Claire Kimber goes back to school, and back to basics!
By Claire Kimber, Group Innovation Director
February 2020
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:
- Keep it simple. No, really simple. 14 year olds don’t care for your beautifully designed flow charts.
- Be real. 14 year olds don’t care for your industry waffle.
- 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.