Advancement Strategies: Trends and Offerings in Executive Education Part I
June 9, 2008
Rose Sauquillo, a creative director at agency Taxi in Toronto, recently had an eye-opening experience. As a participant in Virginia Commonwealth University's Brandcenter, she completed a program entitled "Management Training for CDs," an intense four-and-a-half-day program that teaches enrollees how to evaluate and recruit talent, sell strong creative concepts and responsibly budget the department's budgetary resources. She also gained invaluable knowledge of the client's thought process and how best to exceed client expectations and goals.
"The most important thing I learned was to understand the clients' mindset a little more," she says. "I think it's easy for us as creatives to learn more about being better creatives. But in the end, if you're not understanding where they're coming from, the work isn't going to go through."
Sauquillo isn't alone. Across the gamut of advertising and marketing disciplines-on both the agency and client sides- executives are realizing that if they want their careers to reach their full potential, they need more broad-based knowledge, more up-to- date information and, most of all, more continuing executive education.
In a study earlier this year by Forrester Research's CMO Group and Heidrick & Struggles, fully two-thirds of participants said they wanted to take on more responsibility in the areas of business strategy development and increased involvement in profit-and-loss decisions. The report says that respondents currently spend only about 10 percent of their time on enhancing the skills necessary to take their careers to the next level, even though those who participated in the study wanted to become either a CMO of a large company or brand or a chief executive officer. The study went on to suggest that the participants "will have to increase time spent on professional growth, especially if they want to reach their desired next steps."
And that's precisely why executives such as Sauquillo are now taking full advantage of the many executive education programs in the advertising and marketing professions being offered by top universities and industry organizations.
One of them, VCU's Brandcenter in Richmond, is housed in a new 25,000-square-foot building that opened in late 2007. The structure, designed by noted architect Clive Wilkinson, benefits from sweeping, open spaces and oversize windows that add to the space's expansive and airy qualities.
Courses align in four main tracks: art direction, copywriting, creative brand management and communications strategy. Within the executive education curriculum, about half the programs are open enrollment and half are customized, the latter of which school officials believe will grow in the future. At the center of all the creative energy is Rick Boyko, the former co-president and chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather North America and who in 2003 became professor and managing director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Adcenter (now known as the Brandcenter).
"What we're doing in the classroom is teaching people how to break down the barriers, because in an open-door culture like this, great ideas can come from anywhere," says Boyko. "That forces a sense of partnership. We force all our teams to work together, which teaches them that no one person and no one team has all the answers."
That openness extends to the multifaceted relationship between client and agency. No studentwants to earn a "C." But at VCU, there is an extremely important "C," according to Boyko: The "C" of collaboration.
"That is the key when it comes to clients and agencies," he says." There are still too many silos. We try to get people to really work together to solve thorny problems. We, as an industry, need clients that are more trusting of their agencies. That's where you see the best work come out."
Case in point: The VCU Brandcenter is putting together a customized program for executives from Wal-Mart and The Martin Agency that will be designed to help the two companies maintain their client-agency bond for as long and as effectively as possible.
"That is a real statement of partnership," says Kelly O'Keefe, a professor and executive education director at VCU. "Once word gets out about this type of program, I think you're going to see a lot more of it."
"The lines between client and agency are beginning to blur a little bit," says O'Keefe. "It used to be that all the 'stiffs' were at the client, and all the innovators were at the agency. That's not the case anymore, and I think that makes it easier to attain the type of collaboration we're talking about here."
The school also has made it a point to build a more diverse student body. Of the 85 students in the class of 2008, half were women, 38 percent were minorities and 11 percent were from other countries.
For more Executive Education coverage:
Advancement Strategies: Trends and Offerings in Executive Education Part I
Advancement Strategies: Trends and Offerings in Executive Education Part II
Advancement Strategies: Trends and Offerings in Executive Education Part III
