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How can we as an industry convince schoolchildren to consider a career in advertising?

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By Tim Lefroy, CEO

October 6, 2015 | 4 min read

I’ve done plenty of public speaking in my time – and my audience these days tends to be a pretty senior bunch of marketers, agency bosses and media owners.

Tim Lefroy

But no number of leadership summits prepares you for the piercing stare of 60 high school eyeballs on a September Monday – the toughest audience I’ve faced in a very long time.

So how did I get there?

Last April, the Advertising Association began to recruit over 100 leaders from our industries to get behind Speakers for Schools – Robert Peston’s charity that puts leading figures from business, politics and academia into state schools to inspire the pupils.

It’s an easy cause for us to back. Not only is it a good thing to do, but advertising’s future is utterly dependent on the talent it recruits. It supports over half a million jobs, will be adding another 70,000 over the next three years – and we need the best and brightest, from all backgrounds, if UK advertising is going to continue to be a world beater.

Our industries, bless them, got involved with gusto – and having asked so many of our supporters to get involved personally, I couldn’t duck the opportunity for much longer.

But why would the children of St Edmund’s Catholic School in Dover want to hear from me? The date loomed, apprehension rose. So I phoned a friend.

And Stephanie Richani, the latest product of the AA’s internship scheme and now our talented communications exec, came with me.

I gave them my story, and Stefi hers. I wasn’t much for school, and didn’t do university – but got my education through my apprenticeship at Cadbury. Stefi studied European politics in London and in Paris, and still isn’t sure how she ended up lobbying for advertising. She’s pleased she did, she insists.

Yet our message was united – very few of us know what we want to do when we’re at school. But every one of us has a choice, and as you’ll spend so much of your life in the workplace, make sure you choose something stimulating and enjoyable.

And it’s worth keeping advertising in mind. There’s an incredible number and variety of opportunities across our sector, the careers are rewarding, and every type of skill is in demand – particularly if you’re digitally minded.

From experience, I could say with hand on heart that it’s a worthy path.

So how was it? It was hugely challenging. I underestimated, deeply, how difficult it would be to get their attention – let alone engage with them on any meaningful level.

And, more than I expected, going back to school at this age was a learning experience for me too: kids are very different these days. How successful I was is up for debate – but that was a function of performance, not of message.

So if you’re planning a similar experience, here’s some advice – and a question for everyone else to ponder…

1. Chances are you’ll be at least more than twice their age – you’re inevitably a figure of authority. But if you work for a brand, agency or media channel, your product will be something they want to engage with. Exploit it.

2. Try to keep it light – we used a simple, and hopefully fun, branding exercise, which the feedback spoke well of. Prizes too. Prizes help.

3. Take a young person, preferably as impressive as Stefi.

And the question?

Of the 30 kids we met in Dover, not one had previously considered a career in advertising.

What are we going to do about that, then?

Tim Lefroy is chief executive of the Advertising Association

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