Mention mentoring to a sampling of senior agency execs, and you can get some long pauses and a few recollections about how agencies used to bring new people along in the old days. Agencies often would start new creatives off in newspaper print ads, then magazines, maybe some radio, then sales videos, and finally TV spots. It was, in some cases, almost an apprenticeship.
These days, much has changed. Agencies don’t have the luxury of bringing people along slowly. They no longer have top creative teams that are busy only during surges of work. Creative staffs are leaner and money is tighter; there is little spare time or funding for formal mentoring programs or apprenticeships.
Shops known for their creative television work are hiring people out of places like Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif., or Atlanta’s Portfolio Center—graduates who are far better prepared than were previous generations of creatives. These young creatives often move into high-profile TV campaigns right off the bat. The measure of junior copywriters and art directors is their ideas, not their experience. For them, being mentored comes very much by the sink-or-swim method, but with a lifeguard nearby.
"It’s not really about mentoring," says Charlie Miesmer, vice chairman/senior executive creative director at BBDO New York. "It’s about discovering someone who is excellent and taking care of them. And taking care of somebody means making sure they don’t [screw] up. It’s singling them out."
About 10 or 12 years ago, Miesmer took note of the good young people graduating from schools with high-profile advertising programs, and began hiring from there. "As these ad schools began to develop and proliferate, they began to turn out some really good people," he says. "I would fill my group with a bunch of young teams, more than I really needed. They barely cost anything. The mortality rate on those teams was high. But some were really good and they would go to other agencies for huge salary bumps. A couple of them stuck, and those are the ones you wind up mentoring."
Another experienced hand, Rob Schwartz, executive creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, notes the absence of a formal mentoring system in the advertising business today. "It used to be, the best farm system at this agency was [made up of] people who came in to work on retail business—some bank retail or Nissan retail," he says. "You really learn the trade because you work on impossible deadlines and you have to be really smart. Results are attached [to retail]. If it works, you’ve earned the right to another assignment, to do something else."
At the same time, Schwartz notes that the quality of junior talent is high today. "The generation of people coming out of the creative schools now has all grown up with advertising," he points out. "This is a very well-schooled, mature group that has been touched by brands their whole lives."
But there is still a need to help new talent develop and become acclimated to the agency environment. Most of the executives that SHOOT talked with resist using the word "mentoring" to describe what they do at their agencies, but each agency, and in some cases a creative group within an agency, has its own way of bringing people along.
"Mentoring is not something one sets out to do," explains Miesmer. "When you run a group, a big group, there are always a small number of people who really blow you away. You find yourself taking an inordinate amount of interest in those people."
At BBDO, which does a great deal of television work, young teams are routinely given what Miesmer calls "incredibly great assignments" and the opportunity to do the real work themselves. "It used to be, the guy who ran a group tried to do most of the work himself," recalls Miesmer. "The people you saw at the big shoots were the people who ran the group. In my group, I loved it when I didn’t have to write all the stuff. I loved it when two kids I hired are standing there telling Bob Giraldi [of bicoastal Giraldi Suarez Productions] what to do, or getting into a fight with Joe Pytka [of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA]. Jimmy Siegel, who is now executive VP/executive creative director, used to get in fights with Pytka, and I just loved it. I have enormous respect for young thought that isn’t corrupted by experience, or by the attitude, ‘You can’t do that.’ I have enormous respect for a new sense of humor."
While Miesmer sees the new generation of talent coming out of specialized schools as infinitely better prepared than previous generations, he says they sometimes need assistance. "The art of assembling a commercial—the editorial process—is what a kid mostly needs help with," he observes. "Sometimes they have great ideas, and they sell them to a client and they go to great directors, and they shoot great film, and you leave them with the editors for a week and they proudly come up with rough cuts that are so bad you can’t believe it. It’s something you have to learn; it isn’t something you show up with. Having great ideas is something you show up with."
These days, Miesmer is kicking himself a bit for initially ignoring two hires who were languishing on the bench, pasting up storyboards and the like. "Jay Lambert [junior copywriter] and Husani Barnwell [assistant art director] begged me for a shot, and like a schmuck I didn’t pay close enough attention," recounts Miesmer. "I finally looked at their book and it was wonderful. First thing they did, after they got promoted to writer and art director, is nail three spots—one for Cingular and two for Pizza Hut. Their first three times at the plate: bang, bang, bang. I think those guys are going to be a hit."
At The Martin Agency, senior VP/associate creative director Joe Alexander says mentoring is a two-way street. "It’s important that senior people in our business get mentored by the junior people," he stresses. "That’s the only way you survive in this business. The new blood is like the key to how the business is going to be in the future and how you look at things, how you tell a joke and the kind of music you tend to like."
