The One Club Boosts Programming Under Australian Advertising Legend Bob Isherwood
While other industry organizations retreated in the face of a challenging 2020, The One Club for Creativity doubled down on its nonprofit support of the creative community in two ways: reimagining some of its well-known existing programming — such as moving The One Show and ADC awards judging and ceremonies online — and creating whole new initiatives to address some of the industry’s most pressing issues.
The leading driver of the club’s new programs has been its Professional Development pillar, under the guidance of Australian creative legend Bob Isherwood, who joined the club last year as department director.
Leveraging both his lengthy industry experience as a top global creative and years teaching advertising on the university level, Isherwood and The One Club team initiated a pair of significant new programs: ONE School and the “A Creative Perspective” series.
ONE School
In response to the industry’s severe lack of diversity, The One Club launched the groundbreaking ONE School, a free portfolio program for young Black creatives in late summer.
ONE School is run by award-winning Spotify creative director Oriel Davis-Lyons. The initiative quickly came together as a result of his early-June LinkedIn post lamenting the high cost barrier of US portfolio schools for young creatives of color, and his pledge to find a way to rectify the situation. That post was seen by Isherwood, who reached out to Davis-Lyons and started the collaborative process to make ONE School a reality.
ONE School briefs are written by Black strategists and taught by Black tutors and lecturers, and students are paired with Black mentors in the industry.
Says Isherwood: “An issue in many courses is people from the very top of the industry, who are usually white, come in and speak to diverse students. While well intentioned, that reinforces the students’ idea that there’s no one at the top who looks like them. With our choice of lecturers and mentors, we’re closing the gap and exposing young Black creatives to leaders in the industry who they can follow, who get where they’re coming from, and will connect with them quicker than most CCOs.”
The 16-week online program kicked off last fall in New York and Los Angeles, supported by 39 leading agency and brand sponsors, with graduation of the first class of 30 participants set for early February. The Professional Development department also went the extra mile to arrange mentorship programs at top agencies for 79 applicants who did not make it into this first ONE School cohort
Launched daily during Creative Month and now an ongoing monthly program, this provocative series features brief videos from global industry leaders sharing their unique views on creative inspiration and practice.
Participants have included creative legends such as Sir John Hegarty, Joe Pytka, David Nobay, John Hunt, Susan Hoffman, Tony Davidson,Fernando Machado and others. To date, the series has racked up more than 772,000 views for nearly 29,000 hours watched.
“Vision, leadership and pursuit of creative excellence”
Isherwood’s creative career started as a junior art director at Y&R London before working his way up to partner at Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, London. He returned to Sydney in 1982 to co-found The Campaign Palace Sydney, which became the country’s most awarded agency of its time before being acquired by Bates.
Isherwood stepped onto the global stage during his 22 years at Saatchi & Saatchi, where he served 11 years as the agency’s worldwide creative director and as chair of its worldwide creative board. Under his leadership, the network was consistently ranked one of the most creative in the world, winning more than 8,000 major awards for clients such as P&G and Toyota, for whom Isherwood served as creative director for the global launch of Toyota Prius.
He is an inductee in the Clio Hall of Fame, and recipient of the Clio Lifetime Achievement Award and British Design and Art Directors Gold Award for Advertising.
Upon leaving the agency world, he developed and taught an advertising course for six years at Vanderbilt University, and co-founded Dialog Health, a mobile messaging company created to improve patient satisfaction, compliance and adherence in healthcare. He also holds an honorary doctorate from RMIT University in Melbourne.
Says Isherwood, who as an Adjunct Professor at Vanderbilt developed his own course on “Creative Advertising”: “Education has been my focus for quite a while now. For the past few years, I’ve had ongoing discussions with Kevin and Tony Gulisano (The One Club global chief growth officer) about where the current education system falls short for our industry. That led me to joining the club because we are like minded on the gaps we can fill.”
Says Swanepoel: “Bob’s vision, leadership and pursuit of creative excellence has been an inspiration to thousands of our people around the world. We’re thrilled and lucky to have him as a member of the team, where he has raised our Professional Development programming to the next level.”