Soaking up the brilliance of top ad industry creatives (and learning their secrets) is the best way to get ahead as a creative, argues Sarah McGregor (pictured above), executive creative director at Dentsu Creative. However, opportunities to learn from these experts and progress in your career beyond just generating great ideas are rare.
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how we acquire the skills that make us into brilliant, well-rounded creative professionals. Not the practical skills—like writing a script, art directing a layout, or inputting an AI prompt—but the skills that set us apart and lead to satisfying, memorable, and long-lasting careers. Skills like diffusing conflict like a high-level UN diplomat, presenting ideas with the showbiz flair that both charms and convinces a room full of doubters, or inspiring a team to greatness even during tough times. These are the magic tricks they don’t teach you in school or during your early 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 learn their secrets).
I realized this about ten years into my career. I knew I’d picked up things from people I’d worked with, but it was at this point that I really started studying them—like the planner who’d captivate clients not with charts and data, but with stories. Or the writer who’d present her scripts with real drama, making everything feel like the best idea she, or anyone, had ever had.
There is, however, one problem with this: you have to be lucky enough to work with these magical unicorns. While they are scattered like fairy dust in agencies across the world, in an average career that might span five or six agencies, most of us will only get the chance to witness a few of them. Given these are chance encounters, we can’t always choose which disciplines we might stumble across. I might learn the art of charming clients from a gifted account director and how to get the best work from production companies from a talented producer but miss out on learning how to ask great questions or sell an unconventional idea without scaring the horses.
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, providing an unfair advantage to move their careers forward quickly.
It’s designed to teach you the things you might otherwise miss—all the essential elements outside of just having a great idea that will lead to not only great work but also a good, long career.
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. They’ll cover favorite subjects from last year and introduce new ones like ‘The Power of Presenting,’ ‘Tangible Ways to Know You’re Moving Up,’ and my personal favorite, ‘The Power of Delusional Optimism.’
The course will 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.
