Sarah McGregor: Supercharge your creative career – be a sponge and surround yourself with magical unicorns

Soaking up the brilliance of top ad industry creatives (and stealing all their secrets), is the best way to get ahead as a creative, argues Sarah McGregor (pictured above), executive creative director, Dentsu Creative. However, opportunities to learn from these experts and progress in your career beyond just generating great ideas are rare.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how it is we come to learn the skills that make us into brilliant, well-rounded creative people. Not so much what I will call the practical skills – how to write a script, art direct a layout, input an AI prompt. More the skills that set us apart and lead to satisfying, memorable and long-lasting careers. Skills like being able to diffuse conflict in the manner of a high-level UN diplomat, present our ideas with the kind of showbiz flair that both charms and convinces a room full of doubters, or inspire a team to greatness even when times are tough. The magic tricks they simply don’t teach you at school or in your first days as a creative.

I’ve concluded that we learn these special skills by watching, listening, and absorbing the nutrient-rich good bits like sea sponges.

Some of this learning happens unconsciously, but once you become aware of it, you can start to tap into it and treat every encounter as a chance to soak up another person’s brilliance (and steal all their secrets).

This is something I learned about ten years into my career – I knew I’d picked up stuff from people I’d worked with, but it was at this point that I really started studying them – like the planner who’d keep clients in the palm of his hand not with charts and data, but with stories. Or the writer who’d present her scripts with real drama – she made everything feel like it was the best idea she, or indeed anyone, had ever had.

There is, however, one problem with this. You have to be lucky enough to work with these magical unicorns – and while they are scattered like fairy dust in agencies across the world, in the average career that might span say, five or six agencies, most of us will only get the chance to witness a few of them. And given these are chance encounters, we can’t always choose just what disciplines we might stumble across – I might learn the dark arts of charming clients from a kindly GAD, and how to get the best work from production companies from a gifted producer, but completely miss out on how to ask great questions or sell an unconventional idea without scaring the horses.

And this is exactly why AWARD Uni was created. Part of AWARD’s This Way Up festival and featuring a host of Australia’s best creative leaders offering their insights and advice, it aims to give mid-weight creatives a shortcut to the kind of wisdom that might usually take a lifetime, and an unfair advantage that can move their careers along fast.

It’s designed to teach you the things that you might otherwise miss – all of the essential elements outside of simply having an idea that will lead to not just great work, but a good career, and a long one.

You’ll hear from top creatives like Bridget Jung (Ogilvy), Jonathan Kneebone (The Glue Society), Julian Schreiber (Special Australia), Mandie van der Merwe (Saatchi & Saatchi), Barbara Humphries (The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song), and more, who’ll cover favourite subjects from last year and brand new ones – like ‘The power of presenting’, ‘Tangible ways to know you’re moving up’ and my personal favourite, ‘The power of delusional optimism’.

The course will also run in Sydney from August 13 and also in Melbourne, through a mix of in-person and online sessions.

You can find out more about AWARD Uni here.