Alexander is creative director on a team that ranges from senior copywriter Josh Gold to art director Mark Peters, who graduated last year from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Ad Center, Richmond, Va. "Mark is twenty-seven or twenty-eight. I’m forty-one," Alexander says. "We’re very much alike in a lot of ways, but the age difference is huge. I’m mentored by him as much as he is by me. … So much of what we do is about taking what we’ve learned—our life experiences and what we’ve observed—and then applying that to brands and communications. Finding the right combination of those experiences is the trick."
Speaking from the new guy’s perspective, Peters agrees that the mentoring process needs to go both ways for a creative team to be successful. "I’m fortunate because these guys do listen," he says. "I don’t feel like I’m completely wet behind the ears all the time. For the most part it is a conversation, and that’s the way the good work happens." Since the team was put together, its projects have included the three-spot "Elves" Christmas campaign for UPS, directed by Stacy Wall through bicoastal/international hungry man (Wall is now with bicoastal Epoch Films), and the regional three-spot "Foam Finger" campaign for cell phone provider Alltel, directed by Jim Jenkins of hungry man.
Gold, who has about 10 years’ experience, reports he and Alexander both noticed that while Peters is young, he has a good eye and refined tastes. "He has a really good sense of what’s good and what’s not," Gold observes. "A lot of guys who have been around ten years don’t have it like Mark does. We find our senses of humor kind of jibe. That’s more important than experience. Bringing Mark along, he learns the logistics and technical things that the experience has given us. It’s a lot easier to work with a guy like Mark than it is to work with someone who has learned a few [bad] habits that are hard to clear up at a later date."
The ad schools can teach the basics, Gold says, "But until you’re out there rolling up your sleeves, doing it, you have no idea what it’s going to be like with you and an editor and some footage, and you’re supposed to make something good out of it. So that’s still a process. And that’s where Mark has really developed."
"A television commercial can fall down in a million different places," adds Peters. "You don’t understand that at the Ad Center. You need people who have been through the process of choosing an editor, of dealing with a director, of understanding the kinds of questions you need to ask of a director and making sure they have the same vision you have."
The biggest weakness Alexander finds in creatives coming out of school is a formula approach. "What is being lost is a sense of awe, of being surprised by things," he says. "They’ve gone through two years of incredibly hard work, creating ads, refining their books, and they come out and it’s almost like, ‘I’m already bored with advertising. I want to start producing a great campaign with Joe Pytka.’ When you don’t have that sense of awe, you tend to take things for granted. The school of hard knocks, to me, is still a great way to learn."
Sink Or Swim
Rob Schwartz of TBWA/Chiat/ Day has two names for that agency’s approach to mentoring: "It’s called ‘sink or swim,’ or ‘baptism by fire.’ We don’t have a formal program here, but we’re very receptive to hearing ideas from anywhere," he states. "You’re thrown into it. You can either triumph over adversity or you’re dwarfed by it, and hopefully you can learn from your mistakes and get another opportunity."
If this sounds a little harsh, Schwartz adds that some guidance is available. "There are some fences built up so you don’t get too far out there," he explains. "But we want people to go into it with some abandon. Not reckless abandon, but with some gusto, and see where the chips fall. We try to find people who are hungry and smart and pitching ideas, and we let them pitch. A hallmark of this agency from day one is that there are only great ideas; it doesn’t matter who the author is—creative is not confined to the creative department."
Most of the junior creatives coming into the agency are well grounded in advertising techniques, Schwartz says, and full of the energy needed to generate good ideas and writing. But they do still have a few things to learn. "What they learn is that the writing isn’t so tough; it’s the rewriting that is tough," points out Schwartz. "When somebody says to them, ‘This is working seventy-percent, get me the extra thirty-percent,’ that’s hard to do because they thought that the seventy percent was one-hundred percent. The second piece they don’t quite get is resilience. You need that Shackleton-like power to say, ‘I can get up and do it again.’ You get knocked down, you have to get up again. The last piece they learn is scale—scale of assignment. It’s not [just], ‘I can do one good print ad.’ It’s, ‘I can do a holistic, fully integrated, major, big chunky thought that is media infinite. It can run on TV; it can run in print; it can run in someone’s dinner conversation; the public relations people can work with it."
