_2.png)
What’s it like being the last of your species? As of last Monday, the School of Communication Art (SCA) found out, when it became the last portfolio ad school in the UK.
When the news broke that the Watford Ad Course would no longer run, many in the ad industry went into mourning. Was this the final nail in the coffin for the old-school model? Money had poured into other ad schools and in-house creative incubators, according to its revered programme leader, Tony Cullingham, who was at the helm for 30 years.
It was a sad day for Cullingham’s former pupils, a sad day in adland, and it was a sad day for Marc Lewis, the dean of SCA, who had to face up to the fact he was the last of a dying breed. Gone were the days where Watford and the SCA played against each other, in a rivalry akin to Spurs versus Arsenal.
“It’s a really scary time,” Lewis admits. Pardoning his French, the next thing he says is something along the lines of the industry "screwing" itself. “It’s damaging itself and causing ourselves so much self-harm while the consultancy world is eating its lunch,” he says, regretfully.
The week was not all "doom and gloom", however, as the ad school found out it had retained its title as the most-awarded advertising school in the world, for the ninth consecutive year. In doing so, it beat entrants from Central St Martins and the Miami Ad School. And Lewis is hell-bent on making it to tenth.
He doesn't beat about the bush about the trials and tribulations of keeping his school open. Rather, he’s been very vocal about suffering losses to the tune of £200,000 during the pandemic, which he attributes to agencies poaching talent while giving nothing back.
“It nearly went bust last year, I took a £300k Covid-loan,” Lewis shares candidly, joking that it was partly a selfish act. “I have the best job in the industry; I’d be miserable without it."
It’s important to note that this isn’t the first time the School of Communication Arts has found itself in dire straits. Founded in 1985, the school didn’t make it past the next decade “because agencies abused it”, according to Lewis.
But, while adland contributed to the school’s demise in the 1990s, driven by a burning desire to offer something better than the traditional university model, in 2010 Lewis managed to persuade the advertising industry to back him in reinventing it.
Now that there has been a rise in agencies offering incubator programmes, what would the advertising industry look like now, without portfolio schools like SCA?
“Education should be about broadening minds and exploring all sorts of opportunities,” Lewis insists. “When you’re running an in-house programme inside one agency, there’s no chance of broadening that mind. When students come to a great portfolio school and they are diverse, you end up with books that are good for experiential or integrated or digital.”
The practice of agencies running training programmes in-house is a huge threat to SCA, which threatens the loss of sponsor money and competition for students. The solution? It lies in the practice of reciprocity.
“The school’s North Star is reciprocity. That idea that we have a responsibility to leave our village better than how we found it. And to help everyone do the same,” he insists.
“Anyone getting involved in the school should do so because they are hoping to make that place better. And because they hope to get something out of it. What we don’t want to do is appear like we’re asking for charity, because that’s not sustainable.”
Claiming that agencies are killing the creative industry, Lewis explains the ad school is actually moving closer to brands, consultancies and media owners. “Organisations like TikTok, Unilever or Deloitte,” he notes. “I think I would be just as happy to listen to Deloitte right now about my direction creatively than I would VCCP.”
A fortuitous side-effect of the pandemic was the SCA's move to remote study, which Lewis claims essentially saved the school. "We now have a remote learning squad. Without that, we would have closed the school," he says. "We wouldn't have been profitable, or rather, we would have made too much of a loss. Right now we have 18 scholarships and 20 online. We believe in the next year or two, if we get the right support, we should be able to pay 100 scholarships a year online.”
As the news of Watford’s demise sinks in, Lewis says this is a moment for agencies to take a long hard look at themselves and decide whether they’d rather have an adland where no portfolio schools exist.
“There’s a genuine opportunity here for the industry to say, enough is enough,” Lewis says.