What Is Threatening the World’s Top Ad Schools?

Ad schools have long been the conventional route into the industry and a go-to source of new talent for agencies. But this month, one of the best in the world, The Watford Course in the U.K., shut down. And it is not the only ad school facing trouble. The School of Communication Arts in London, whose alumni also includes internationally renowned creatives, is under pressure after losing about $273,000 (£200,000) last year. SCA dean Marc Lewis recently wrote that ad schools like his and Watford are “the last of a species.” This species is endangered because of the proliferation of agencies’ in-house training programs, according to Lewis and former Watford leader Tony Cullingham. “Ogilvy London received 1,000 applicants for their internal creative scheme, Pipe. I’ve had a dozen,” Cullingham told Adweek in July, before he closed Watford. “‘Grow your own’ is the thing.” In fact, Cullingham’s next move will be leading the revamped creative incubator program at Bartle Bogle Hegarty London. The Barn is a full-time, paid, 10-month course that will help eight people enter the advertising industry. Like others, Cullingham has seen that pathways into advertising careers are changing. But as more agencies take the reins on delivering creative education, this shift also exposes some potential weaknesses where the industry still struggles to bring up the next generation of talent. Why Some Ad Schools Are Struggling A perfect storm of factors is putting pressure on ad schools. The first is the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced education—like many other sectors—to move online and hit some revenue sources. “The pandemic has pushed a lot of mentoring, teaching, networking, workshops and portfolio building online—and this is a free resource,” Cullingham explained. After shifting its program online early in the pandemic, SCA plans to maintain a distance learning course even now that its studio has reopened. Virtual learning could be beneficial because it gives access to students who can’t or don’t want to live in London, SCA chief executive Tom Crossley noted. But those who aren’t there physically also miss out on in-person mentoring and networking—and some aren’t willing to pay the same price for a virtual option. In the U.K., which has long attracted international students, another pressure point for schools is Brexit, which has made it more challenging for students from Europe to study there—potentially drying up another revenue source. But the real bugbear of some ad school leaders is that more agencies are setting up their own courses. Some in-house creative incubators, like Ogilvy’s Pipe or Wieden+Kennedy’s The Kennedys, are well-established, but many more have sprung up over the past year to fix an issue that has plagued the industry for a long time: its lack of diversity. Why More Agencies Are Growing Their Own The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 shone a glaring spotlight on this problem, and some agencies’ answer to this has been to start their own schemes that recruit and train talent from diverse backgrounds. BBH, Saatchi & Saatchi and M&C Saatchi are just a few to have done this recently. BBH Barn leader Tony Cullingham (left) and BBH London executive creative director Helen Rhodes. These programs may appeal to young people for being more cost-effective than ad schools (while SCA aims to offer scholarships to a third of its students each year, for example, it costs about $22,500 [£16,500] annually at full price). Agency incubators also tend to be shorter and offer on-the-job training—attractive prospects during an economic downturn. On the flip side, ad schools can offer exposure to a wide range of agencies, rather than just one. Like others, SCA has regular guest speakers and mentors from various agencies and assigns its students real client briefs. Crossley also argues that in-house programs do not provide the same level of educational expertise as a traditional ad school, nor do they have the same experience spotting and recruiting potential talent among people from diverse backgrounds. “Why create something yourself when you could partner with someone who’s been doing it for 10 years?” he said. “We’re trying to educate people who aren’t in the [advertising] ecosystem. In our current cohort, for example, we have a woman of color who’s a nurse and carer. She’s not in the ecosystem and wouldn’t get a placement [at an agency] because she doesn’t have experience, but she has so much creative potential.” Fixing Structural Problems Ad schools like SCA have set an agenda to find and train more diverse talent—a goal shared with many of the agencies that have started competing programs. Yet educational leaders warn that some agencies’ homegrown initiatives could fail to address the issues that are halting the industry’s progress on diversity. For one, some agencies that have set up courses are looking for a “quick fix” to inequalities rather than a long-term solution, said Isabel Farchy, founder and CEO of Creative Mentor Network, an organization that provides mentoring programs and a talent finding service for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In Its First Year, the One School Has Trained 84 Black Creatives, With 80% of Grads Hired “There are some [agency programs] that are less well thought through and feel more like a reaction. They can be a vanity exercise for the agency,” Farchy said. “In some cases, you have people without much expertise in education delivering educational programs. Advertising is quite a solutions focused industry and everyone’s looking for that easy, quick insight or solution. But these are complicated, structural problems that we’re dealing with.” One of those structural problems, according to Farchy, is that “the creative industry isn’t more accessible because it’s not visible”—so the people that agencies want to recruit may never even hear of such programs. “It can be difficult to apply directly to one of these creative incubator programs without an understanding of the whole [advertising] ecosystem. Are those programs only tapping into people who might already understand and know about that world?” she continued. “The industry is pretty good at seeking out a more diverse workforce, particularly at entry level. The problem is a pipeline problem—the issues are starting much further back, at age 14, 15 or earlier. In certain schools and communities there is a real lack of understanding of the creative industry as a source of employment.” Retaining Talent for the Long Haul The people who do find and make it through an agency course may then face another hurdle. Agencies are “notoriously bad at nurturing junior talent,” said James Hillhouse, co-founder of Commercial Break, an organization focused on increasing working class representation in the creative and marketing industries. Because “busyness and clients dictate everything” at agencies, senior staff often fail to provide the support and structures needed to help talent progress in their careers, he explained. People say ‘diversity and inclusion’ but forget about the inclusion part, which is making people feel like they belong in those spacesNatalie Nahr, alumnus of Ogilvy Pipe's program This barrier may feel even more impenetrable among the talent recruited through diversity programs. Natalie Nahr, an alumnus of Ogilvy’s Pipe program, has observed a widespread lack of workplace inclusion since entering the ad industry. She said this issue is causing many people from diverse backgrounds to hit a glass ceiling, leaving agencies to start their own ventures—or exiting the industry altogether. “Sometimes agencies do these internships and courses to get in diverse talent, and then think that the job is done. But the creative industries struggle with retaining diverse talent after those courses are over,” she said. “People say ‘diversity and inclusion’ but forget about the inclusion part, which is making people feel like they belong in those spaces.” A New Door Opening Ultimately, Hillhouse believes it is a positive shift that “more entry points have opened into the industry” beyond ad schools: “It’s not a question of when a new door opens, then an old one closes. That implies that the pathway into the industry or the gap in the fence is only ever going to be so wide,” he said. But if more people are finally entering that gap in the fence, what destination awaits them? For agencies to take on the role of educators and raise a new generation of talent, it will require deep, long-term change within their structures and cultures, Hillhouse warned. He worries that “maybe what agencies really want is the sense that they’re doing something, but nothing actually changes. If you want to make this work, you can make it work, but it is going to be different. It’s not going to be what it is before. And are you okay with that?” Agencies Are Finally Dropping College Degree Requirements