1. THE NEW STUDENT BOOK
This is a business that loves its creative geniuses. But the cold, hard truth is that without a book to show it o., creative genius won’t get you a gumball, let alone a job. For all the industry transitions, the book is one hiring norm that’s stayed a steady course. What has changed, however, is the kind of thinking students are demonstrating in their work. Less than a decade ago, the typical book consisted of print ads alone. As recruiters increasingly look for candidates who can translate ideas across a range of media, nontraditional advertising is taking up more and more portfolio space.

At Atlanta’s Creative Circus—the two-year portfolio school in art direction, copywriting, photography, and design—students of advertising include a blend of print campaigns and ambient media in their books, even a smattering of poetry, painting, and short stories. “It’s still about having a great idea,” says Carol Vick Bynum, associate director/graduate services director, “and whatever media best facilitates that idea is the most relevant to teach. As a school, our responsibility is to make sure our students are aware of alternative ways to reach people.”

The changing student book is perhaps the most concrete reflection of the creative professional’s expanding role in the field. “We have writers here who haven’t done ads for a year,” says Chuck Porter, chair of Miami’s Crispin Porter + Bogusky. “They do gear or events, but they don’t do ads. So the thinking you look for gets a lot broader.”

That CP+B has broken through perceptions of what advertising can be bodes well for its ability to help the next generation move beyond the 8½ x 11-inch sheet of paper. This year, CP+B launched a partnership with Miami Ad School, the two-year portfolio school in art direction, copywriting, account planning, fashion photography, and design, with six locations across the world. “The business is changing a lot and fast,” says Porter, “and as students face those changes, we think we might be able to help them think about things in a different way.”

According to Pippa Seichrist, co-founder of Miami Ad School, the union supports one of the school’s long-standing missions. “Our message to students has been that this is not about creating ads,” says Seichrist, “it’s about solving problems, and that’s what CP+B has always done for its clients. In holding their hands, we can run faster in the direction we were heading.” CP+B has helped the school revise its curriculum to make it as contemporary as possible, providing briefs, course material, and diverse suggested readings. Students also have access to a permanent teaching base of CP+B sta.ers, who will soon conduct classes in an expanded space at the agency.

Seichrist notes that 30 percent of her graduates’ books are not print campaigns, but guerrilla concepts, editorial-style writing, game design, brand books, or product designs. In a class called “Everything Is Media,” students work off CP+B briefs to create campaigns in media as broadly defined as the course title. One student concept for Virgin Mobile called “Cheap Thrills” would provide branded underwear in packaging instructing consumers to store their phones on the vibrate mode in the underwear’s pocket. With each call, cell phone owners would be treated to some value-added pleasure in their pants. Cheap thrill indeed.

Even in an era of vibrating underwear, educators continue to stress the importance of foundational skills. So while at the Art Center College of Design, Osaki has introduced classes to help students move “Beyond Advertising,” as one course title puts it, to include interactive and guerrilla advertising. He explains his BFA program’s continued emphasis on the craft of print and television advertising this way: “You have to start from some place. You have to eat your vegetables.”

2. THE MBA PLUS
Rick Boyko personally witnessed the changing landscape of the business in his former role as co-president and CCO of Ogilvy & Mather North America. In 2003, he became managing director of the master of science program at the VCU Adcenter, Richmond, in copywriting, art direction, strategy, and creative media planning. He has laid out a curricular blueprint—including the requirement that students include new media in their books—to expand the definition of advertising to include any form of communication that comes into contact with the consumer.

His most potentially groundbreaking initiative is a program that will direct creative efforts toward students who will land not in creative departments at agencies, but on the client side of the table. “Marketing students are taught to find one answer through a process of analytics,” says Boyko, “and creatives are taught to go wide, to stretch the boundaries.” His proposed “Creative Brand Management” track, currently working its way up the university’s approval process as a master of science in mass communication, will merge creative and business pedagogy in a first-of-its-kind curriculum.

The program offers an alternative to the MBA degree, which most brand managers attain before joining the workforce. In developing the curriculum, associate professor Charles W. Kouns says his goal wasn’t to reinvent the MBA. “This is more like the MBAplus,” he says. The track includes an MBA’s in-depth marketing and finance studies, but its creative approach to brands will conceivably give graduates a competitive edge over other marketing-savvy candidates. “The graduates who know how to create ideas and make them grow in the market are the ones who are going to thrive,” he explains. In a section called “Creative Brand Origination,” for example, students will create campaigns in teams with art directors, planners, and copywriters, offering “real-life, down-in-the- trenches experience you can’t get anywhere else in the country,” says Kouns.

In the 2004 Harvard Business Review “List of Breakthrough Ideas,” author Daniel H. Pink posits that “The MFA is the new MBA” in an article of the same name. He tracks the surging demand for artistic talent in the corporate world, whose recruiters are increasingly visiting fine arts campuses to find talent—often at the expense of traditional business candidates. The Adcenter curriculum, arming business-minded students with a critical understanding of the creative process, addresses the same need. Corporations are hungry for brand managers who can think in terms of ideas for their products, not merely numbers for the bottom line.

“There are a lot of companies that are thinking about this,” says Kouns, “but they’ve only been presented with the MBA graduate. We’re going to do some work to educate people about our students, but they’ll get it the minute they see it.”