Time to teach, again
Soon after moving to Minneapolis, I got a call from Nancy Rice (one of the founders of Fallon, McElligott, Rice) and now the head of the advertising program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Would I be interested in teaching?
(I taught advertising at Emerson College and the Boston Ad Club for two years, and lectured at Boston University. You don't do it for the paycheck!)
The timing for MCAD wasn't good back then. But now, 14 months later, it is. So I've recently agreed to teach a course in...well, I'm not 100% sure. Perhaps you can help.
The gist of it is, MCAD has a really solid offering of advertising courses -- taught by smart people like Nancy Rice. I mean, you can learn copywriting from Tom McElligott. And TV concepting from Pat Burnham. In other words, you can learn from legends.
And they've got great courses in the fine arts, in illustration, photography, animation and digital technologies. Oh, and they teach entrepreneurialism and strategic thinking!
So I'm not sure what exactly this course should be or could be. It's definitely going to have something to do with:
Digital Thinking. In other words, expressing marketing and advertising thoughts effectively across web sites, online ads, social networking, mobile, etc. It's about learning how User Experience, technology and consumer control affect advertising ideas.
Integration. Begin with a strategic idea, then learn how to express it in a wide variety of mediums so the core remains the same, but each medium is used for its unique strengths. For me, it seems like half of this area is simply about communication and articulation skills -- being able to help your account, production and client partners understand how it's all going to work together (creatively and finacially).
Conversation. Maybe Jaffe's newer book or the 103+'s The Age of Conversation will be required. The gist of this subject is, naturally, the evolution of marketing communications and the growing role of the consumer.
The students will have taken basic courses in advertising. But they'll come from a mix of backgrounds: Fine Arts, Animation, Comic Book Arts, Advertising, etc.
What do you think tomorrow's advertising professionals should know? What should their heads be filled with? What should be in their portfolios? I'd appreciate any thoughts or observations you care to share. And I'll keep posting as the course description and curriculum develop.
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UPDATE: Lots of great comments here. Thanks! And I've got a new post on the curriculum featuring some great thoughts from Edward Boches, CCO of Mullen.
And a third post. And the fourth, which features course title, description and objectives.