By Dennis Engel

3-Generation-Day at SCA

It’s Wednesday. What an exciting day at SCA. Most of us arrived earlier than usual in the agency just to be slightly more prepared and focused than we already try to be anyways. Every day is exciting at SCA but this one was really special. Sir John Hegarty visited the Coup agency and mentored us the whole morning.

I thought about introducing John to this blog but I think if you don’t know who he is you either have a lack of interest in our school and industry anyways or you should rethink your attitude.

The majority of the Coup intake have read his books like teenyboppers the Miley Cyrus fan-page — to be honest his talk wasn’t really new and unexpected. What fascinated me the most was his presence. The way he talks, the way he moves and how he gesticulates with his hands as if he would write calligraphy in the air. Beside giving us advice like a father to his son just before he does his driving license, he answered lots of our questions.

While listening to his wise words I relized that John Hegarty, Marc Lewis and Pete Cain where all once students of John Gillard the founder of the first School of Communication Arts. Without the drive and the belief in our creative minds, one of the best creative schools would never have seen the light of the world. It really gave me goosebumps that three generations with over half a century of experience in the creative industry came together to exchange knowledge simply to keep John Gillard’s spirit alive.  I think that is a unique moment that I will keep with me for the rest of my life.

“You look at ma face and scream out: JESUS IS KILLING ME! I put your head in a box! Pizza delivery!” – Kung Henry Bowers

At lunchtime the day took an unexpected change when Deanna showed up with two creative poetry slammers from Sweden who she got introduced to at a poetry slam just the night before. It was one of the most fascinating and unusual copy writing lessons since I started at SCA. Especially as a non-native-English speaker it motivated me a lot to see that your heritage is not necessarily important to become an international, well respected, English speaking writer. I took this lessons with me when I went home this evening to think about the Metro copy writing brief we just received.

The following day I woke up just one hour earlier to try to crack the brief and to push my idea a little bit further. I came up with some good ideas and started to execute them and it was quite an awesome feeling that Metro picked one of them.

Have a nice week-end