David Kershaw

David Kershaw: “I think inspired would be an over statement. I remember I just went to the careers office at university and I said, well, ‘I want to do, something to do with business, but I don’t want it to be too serious. I’d like it to be interesting as well’. And then he said ‘Oh well, that would be advertising then’.

“Depends on what side of the industry you’re coming in on. If it’s on the account management side, which is sort of dealing with clients and running the process of getting advertising out, then to be honest, yes, you need to be a graduate because companies will almost exclusively take you through a graduate scheme. However, on the creative side it’s absolutely irrelevant what your education is, at the end you’ll be judged by what's called your book, your portfolio. So it varies across, because advertising tends to be a sort of mosaic of different careers and skills.

“I think from a graduate’s point of view the key things are to show that you really want to be in advertising. That it’s not just ‘Oh yeah, I’d like to do media and I’ll do advertising’, and be articulate about why they generally have a passion to go into that.
So you’re looking for people who’ve got a different, not wacky, but got a mind which is, even if it’s not creative with a capital C, has got some imagination in how you might solve things.
 
“One of my first bosses said to me ‘Does he pass the lifeboat test?’ Which is, would you want him in your lifeboat for a few weeks? That’s incredibly important.

“I think its learning through osmosis actually rather than some sort of formal mentoring. I still learn by seeing other people operate and how other people think and how people get things done. I’d always encourage people to try and work in the best places and work with the best people. And keep learning. Keep absorbing.

“On the business side you need to have a level of brightness. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist but I think it does require sound intellectual ability to be able to analyze problems, look at options, and look at how you might discover new solutions, so it does need some brainpower. I think then the ability to communicate and work with hugely diverse groups of people is absolutely critical, and then you need to deal with hard financial side, when you’re talking about supervising production budgets and delivering those.

“In terms of personality traits I’d also add relentless quality to get it done. So that’s really on the business side.

“On the creative side it’s very hard because, my view is that it’s a pretty innate quality. I think that actually that ability to make creative leaps. Of course it can be nurtured and made better but I think much more then on the business side you need the raw material of creative talent.

“I think in terms of the tough times, cyclical tough times like a recession then I think what you can’t do is go into sort of defensive mode because all the clients are going through tough times and the clients will, even more than ever, need dramatic, highly effective solutions.

“Losing a big piece of business and then what that requires is resilience and stamina and you get on and you say ‘their loss,’ we’re now going to do bigger and better things.

“In my own view which is no better than anyone else’s view, is that sometime during the course of the next year we’ll begin to see the first flickering of an upturn but I think it’s going to be 18 months at least before we see that.

“By definition I don’t like government doing too much but sometimes it’s government doing less, like with the advertising industry government regulating about what you can’t advertise will strangle the very life out of it. Sometimes government not doing stuff is important. I think in terms of doing stuff I think it’s quite encouraging that they have this blueprint of creative Britain, which I think is a pretty good analysis.

“I think the UK it is something that we are good at, creative businesses. It’s in our cultural DNA, so I don’t think that’s going to disappear as a result of a recession.

“I think what is important, which is where Creative & Cultural Skills obviously comes in, is making sure the pipeline of talent is identified and nurtured so that the next generation comes through. I think taking it for granted, thinking it will automatically happen, is very dangerous.”