By Nick Kugge

The No-Nonsense School

“They aren’t really any advertising degrees, Nick…” those were the words of my marketing professor at university. Back then, before I heard about SCA, entering advertising seemed like an impossible goal. Mentors and counsellors shared a rather mythical opinion on advertising, “you fall into it”, “you don’t teach creativity”, “you have it or you don’t” and some more discouraging nonsense. As I started to work in some agencies I realised I wasn’t going to be blessed by some creative epiphany without a proper education – even if it didn’t seem to exist.

This half-term, I flickered through some old notepads and scribbles from Canada. It was entertaining to go through all these thoughts and ideas from several years ago and see how much my thinking had changed. How ideas, strategies and executions were mixed-up, everything in there was just all over the place. It reminded me how lucky we are at SCA and how hard it must be for those trying on their own.

When entering SCA it took quite a while to unlearn some of the nonsense accumulated over the years, and I have to admit I was sceptical when I first heard that creativity was a process. But unlike other schools and universities which provide a specific formula which you must apply, SCA offers a multitudes of tools and people with which you can experiment and find your own creative process.