Matt Smith and Rocky Ranallo are the founders of Western Sydney Ad School - an idea they dreamed up over lunch to address that advertising isn’t easy or equal for everyone. 

In this episode of Advent, we explore how advertising is a tricky place to get a start if you don’t have friends or family in the industry, and why Western Sydney Ad School is part of an important solution.

Rocky and Matt also explain how ad school can be a pathway to anything – becoming a Creative Director, opening your own business, or helping to create flying cars (true story). 

Rocky and Matt touch on ageism too – is the industry’s issue a small snapshot of a national problem of not valuing experience enough? Is ageism detrimental to the quality of craft? Or with adland’s churn and burn nature, does ‘craft’ as we once knew it exist anymore? Is the magic gone?  

Oh, and Rocky tells us why he’s never worked a weekend in his whole career. 

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging. 

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Shane Vancuylenberg, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby and Emma Howard. Alex Watts hosts Advent. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kirsty Muddle spent over a decade at Cummins&Partners, the indie agency she co-founded, before she was named CEO of Dentsu’s creative arm late last year. 

Kirsty chats through why the words “never before” were the catalyst for her jump to Dentsu, and delves into how it’s getting harder to make stuff that lasts (which is why we need a Razzies for advertising - a database of campaigns that just didn’t work).

She discusses how sticking around one business for a long time means you build the confidence to recover from a trough, and explains why she doesn't like the phrase 'trust your gut' - it devalues experience and expertise. And Kirsty celebrates the nature of agency competition changing: from pub brawls and realising, at nine months pregnant, she was the only person at the table spending time outside of work unpaid, to helping each other make great work and become a more diverse industry.

You might notice that Advent has a new look, to tie in with our new season. The brilliant redesign is all thanks to Tim Singleton, who you can find online at https://www.timsingleton.rocks/

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Shane Vancuylenberg, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our last episode of Advent for 2021, Carat’s Head of Strategy Bethanie Blanchard delves in to why her vent is about venting - people sneering at the new “as though it means you’re not across the fundamentals of your craft”. In fact, brands should act like sponges for culture, she argues, soaking up even the flash-in-the-pan trends, because they reveal just as much about people and the world as the Next Big Thing.

She also talks about agency responsibility for who you work with and for, and the positive conversations happening in media agencies around how to reach diverse audiences. And she tackles some hard questions. Are we making too much stuff? Why are people embarrassed to work in advertising?

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Advertising Council Australia (ACA) has partnered with Kantar to launch Create Space, the industry’s first-ever diversity and inclusion census that will collect anonymous data on gender identity, social and ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, mental health, family status, and experiences of inclusion at work.

Jasmin Bedir, CEO of Innocean; Simon Wassef, Chief Strategy Officer at whiteGREY; and Renata Yannoulis, Senior Strategist at TBWA Sydney, are each members of the ACA’s D&I committee.

In this special episode, they talk about the impact of changing your identity to fit in, why the answer to opening more doors is “we just fucking do it”, and whether we’ve strayed from our reputation as a collection of misfits. Or were we never really that to begin with?

Jasmin speaks of white privilege in adland, Renata explains why she wants senior leadership to pay attention to the census results, and Simon issues a challenge to award show jurors: Give away your place to someone from an underrepresented community.

You can complete the census until 15 December at createspacecensus.com

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Corey Kindberg wouldn’t want to do anything else than be in advertising. Other than becoming a rich, stay-at-home husband (which doesn't sound half bad, to be fair).

TBWA\Chiat\Day’s Associate Strategy Director, who’s based in Los Angeles, digs into whether advertising is as fun as it used to be, why it doesn’t help to get further away from the work the more senior you get, and why a lack of entry level roles “hits the creative work hard”. When there’s a high bar to entry, the industry doesn’t get “cool, weird fucking people” in the room.

He also talks about whether the US is that far ahead of Australia on DE&I, his recent move from New York to LA, and the surprising upsides to being fired from New York Magazine’s The Cut.

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent, and wrote this in third person.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When MD Davy Rennie took over Tribal Australia, he went straight into a Volkswagen pitch. The client told him “I don’t think you’ll win.” Against all odds, they did. But it required a reset, and proving promises would be kept. Now, Tribal couldn’t be closer to the Volkswagen team.

Davy doesn’t just chat about Tribal though. He touches on the power of proper honesty in client relationships, the importance of asking for help when you need it, his own mental health journey and watching out for the mental health of his team, and why culture is the glue that holds everything together. It’s all connected, and speaks to the fact we should be more vulnerable and better to each other. Because “high fives and hugs make us who we are”.

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent, and wrote this in third person.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anna Dancey is a Gamilaroi woman living, working and thriving on the lands of the Eora Nation. She’s also the National Sales Manager at NITV, a part of SBS. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 3.3% of the Australian population, but just 0.3% of advertising spend is dedicated to reaching these audiences. Anna talks about SBS and NITV’s initiative Beyond 3 Per Cent, which aims to change that. She also explains why people working in advertising can learn a lot from Indigenous culture about the importance of caring for your community. And she asks: Should our industry consider hiring previously incarcerated people in an attempt to reflect the cross-section of people our advertising reaches?

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent, and wrote this in third person.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pia Chaudhuri is BMF’s Executive Creative Director. The path to that role has been windy, and 17 years long. As she puts it, it required working at an agency that was happy to appoint someone that doesn’t look like your typical ECD: A white guy wearing trendy glasses, jeans, and a T-Shirt.

Pia explains why we need to not just focus on diversity, but also analyse where diverse people sit in the business. How diverse is the leadership team, or the creative department? She talks about burn out - “every agency has a culture of burning people out” - the necessity for brave people to reveal themselves, and having the guts to be wrong sometimes. And we chat about OnlyOneInTheRoom, the platform designed to create a more diverse advertising community that Pia co-founded.

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent, and wrote this in third person.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Advertising is a fast-paced game. Ben Shepherd has experienced two decades’ worth of that pace, across companies including Yahoo, Mindshare, Junkee, OMD, PwC, and CHE Proximity. Most recently, he was General Manager of Media at Thinkerbell, and wrote a book last year called Everything You Wanted to Know About Advertising and Media… But Were Too Afraid to Ask.

Ben explains why it’s hard to increase mental health progress without decreasing the pace, why media companies have tried to get him fired, and why more time should be spent training people with two to five years’ experience. He also teases a publishing experiment he’s hoping to roll out on Instagram.

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent, and wrote this in third person.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Social media has been through a lot of growing pains, and few people know that better than Mandi Barton. Over many roles, including as the social lead at ZipCo and M&C Saatchi, Mandi has guided clients through how to ride the wave of social innovation while still doing effective work.

We also touch on the untapped power of authenticity and the critical need for specialists in a world of hybrids. And we discuss how too many industry leaders think that social is all about being friends with a brand, when they couldn't be more wrong.

Right now, we're recording and producing Advent from home, on the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Editing and mixing for Advent is done by Andy Stewart, with production support from Declan Clow Wood. Editorial guidance and research comes from Brittney Rigby. Alex Watts hosts Advent, and wrote this in third person.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.