Get some of the North’s best agencies together with with some of the most ambitious thinkers and what have you got?
Billed as ‘The infamous creative course for competitive, fearless thinkers in the North’, School Of Thought is an intensive 12-week training programme for aspiring creative thinkers. And here at Creode, we’re buzzing to be taking part.
Designed for people who want to learn how to develop their thinking, pitch big ideas and flex their creative muscles, SOT is not just a course, it’s a no-holds barred competition. With a trip to Cannes Lions Festival of Advertising, worth oodles up for grabs as the first prize, no less.
That alone, could be a life-changing experience for one lucky student. But at Creode, we’re really hoping the course benefits all the students in a life-changing way. It’s a brilliant way for us, as an integrated agency, to give something back to an industry we love. And the students? Well, the competition is stiff as it’s open to anyone who thinks they’ve got what it takes, from hungry grads to experienced creative pros and client services and planning people.
Anyone, in fact, who’s interested in cracking the big idea that gets clients results. And as big believers in the fact that anyone can have a good initial idea, we’re all for it.
So you can bet we’ve set a challenging brief, where nailing the proposition and using the insight are key to success. And in the interests of keeping it real, it’s a brief from one of our existing clients that will really stretch the capabilities of our students.
As the School Of Thought site says, ‘It’s a pressure cooker of creativity’. And our very own Amy Barstow can testify to that, as she was the runner-up in last year’s challenge. Amy has definitely got a great deal out of it and is now applying the skills she learned to her work, every day here at Creode.
But it’s not just about throwing the North’s best agencies and aspiring creatives together. It’s about learning from each other, so you can also bet we’ll be sharing our knowledge, views and advice. That’s in addition to the great advice already on the School Of Thought site, right here. One of our favourites is …
This is brilliant advice. Not just for School Of Thought, but for thinking creatively in general. Soak up absolutely everything you can. Read all sorts from comic books to broadsheets. Listen to commercial radio and listen to people ranting on phone-ins. Talk to people. People you like and people … well you get the idea. Don’t use social media as an echo chamber of your own views; use it to see what makes people tick. What the fears and hopes are. Soak up good lines that come to you, whilst you’re doing something completely unrelated. Act like a sponge and as time goes on, you’ll find it easier and often quicker, to squeeze out every drop of your creative soul until you start pouring out ideas that generate results for clients and brands.
That’s just a taster of what we’ll be talking about on our stint next week. Until then we’ll leave you with a little taste … a teaser, if you like of what our brief is all about …
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