By Daniel Kelly

Let’s Make Some Ads

It seems I’m a little late to the party. I applied late, scholarship deadlines have passed and many have been snapped up by you incredibly talented lasses and lads.

I’m not disheartened though.

Its just got me excited to start working with you all. Plus, the Co-op approved my loan so its all looking good!

It will surely be an incredible 18 months at the SCA and I can’t wait to start making adverts.

The future is a curious thing. For as long as written language has existed, doom has been forecast on our horizon ready to swallow us into oblivion.

In a country with constant elections, a currency in freefall and blocks of flats which can apparently go up in flames at any moment, you might be forgiven for lending credence to such prophesies. But you’ll know from the reading list: the mind is often tempted to seek patterns where none exist.

I’d like to share with you some reasons I feel driven and why we can be optimistic about the future, despite its bleak portrayal, and hopefully our place within it as the craftspeople of adverts.

For me, much of this year was spent travelling between here and London for work placements and agency interviews.  Even for somebody like me, with the most nascent of careers in adland, it is impossible to ignore the buzz round new technologies like VR and AI.

In my own lifetime I’ve seen new interesting ways for commercials to reach their audience through social media or retargeting, but I wouldn’t say a seismic change has come to completely alter the way ads are widely experienced comparable to the advent of photoengraving or TV.

With these technologies the sensory tolerances of audiences were changed. Images could turn commercial messages into icons, that is to say, compressed images of large complex social processes.

Sound and motion picture created a new commercial environment where adverts were designed to reach audiences on a more subconscious level through the subliminal quality of image paired with the infectious use of sound. It speaks to the uniqueness of the art of advertising that adverts are intended to be received passively.

It seems certain technology will create a more active role for the consumer in the future commercial space. Nobody could argue the internet hasn’t made the conversation between producer and consumer at least more fluid. In the coming years, perhaps some culmination of virtual, augmented and extended realities, mood-tracking apps and machine learning will again reconfigure the way commercial messages are delivered.

Now, having earned my place at the best advertising school in the world, I am excited to be part of a future which will oversee great changes in the ad world. I’m excited to get back to London and to start making adverts. The prospect of being part of the innovation process is more than worth the daunting pressure to innovate.