Oh to be 14 again! Actually, scrap that, I had a perm when I was 14.

But oh to be 14 and a student at Queens Park Community School! This week, I got to spend the day with all of the Year 9 group as a speaker at their annual Creatives Day; in the company of set designers, artists, brand designers, and a professional drummer… the brief? Get them excited about the creative industries ahead of them taking their GCSE Options.

In answering said brief, I was reminded of a few key strategic points that we should all live by in this business of advertising:

1. Keep it simple. No, really simple. 14 year olds don’t care for your beautifully designed flow charts.
2. Be real. 14 year olds don’t care for your industry waffle.
3. Do good work. 14 years don’t care for your ego.

Taking all of the above into account, I boiled my solution down to this: You should get totally excited about working in the creative industries, because I get to do a job within it where I make things up for a living. And so could you.

This seemed to really excite them; as well as giving them a brief to work on and workshopping creative concepts (sorry, making things up) to answer business challenges.

All in all, it was a very sobering day; one where I remembered how brilliantly fun and privileged my job is, how teachers are superheroes, how young people are incredibly smart, and how a perm is just a terrible way of over-complicating straight hair.