Best Sessions from Day 1 of Advertising Week Europe 2018

If you're based in London and working in the creative industries, there's really only one place that you should be at this week, and that's London's Picturehouse Central for the annual Advertising Week Europe conference.

Boasting an eclectic array of panelists, this year's offering features celebrity singers, legendary filmmakers, provocative politicians and other movers and shakers. Even if you have managed to make it through the venue's doors, it's unlikely you've managed to attend all of the best of the day's sessions, so we've sifted through and picked apart the seminars to pull out the key takeaways, so you don't have to.

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Not everybody can do it

You may think there are no obvious links between advertising and being a professional industry critic, but today's panel, Fighting Talk: The Art of Criticism vs the Death of Experience, proved otherwise. With panelists made up of Guardian writers, including restaurant critic Grace Dent (above), radio critic Miranda Sawyer and political columnist Polly Toynbee, chaired by political commentator John Harris, the session provided some top tips on asserting yourself in a world of naysayers and demanding clients. "One of the things you have to develop as a critic is the ability to not care," said Dent. Her advice? Prepare for the criticism and expect it. As advertising creatives and directors, who have to depend on others to get their ideas made, she encouraged them to harden up and to not give up. She later added "Everybody thinks they can do it" - whether that's being a creative or being a resturant critic - "[but] the reality is I have to write about eating pasta in a white tiled room about 20 times a year and there are not many people who are actually doing it in a way that's interesting for others to read." Remember that it may look easy to do, but having the relevant knowledge and experience are what define us as reliable experts rather than new-gen content creators. OA

Alan Parker: From ad creative to movie director

This afternoon, on the NewGen stage of AdWeek, there was a look back at Adland past with one of the industry's most celebrated alumni, creative-turned-ad-director-turned-award-winning-feature-film-maker, Sir Alan Parker. Interviewed on stage by Metfilm Creative's CD, Mike Burgess, Parker took the audience through his journey from a creative at famous London agency CDP, through his beginnings as a commercials director then onto his life as a director of films such as Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Angel Heart and Evita.

The session began with an 11 minute reel of some of his most famous commercials for brands including Cockburn's port, Benson & Hedges and Heineken before he imparted some words of wisdom about his time in the ad world; like the fact that, when they started shooting commercials in-house at the agency ["completely taboo, by the way"] he didn't know anything and had no skills, "so I was the one who just started shouting 'cut' and 'action', and telling people what I thought they should do. Then everyone went 'Ooooooo, film director, are you?'." Turns out, yes, he was.

When commercials started becoming more ambitious - "like mini-movies" - Parker ventured into the world of feature films and after a 'calling card short' and a film for the BBC he wrote and directed Bugsy Malone, which led to a long and successful career and had the added bonus, Parker said, of "really pissing off Ridley [Scott]" because Parker had secured film funding before him.

Parker rounded off the session saying that when he worked in advertising he loved it and that, in the end, direction is one thing, "but all great commercials start with a great idea". He also name-checked Blink's Dougal Wilson, saying that the last time he was surprised by a commercials was by Wilson's early work for John Lewis. DE

Want to get a job in advertising? Ditch the thesis for a telemarketing stint...

... was one of the more leftfield ideas to come out of Degrees of Separation: Looking For a New Industry-Academy Model, which saw a panel of academics from Falmouth University and the London College of Communication, creative industry leaders and students debating whether current advertising courses are actually producing graduates who are fit for purpose in the ad industry. A decent work ethic, resilience (or 'bounce-back-ability' as AMVBBDO's CCO Paul Brazier put it), self-starting entrepreneurialism and a multi-disciplinary viewpoint are the main qualities missing from new recruits, claimed Tim Curtis, head of MediaCom's content division, Beyond Advertising. Which is rather worrying, when students are shelling out upwards of 50 grand on an advertising degree.

So how to bridge the impasse? First off, students take note: it's less about your book and CV than your personality, so think about sending in a creative video application instead. It sounds obvious, but do your research on the company you're applying to. A commercial mindset is critical: understanding why work is created is as important as coming up with creative ideas. Oh, and to counter those snowflake tendencies, why not make a stint in telesales a compulsory part of the curriculum - surely the best people to learn from when it comes to dealing with rejection.

D&AD's foundation director, Paul Drake, suggested that students shouldn't just be graded on a single discipline, and questioned the three-year degree, saying unis should be rewarded for getting students into work earlier. Remote internships, flexible long-distance courses and ditching the thesis in favour of a more relevant project answering a real problem in the industry were all mulled over as solutions. Watch this space (and in the meantime, students, get yourself a holiday job selling timeshares. You'll thank us). SS