a few fresh juniors who just happened to email me at the right time and I could give them some work, albeit small or singular. But it all counts, it’s all experience.
As they rightly pointed out, if you got through this far, you’ll make it. It might just take time.
If you can come up with your own ideas, own strategy even and not be one of the hundreds of juniors with the title ‘mid-weights’ or even ‘seniors’ who rely on the CDs to do the ideas / writing / art direction – you’re fucking in. Man I never would have had a job if I was a talentless lug. They’re everywhere, believe me.
Be a self-starter. Have your own opinion. Do work that will be good and win awards, not the shit your mum or friends like. Not even the shit you like. Do the shit that consumers and juries like.
Most importantly, if you have a mentor – fucking listen to them. They’re giving you their time for free.
Do good, listen to those who know better than you about what’s good, don’t listen to your mate or mum who says ‘I like that better’ – be a force for good creativity. Then, you might have a chance.
Do the opposite? Fine. I look forward to never meeting you.
Do good work? Fuck yes. Please. More of that. Do good work every day, even when you’re not working. Fuck the system. Break it. We are sorely lacking in those kinds of people.
Please be my mentor?
Gee, you’d be a wonderful lecturer. “Do good”… Don’t listen to your mum” – this is stirring stuff. Not to mention, “Fuck the system.”
I’m hard.
Some great advice there, and thanks again for the flowers.
It was our pleasure Craig. :p
I’m a little concerned about how this industry and will cope without this year’s fresh intake of talent? What future banner ads, product innovations and branded content are the Australians going to miss out on because of this?
2020’s been a shit sandwich whichever way you slice it. Sure, we missed out on direct contact, networking etc but I always considered that icing. The course’s purpose never faltered. I think COVID hit just when the course was starting so it had to completely reinvent itself on the fly. The tutors and admin people did absolutely everything they could to deliver a great experience and I couldn’t care less about the beer and pizza.
I’d look on the optimistic side.
You’re all hungry and (i hate to say it)… cheap.
Plus, this is a once in a century moment and so you’ve missed out on getting caught in the middle of it. Instead, you’re waiting on the other side… ready to pounce
Use the time to work on your book, meet people and work out what the fuck advertising is going to look like on the other side of this.
Stay in touch with your tutors and keep grinding. You have time on your side.
I’d much rather be waiting in the wings than have a massive mortgage, kids in school and be waiting for the axe to fall.
Godspeed