KAMIKAZE CREATIVE LEARNING: WHY I TEACH. True Confessions for rising Kamikaze Copywriters, Art Directors, Graphic Designers, Web Designers, AEs and non-Kamikaze professionals who ask why I’m crazy enough to raise the level – and number – of my competition.

My father believed the only reason to send a girl-child to college was to hook a high-earner husband.  In his world, a woman’s place was in the School of Education (or Nursing).  Just in case “Something happens to your husband.”  Math and Science Challenged, I had to be a teacher.  So of course, teaching was the last thing I wanted to do.

Lucky for me my mother, ahead of her times, long-frustrated by the Depression era reality even her full scholarship put Nursing School out of reach, showed me a different way to dream. 

First to BU for liberal arts, ready to transfer to the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Conference, Life (in the form of my mother’s death) intervened.  Back home at eighteen, I found my first job in Advertising.  Hired in as Gal Friday (gone with the electric typewriter, Gal Fridays did general office work more specialized Secretaries, Bookkeepers and such didn’t.  Good ones supplanted them all.) 

I was a complete failure.  Disconnected every phone call, broke the copier, destroyed any logic to two filing systems (office and “art”), forgot clients were king and was never on time for anything.  But I was funny – and I could write.  The agency’s lone female copywriter took me under her wing – mainly because she couldn’t get rid of me. 

From there I migrated back to Boston, bouncing between now-famous worldwide creative shops in their start-up phase and dying Mad Men era dinosaurs.  A kind of hybrid Gal Friday/Copywriter wannabe, still demanding time (and opportunity) from the few female copywriters I found.  Soon Copywriter was the only title I needed.

I eventually ended up in Houston with a portfolio of award winning clever and not much else.  Out of six offers, I luckily hired on with a shop just bought by Y&R.  My first day, the Copy Chief (unfortunately, a job mostly gone w/the Gal Friday, the Copy Chief approved, edited and ordered revisions of every piece of copy in the shop) waved a piece of paper in my face.  “It was so much easier before,” he bemoaned, “now Y&R wants us to fill out one of these before we start work on anything.”

The paper was a blank Y&R Creative Work Plan.  I’d been in the business 3-4 years, winning jobs and awards by being funny, punny, short in headlines; writing snappy, formula copy everywhere else.  I studied the much maligned form – looked pretty smart to me.  For the first time, I had a way to organize my input, thinking, direction.  I used it, but didn’t use it right until Y&R sent two guys out to teach us how. Eureka!  I finally knew what I did for a living.  Y&R must have thought so, too, because I got two weeks in FL for strategy school, a week for presentation school and survived two lay-offs much more experienced writers didn’t.

But growing your own Creatives is expensive – few shops had the money, personnel or foresight to take it on.  Within five years, no one was training and for most females, the route to the Creative Department was still through secretarial, traffic, admin.

I became Paul Revere, going from job to job, teaching everyone and anyone this amazing system I’d been taught.  My work got smarter, my “sell” record unmatched.  Sharing my Work Plan with AEs and clients, I got approvals before the copy was done, won awards, new accounts.  Some agencies sent me to other branches for New Business, new creative on tough accounts.  They gave me the credit.  I knew it was the form and the training that went with it.

Several years later, I found myself in Atlanta, Group Head to one of Portfolio Center’s first graduates.  She introduced me to Ron Siechrist, PC and Miami Ad founder, who asked me to do a portfolio show for the school’s 9-10 ad students.  Before long, I was teaching classes. 

For 18 years, I’ve been at it in one way or another – at PC, establishing it’s Copywriting Department, teaching at the Circus, invited by friends and ex-PC co-workers who founded it, at Emory, creative clubs and professional associations, in agencies.

That’s the how – but the why?  Certainly not the pay – last term I actually lost money commuting to Atlanta.  I teach because of what I see in classes like the one last Friday, when we went over the Kamikaze Key Fact (once again) – and I got to see the look in the eyes of more than half of the class as they finally got it. 

The warm-and-fuzzies still go a long way in the instruction business.  So does the challenge of bright young minds – some of whom I know are more talented than I am (even if – at this point – I still know more).  But the rest of the reason?

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Advertising Industry for a long time.  I’m frustrated by how uncreative about business our creative business is.  I often disagree with what’s in the Award books.  Bemoan how slowly some of the old behemoths of the ad game catch the reality of the next big thing. 

But advertising’s kept me in challenging, meaningful work since I was 18, when teaching elementary school, nursing or motherhood were about the only meaningful work a woman could do.  The industry gave me the freedom to learn more about how this country (and the world) thinks, works, plays, eats, drinks and innovates than I ever could have doing office work.

Why teach when I can just work?  Funny, my husband asked me the same thing every Thursday when I left Charlotte on the three-four hour drive down I85 for two classes a week. 

The hours in classes + time spent with students after class keeps me on my game.  Shows me trends before they start, teaches me the language of each upcoming generation.  They prepare me for any argument a client can make trying to kill good work their companies need.  Since the e-revolution, they also keep me on the cutting edge of technology.

Running to stay three steps ahead of my students keeps my ideas sharp, smart, conceptual.  Forces me to innovate, examine the hows and whys of my work, not just the fact I do it.  It gave voice to in the Kamikaze creative philosophy and developed the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan.  Explaining to students taught me how to explain what I do to clients and potential clients, saving me endless revisions and mediocre solutions.

I know CDs, ECDs and famous ad guys (that’s the unisex “guy”) who always take my phone calls, return my emails and answer my questions as I once answered theirs.  Two of them are teaching me to find the courage to finally write that novel I wanted to write back in high school.  Some teach their own classes what I taught them.  I get important recommendations from ad names that make people take notice. 

The real reasons?  I’m still the youngest person I know.  Have more fun doing creative than I ever did.  All because my students dare me to give more when they finally grok some big idea skill or nit-picky editing technique no one else has ever shown them. 

As much as I challenge, teach and encourage my students, they do the same for me.  Today in class.  Tomorrow when I see what they’ve done with what I’ve given them – and realize I’d better start running faster, innovating harder and concepting smarter if I’m going to keep ahead – or just keep up.

That’s why I teach.  Why I ask all my contemporaries who bemoan the competition, belittle its lack of grammar, exposure, experience – why aren’t you?

You can worry about the youth quake that is most agency Creative Departments.  Feel superior in your greater experience, greater “knowledge.”  Or you can relearn the thrill and excitement this business once gave you.

How about it?  Haven’t you made a good living playing with it?  Mingled with smart, creative, witty people?  Hasn’t this industry given you the opportunity to be creative, to not be tied to a time clock, to not to sell Insurance?  So why aren’t you teaching, giving back too?  Your work will be better for it.  As long as you keep on top of it, they’ll never be your competition.  More importantly, you’ll get back more than you will ever give.

Today I'm making this challenge to my peers.  Giving this  smile of Thank You to last quarter's students, all the students who came before them.  All the students who will come after.  Peers, don't fear the "competition" until they know all you do, work in your market, steal your clients.  None of which they can do until long past your retirement.  Students, thanks for reinspiring my work, rejuvenating my life, challenging my ideas and thinking I know a bit about this biz.  I'll miss you next term, but I have a new group - and a new way of teaching (from home, via skyppe) - coming up next month.  If you see them before I do, be sure to tell them how scary I am.  They're all bigger than me.  I can use the help.

As usual, (c) 2012, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative