\n
I blame the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. And the advertising schools. And me. And every other creative director in town.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Each of us is responsible, a bit, for a change that on one hand has given our international awards tally a handy boost, but on the other has gone through our creative departments like a petrol powered weedeater, stripping an entire level of paid jobs out of the bottom end of the industry and replacing them with what an uncharitable person might describe as a generation of homogenous gong-hungry clones.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Temuera Morrison wasn\u2019t behind this clone army, though. The NZQA was, armed with not just an oversized novelty cheque, but an entire oversized novelty chequebook (and possibly a very big pen). It\u2019s not just an advertising issue. Ever wonder why every other office building on Queen Street is home to at least one hairdressing academy? It\u2019s not because people are hairier these days. It\u2019s because if you can fill a class with wannabe hairdressers and train them to a certain standard, out come the oversized novelty cheques.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 And the size and number of the cheques, whether you\u2019re running a hairdressing academy, an air hostess college or an advertising school, come down to how many students sign up for your course.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 It\u2019s supply and demand. Kids demand a course that sounds like more fun than tax accounting (which, OK, is any course at all), so the hairdressing academies and ad schools supply them.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Turn it round though, and look at it from the ad industry perspective, and the supply and demand start to appear a little out of whack. Between them, the ad schools turn out up to 60 eager, talented graduates a year. That\u2019s a lot of grads. Count up every creative position in every decent agency in the country \u2013 not just the juniors \u2013 and you\u2019d be lucky to hit 200.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 So where do all those graduates go? They\u2019re not all flipping burgers or wishing they\u2019d done hairdressing. A good number of them are working long hours in creative departments, for less each week than some of us could spend on a feed at Prego. They\u2019re winning awards, and they\u2019re turning out the work.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 But they\u2019re also turning out the workers. Rather than serving as a poorly compensated step on the way to a proper job, the placement teams have become the replacement teams \u2013 doing the work junior teams once did, but for a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 The impact on the number of paid jobs is just one problem though \u2013 and if you\u2019re into market forces, you could say it\u2019s just tough titties. What\u2019s hurting us more \u2013 and this is where creative directors have to take a hit \u2013 is that going to an ad school has become almost the only way into the game.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t always been this way. There used to be a time, the ex-art director who cleans our kitchen at work told me, when people who wanted to work in advertising would get a book together, knock on a lot of doors, land an interview or two, then maybe get a job. What they didn\u2019t know when they turned up they\u2019d learn as they went along.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Since there was no such thing as an advertising graduate back then, all sorts of people would turn up and try their luck. Policemen, firewood contractors and \u2013 God help us all \u2013 military pilots came knocking and some of them even got hired.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Sure, not all of them could tell you the nine times in the last three decades that ads featuring gerbils had won international awards, but they got by. They came up with ads based on their life experiences \u2013 which they could do because they\u2019d actually had some. Insights weren\u2019t just something that came from the planner\u2019s crystal ball. They were what you got from spilling beer on a big guy\u2019s shoes in a pub, riding the bus 200 times to a shit job, having kids and changing their nappies, falling in love, buying a house, crashing your car, having your cat die and painting a roof.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 The result, on a good day, was advertising that connected with all sorts of people, because it was made by all sorts of people.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Of course, it makes perfect sense for some professions to be staffed by an annual crop of bright eyed graduates, all products of the same rigorous system, all trained to the same high standard. It seems to make sense for lawyers, and I\u2019m pretty sure it makes sense for doctors \u2013 when the folks at the ad schools mail me a bomb tomorrow I want someone who knows what they\u2019re doing stitching my hands back on.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure it makes so much sense for advertising.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I blame the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. And the advertising schools. And me. And every other creative director in town. \u00a0 Each of us is responsible, a bit, for a change that on one hand has given our international awards tally a handy boost, but on the other has gone through our creative departments like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12023],"tags":[6021,2481,15171,1619,1232],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-145128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","tag-farm","tag-future","tag-goat","tag-week","tag-works"],"yoast_head":"\n
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