Kate Humphries: “A big cheer to industry for your support”

Kate Humphries, programme leader of Media Design School’s AdSchool thanks the industry for its support of MDS’s Creative Advertising Programme throughout 2023.

Just over two weeks out from our portfolio show and three quarters of the teams from the 2023 class are already signed up with agencies.

But, as ever, we couldn’t have done it without the industry. We couldn’t have won globally at D&AD with 2 Pencils and 3 Top Portfolio picks; or won the 52 Finalists wins and 18 Awards from Mad Stars without invaluable feedback from Kaz Maurice O’Leary, Michael Tam & Yvonne Leong,  and from IBM iX; and art directors Tess Saxby and Lorenz Perry.

And a big thank you to the industry panellists from the first half of the year whose feedback put all of those global ideas on steroids: Andy Wyeth from Serviceplan, Germany; Sylvia Humphries from Thinkerbell Melbourne; Guy Trengrove from DDB Aotearoa; Rob Cook from Cheil; Brad Stratton & Rob Longuet from Dentsu Creative; and Jack Close & Zac Hawkins from Colenso BBDO.

We also couldn’t have won the big one locally at the Student Orca awards or gained the 11 first-round finalist places, or the 2 out of the 3 second round finalist places (that now go onto final judging at the Axis next year), without the help of feedback, once again, from Rob Cook and Guy Trengrove for the Orcas; and the spot-on feedback from the inestimable Thomas Darlow and Dan Wright from Deloitte Digital for all MDS’s Student Axis ideas.

Thank you also to the 2 industry judging panels, Rory McKechnie & Matt Williams (DDB) and Matt Watts (Chemistry) for the Student Orcas; and Haydn Kerr (Tango), Kristal Knight (Ogilvy); and Angelo An & Alan Jones (FCB); and Michael Swinburn for the Student Axis.

Grateful thanks to The Radio Bureau & The Radio Broadcasters Association for organising & sponsoring the Student Orca Awards; and to the Comms Council for organising the Student Axis Awards, and, with the help of Andy Blood,  for getting Tara McKenty, Chief Innovation Officer at BMF Sydney along to help out with the briefing.

Three raucous cheers for TikTok Creative Agency Partner Nick O’Donnell and Head of Brand & Creative, Anthony Dever, for taking students and tutors alike through a faster-than-you-can-move-two-week TikTok workshop that left us all feeling thoroughly innervated about the platform.

And to DDB once more we owe a massive thanks to Gary Steele, Haydn Kerr and Dan Brown, for organising a half-day at DDB for all Auckland’s creative advertising students. It was a huge effort, and an invaluable one for budding creatives to hear not only from all the big names at DDB, but also the junior creatives who sat in their place only last year. And for DDB, a standing ovation for once again supporting new talent again this year with the Internship programme. You made three of our students deliriously happy with the good news about their internship places last week.

Thank you to Brett Colliver and Mike Felix the newly minted CCOs at Dentsu Creative for one of the best talks the students have ever received on managing their creative brain, and for not only trialling out all the students with a live brief, but also coming back to give them face-to-face feedback.

Thank you to Communications Council for the brief you gave us, for your support at the beginning of the year, and for organising the Communication Council and Media Design School mentoring programme once again this year. To all the mentors that helped every one of our students to sharpen up their thinking over the last 10 weeks, you are too numerous to mention here, but you know who you are, and every single one of you is a legend.

And a standing ovation to our final industry panel of Stu Mallarkey, Gareth Rice and Kim Scott from Special; Brad Collett & Anna Yates from Stanley St; Adam Thompson from Augusto, Anne Boothroyd; Mick Stalker from TBWA; and Hadleigh Sinclair from Colenso BBDO for your sharp-eyed comments and helpful pointers.

Thank you to all the CDs, ECDs, and CCOs who didn’t sue us for making 30 AIs of you for our Actual Ideas invites to our End of Year show. And to everybody who turned up to our show, we hope you appreciated the bigger space, and to anyone who and took their AI selves seriously and weren’t able to make it this year, here’s a little video from the show, just so you can witness the aforementioned bigger-non-sardine-packed space.

And lastly to the students.

There is an iridescence to intelligence at work, and at 11pm on an otherwise dark and empty campus, after a mammoth 4-day effort that chewed and spat out your weekend with barely a backward glance, that iridescence lit up the campus when you finally completed and uploaded all 30 of the AI Creative Director video invites to the show. For that core memory, I’m in your debt.