Industry News

The first of nine months at AFA Grad School

What do you get when you stick 35 Gen Ys in an old castle in Manly with some of the best speakers the advertising industry has to offer? Every Gen X’s nightmare for one, but also our first real taste of the wonderful world of advertising. Under the guidance of Gawen Rudder, our surrogate father in the ‘gestation period’ that is the AFA Graduate Trainee Program, we were eased into what would turn out to be the longest 96 hours of our lives. It was the Gestapo and information was the blitzkrieg.

Our classroom in the old International College of Management was hot and filled to each wall with AFA students. Our AdSchool lecturer Martin Salkild introduced us to the program, and this was followed by a talk on ethics and then strategic planning. We finished early and headed down to Yahoo! 7 for the welcome cocktail party and the chance to get to know the AFA and each other, an activity of which we are now aware results in hangovers for all involved.

Over the next three days we were briefed on our second assignment and taught about creative, media, account management, print production, TV production, digital media, channel planning and the client’s view. We finished off with a much-needed presentation skills workshop before all rushing off to burn the midnight oil on our major assignment to be presented at 8am the next morning. We were buzzing on knowledge, stress, exhaustion and Red Bull.

Being university graduates we were all experienced in gunning assignments last-minute. We were highly skilled in the abusing of computers at 3:00am after losing Word documents and fixing stubborn printers with the percussion maintenance and yet having had minimal advertising experience, we were finally pushed to our mental and at times physical limitations. Preparing our presentations was exactly what we all needed to fully understand what lay in store for us in advertising – perfection and deadlines. Come Saturday morning, we had crafted elaborate plans to surpass the other groups, bribe the lecturers and maintain a seemingly sane state of mind in front of the class having only stolen 2 hours of sleep.

All the presentations were incredible and the peer support equally so. A group of us stayed behind to catch up with our newfound friends and talk about our experiences and where we were off to next.

At the risk of sounding like someone who doesn’t get out much, AFA Summer School was undoubtedly one of the best weeks of my life and I left armed with skills for my dream career. I have the stamina to deal with the electric pace of advertising with its late nights and early mornings. My first month in the agency not only exceeded my expectations but reinforced my commitment and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I feel privileged to go through the rest of the gestation period with the support of my fantastic agency, fellow grads and, of course, the encouragement of the AFA.

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