The dismal state of advertising training in India

In the early 1980s, as a young account executive, I was fortunate enough to receive two attractive job offers while departing from Ulka (now FCB), the agency that my legendary uncle Bal Mundkur founded. I left because people attributed my success to sharing the founder's second name, a trait I needed to overcome to succeed independently. The first offer was with HTA, which later evolved into JWT and VML, and the second was with a small advertising agency called Everest.

However, my dilemma stemmed from the fact that HTA was only offering me a monthly salary of Rs 2,200, whereas Everest was offering me a generous monthly salary of Rs 2,900. Given my existing life responsibilities of raising a wife and my first child, choosing Everest seemed like the logical choice. When I enquired about why HTA, despite being the largest agency, was paying me less than Everest, they responded by stating that they provide training in advertising. I was later to learn that this was entirely true. In fact, people often refer to JWT as the University of Advertising.

Another stark difference in the industry was that advertising trade bodies like CAG (Commercial Artists Guild, now defunct), the Ad Club, and the AAAI were equally interested in training people in advertising. For example, my friend Pradyuman Maheshwari, the founder of mxmindia.com, fondly recalls taking a copywriting course from one of the industry trade bodies with Larry Grant, a renowned creative director who founded his own agency, Larry Grant Advertising, after leaving Ogilvy.

I, for example, used to run a training program for young MBA’s joining HTA—about 55 of them from all over the country. We held the Entre Vous programme at the Marve hotel, training our young entrants for two whole weeks before dispatching them to various offices across the country as management trainees.

I think a quick roundup of the training scenario today would reveal that:

1. It is nowhere close to what we were doing in the 80s and 90s as agencies.
2. Industry bodies such as AAAI, Ad Club, and the IAA have transitioned into solely operating award shows.

Enter Raj Kamble, a creative maverick who, 10 years ago, borrowed money from a few friends to purchase the Miami Ad School franchise for India, a global school with 15 locations worldwide and the Future Lions School of the Year for 2022 at Cannes. Raj's favourite story is about how educational institutions failed to prepare young minds for the world of advertising. During his first interview with the then Lintas, Raj, a gold medallist from the JJ School of Art, received an assignment to create a 10x1 cc ad. Raj says he had no clue what a 10x1 cc ad meant after 5 years at JJ. It was this unpleasant experience that spurred his interest in advertising education about 10 years ago.

Young minds require practical on-the-job experience to equip them for the realities of the advertising industry. While education is a lucrative industry today, The Miami Ad School is still struggling to break even. But Raj shrugs it off by saying, ‘I am doing it as a passion.' Particularly for India, it is encouraging to know that passion, not money, can drive education.

If we were to assess the current state of training in the industry, where would we find ourselves? Businessmen and financial sharks now run the industry, once dominated by advertising giants such as Ogilvy, Ted Bates, Bill Bernbach, John Hegarty, and many others who created legendary advertising. Their focus on profits has severely impacted many aspects of advertising, including training. A quick roundup of the largest agencies might reveal a woefully underspent training budget, aimed at bolstering a precarious and uncertain bottom line.

Don Draper says in Mad Men, “We are flawed because we want so much more. We are ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.”

Training in advertising is undoubtedly something we wish we had.

Amen!

(Our author, Prabhakar Mundkur, serves as an independent brand strategy advisor and advisory director at Miami Ad School.)