WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO ADVERTISING? WAS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO PURSUE?
No, it wasn’t something I was ever that interested in. I never even thought of it as a possible career, but I was always very creative and always very into art from an early age. I always remember drawing and painting and I always knew I wanted to do art. I went into Fine Art in DIT and I did four years there and I loved it but towards the end of my final year I started to think what are my options here? There’s not many career paths you can go down and our lecturers were very contemporary and very much wanted us to pursue our own artistic careers and work as artists and you’d have to have a second job to support yourself. I knew myself to live in Dublin I had to make a living. I started to think about what creative careers I could go into and I was very much torn between art teaching in secondary schools and advertising. I found it crazy, our lecturers had obviously told us about art teaching, but no-one had ever mentioned advertising or creative advertising or creative communications. I thought that would be something I’d be interested in, so I went with my gut and just decided to do the TU Masters in Creative Advertising.
WHY TU DUBLIN?
There are loads of really good Fine Arts courses in Dublin but DIT, now TU Dublin were moving up to their brand-new campus in Grange Gorman the year I was going in and it looked fab! The course seemed good, the lecturers were great, and they seemed to take on less students than NCAD or IADT so I just thought it would be a nicer more intimate course and it really was, it was great. I’m glad I chose that course.
SO AS A SLIGO NATIVE HOW DIFFICULT WAS THE MOVE TO DUBLIN IN A LOGISTICAL / FINANCIAL WAY?
It was difficult financially because the rent in Dublin is extortionate and my parents who both work full time, found it difficult to pay for my accommodation for the four years. It was tough but that kind of made me appreciate college a lot more and I think it made me work a lot harder at what I was doing. I felt very privileged as I am very aware that there are lots of people who maybe could not afford the rent in Dublin. There is a college in Sligo, but it just doesn’t have the same options. Sligo IT offers a Fine Arts diploma and it looks great, but I really wanted a degree.
YOU RECENTLY RETURNED FROM A WEEK IN THE ROGER HATCHUEL ACADEMY THAT TAKES PLACE DURING THE CANNES LIONS CREATIVE FESTIVAL. HOW WAS THAT EXPERIENCE?
It was incredible, I didn’t really know what to expect going over, they didn’t tell us too much, the people in the academy kept it very secretive to keep an element of surprise I think, but it was fantastic! I didn’t realise how much I’d get out of it and I think you got out of it what you put into it. Classes ran from 8.30 in the morning to 5.30 in the evening and no-one made you go, you just wanted to go. The speakers we had in were incredible and taught us so much; leadership, creativity, CV’s, portfolios; I mean practical things that would help recent graduates start their careers.
At least once a day we had one of the top speakers from the festival come in and talk to us and our class was only 40 people, so we got to speak to them in a very intimate and casual way. It was lovely, and they opened up about things that I don’t think they would discuss up on a big stage.
Wyclef Jean, the musician spoke to us about his upbringing. He was from Haiti and he talked to us about when he was a child literally starving and how he would eat dirt off the ground to fill his stomach with something and how he just knew he wanted to make it and do something really big and he never let anything stop him so that was really, really inspiring.
DO YOU THINK ATTENDING THE ACADEMY WILL HAVE AN IMPACT ON YOUR CAREER?
Yeah, I really do in loads of different ways. First of all, the academy is made up of 40 students from 32 different nationalities and we all became absolute best friends by the end of the week so now I’m very lucky to say that I have a global network of young creatives. We are all keeping in contact even now on the WhatsApp and we are all going to meet up in California in November.
WHATS HAPPENING IN CALIFORNIA?
All the Roger Hatchuel students are going to Google in California in Silicon Valley in November. We get to go to Google’s creative campus, Google HQ and YouTube HQ. This is all paid for and sponsored by Google as they partner with Cannes Lions for the Roger Hatchuel Academy.
WHAT AGENCY ROLE / CAREER AREA ARE YOU MOST ATTRACTED TO?
Well coming from fine art, I think being an art director would be a natural fit. I already have a good eye for things I would say and yeah, I think it would just work really, really well. I would say to anyone coming from a fine art background that art director is a really good career path to go down.
WHAT ARE YOUR INSIGHTS / TOP TIPS FOR ANYONE CONSIDERING A CAREER IN THE ADVERTISING / CREATIVE COMMS SECTOR?
To just go for it. I have never been so happy with a decision I’ve made! To just dive into something, I never thought I could love advertising this much, but I do. I honestly just think it’s the best sector, best career, it’s soo… I don’t know, it’s such a fun job, it’s soo creative. I was worried that as a new start you wouldn’t have any creative license, but you really do!
What’s great about advertising is that it is made up of so many people from so many different walks of life, everyone is so unbelievably different, and that’s really encouraged, you know, there's no type that you have to conform to. I think everyone’s individuality is actually required!
WHAT DIFFERENTIATION WILL MAKE ONE AGENCY MORE ATTRACTIVE TO YOU AS A JOB SEEKER?
There are two main things for me, the first thing is money. There’s a lot of agencies that will take on graduates in unpaid internships. When I say unpaid, it can be like €150 euros a week, realistically it’s not nothing but it’s not enough to support yourself on in Dublin; especially when you are working there 9 to 5. I just don’t think it’s practical at all. I think there should be some sort of limit on how little they can pay for internships.
Also, I think agencies need to be more transparent. I’ve come across cases where interns have been kept on for up to 6 months and then not kept on once the internship finishes. I’ve met loads of people who have said they have been in situations like that and they end up being just disappointed.
The second big thing for me when looking at an agency was, I looked for female creatives. There’s just such a lack of women in creative roles all over the world but in Ireland I think it’s really bad. In loads of the agencies we visited through college or the ones that I’ve been into I’ve just noticed that there seemed to be two female creatives to every ten male creatives, at best. In some agencies in Dublin they have zero female creatives. So as a young female graduate going into the industry, I would really like to see more female creatives, it would be nice to have some female role models.