To prove that it’s the idea that counts, Schwartz cites a current Nissan Pathfinder spot. "There is a young writer here named Raymond Hwang. He’s been pitching a couple car ideas for the last eighteen months. This one stuck and we produced it. He got to go on the shoot and I think he learned quite a bit." The spot is "Relay," which follows four Pathfinder SUVs on a relay race around the globe, and was directed by Adrian Moat of bicoastal RSA USA. "Raymond was working with creative director Chris Graves to bring that thing to life," Schwartz relates. "You had Chris’s mature eye with Raymond’s unbridled energy and enthusiasm, and I think it produced a memorable, powerful spot. Raymond got to go on the shoot, and I think he learned quite a bit. If you don’t have a formal mentor, the best thing you can do is be a good listener. The wisdom is going to come from a lot of different people in a lot of different places."
Young & Rubicam, New York, is another agency where junior creatives are given big responsibilities early in their careers. "There is a lot of value in not knowing how to do it," notes Ann Hayden, managing partner/executive creative director at the shop. "We have a good group of people who are still early in the business. I think it’s the only thing that keeps us honest. It goes back to the nature of creativity. Creativity is really about finding new ways to see things. Once you learn how to do it, it’s too easy to fall into patterns that you’ve experienced before, because, at some level, you know they’re going to be successful for you."
A big part of Hayden’s role with newer creatives, she says, is having them learn from each other and from the more experienced people at the agency. "It’s just to be there more in support of them and help shape things when necessary," she explains, "to give information that is useful to them so that they can succeed. There are great people here to help them work through any issues they have, and help make sure their strategies are right, and keep the stresses in a place where they can be handled."
Without any structured apprenticeships in place, new people—even those well schooled in advertising techniques—can have a tough time adapting to an agency environment. "They have to make their own way a lot more than ever before," observes Hayden. "There is nobody protecting them and holding their hands. It’s a combination of people being independent enough to make some decisions and figure out what steps to take, but also being honest enough to raise hands, scream and yell, to listen really hard, to go back to creative directors and other kinds of people and say, ‘I thought I understood what you were saying, but I don’t,’ or to say, ‘The idea you were giving me, I understand it but I can’t get my head around it or my heart around it; how about trying something else?’ "
Like Chiat/Day’s Schwartz, Hayden says the learning process for new talent today is often a "sink or swim" proposition. "They will be put into places of being responsible for stuff, and that wouldn’t have been the case years ago. People then would have come in and learned under the wing of one art director and one writer, and been brought up after they learned the business from the ground up."
What young creatives lack in experience, they make up for in ideas and smarts, Hayden says. "For me, people who are new to the business are some of the freest and best thinkers about the business," she says. "A mentor, a creative director, has to walk the line between giving direction and shaping a direction so people know where they’re going and can hit it, but also leaving yourself open enough to some surprises that would be a different way of seeing it."
Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., a shop held in high regard for its creativity, has no mentoring plan at all, reports creative director Tim Hanrahan: "The place is always run where the only system is chaos. People have come in here at all different levels of experience. Once you’re here, you’re exposed to anything. The ideas are valued more than having specific experience. Everybody cooperates with each other here to sponsor the idea. It’s more like mentoring ideas than individuals. If someone has a good idea, other people will gather around them and help make it happen. It’s a way people learn. It helps people move forward at a more individual pace."
Hanrahan says the W+K’s environment isn’t exactly what he would call nurturing. "You kind of have to stand up for yourself and your own ideas, and get what you want out of it," he points out. "Nobody comes and says, ‘We think you’re doing a really good job. What can we do to help you?’ Everybody works and carries their own weight; you have to find the opportunities to do something outstanding, and you get recognized for it. Even that isn’t formal. I don’t think anybody ever gets excluded from an opportunity to do something."
An extreme example from a couple years ago was a spot in a new Powerade campaign that was done by a couple of summer interns. "They came in and worked on this launch of a brand-new campaign, and they did one of the spots," Hanrahan says. "I think they learned at an accelerated pace. They’re smart people, they had ideas and they understood how the campaign worked."
Art director Patty Fogarty, who has been at W+K for about five years now, recalls that when she came up to work with Hanrahan, her learning curve was work centered. "I started out in the studio here, and Tim was an art director I worked with a lot," she says. "A lot of his mentoring came by example, from working with him and hearing his take on things and why he was doing things—whether it was design issues or bigger concept issues. It was ideal for me, because when I became an art director, Tim was promoted to creative director, so our relationship was similar but shifted up a degree. We continued working together."
From Hanrahan’s perspective, the learning was two-way: "Patty, having worked in the studio, actually knows more about design and layout in a lot of ways than I do. She was kind of mentoring me.
"People have respect for each other and for their ideas and their individual, idiosyncratic ways of seeing the world and expressing themselves," Hanrahan continues. "If that exists, then everybody helps everybody else out. It’s competitive and not always a big lovefest, but I think ultimately people respect the best idea and the people who did it. If they don’t help you, at least they’ll get out of your way."
