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| CRBJ Home > April 2007 | ||||||
Tilting at windmillsInterviewed by Nathan Leaf
Chief quixotic officer, Extra Bold Portfolio School, 121 S. Pinckney St. Age: 45 Family: Wife Carrie, son Riley, daughter Carly Background: Born in Waupun, moved to Madison at age 15 and graduated from Madison East High School. Education: Attended the University of Minnesota, majoring in art history. Experience: Has worked in several creative positions, including creative director, at companies including Campbell Mithun, Martin Williams Advertising, Best Buy, Carmichael Lynch, Stephan & Brady and Famous Footwear. About the school: Formed in early 2006, Extra Bold consists of a one-year tuition school, a mini-course and an advertising shop, which produces the students' work for local businesses. Extra Bold has one full-time employee in addition to Kirkpatrick and receives volunteer teaching services from advertising professionals in the area. It will graduate its first class this summer. Q. Why did you leave the advertising business to start this school? A. The whole time that I was in the process of interviewing people I realized that people just don't know how to put a portfolio together. . . . The thing that to me is sad is that Madison is such a creative city but people are leaving because they don't know how to get a job. So we're filling a gap between what (UW-Madison) can offer and what MATC can offer. Q. What is that gap? A. We're really idea focused. . . . What the university specializes in is really more strategic planning, media buying, public relations, those kinds of things. Number crunching. Tactical approaches like running billboards instead of magazines. Really figuring out where the dollars should go, and positioning. Coming up with the position is one of the most valuable ideas in the world but then coming up with the "Just Do It" idea that makes (the advertisement) memorable is where we are. Q. What's the most important thing students learn about at your school? A. Really, the diploma, the resume, they don't matter as much as that leather-bound case that has all of your samples in it. You could be a janitor but if you have a great portfolio, you'll get hired. Q. What are your goals at the school? A. One of the things I'm trying to do is stop the creative brain drain from Madison. I really feel passionate about making Madison a Sundance of advertising. Q. Why do you think there is a creative brain drain and why do think you can stop it? A. There's a desperate need for agencies to get talented people and they're not finding them. When I was at Stephan & Brady, I couldn't find them. When I was at Famous Footwear, I couldn't find them. I one time put an ad out for a copywriter, I think we had 1,000 applicants. I ended up looking at like 200 portfolios. I didn't hire anybody. There are people that just have that kind of high standard. We have (creative directors) now in Madison who are from Chicago, Minneapolis and all these great places that have had great experiences and they want really good people. And it's hard to get people to come to Madison when they have a choice between Minneapolis and Chicago. Q. Why is it so hard for students to develop their portfolios? A. You can't do it on your own. You need to have someone that says "That idea sucks." Creative directors are not looking for how sophomoric your ideas can be and how you can get someone's attention by being gross or whatever. What they're looking for are people who are smart, strategic and can come up with a credible marketing idea. Q. What were you doing before you started the school? A. I was at Famous Footwear. . . . But honestly, I kind of hit a burnout factor and started working at Starbucks. Because I missed the one-on-one relationship that you have with clients. For me it was time for me to work on my business plan, which I needed. It was a way of just being energized by working on something else. Q. What goes into creating an advertising portfolio? A. I always say 10 ads should be in your portfolio. In a process of putting a portfolio together, you should probably have 100 ads that you've done to get to 10. But the problem is that people will get to 10 and say "Ok, I've got 10. I'm done." Q. How many students have you had in the program so far? A. Right now we have 12 students in the tuition school. We're getting close to 60 students who we've worked with in some way or another. Q. Is that enough to sustain the school? Is the school doing well financially? A. Well, I'm eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day but we're a start-up. The biggest fear is the first two years. Madison is not a city that knows what an ad school is and what the benefits are. But when you talk to (people) they understand what the benefits are. . . . We charge $10,000 for tuition for one year. Most of the other advertising schools are two years for as much as $30,000 to $40,000. Our goal would be to break even and we're not quite there yet. I would like to have consistently 10 students in the school. Part of it is also the clients coming in. Clients paying to use our student services. When someone comes in and sees an idea they like and wants to get it produced then it goes to the ad shop. And they pay an incredibly small amount of money for that. Q. What has been the hardest part of getting the school off the ground? A. I am completely right-brained. I'm the creative guy. The nice thing was that the people you see around here are all volunteers and they're all helping out because they believe in the school. . . . The figuring out how to make the cash-flow part go (will be the hardest thing). I got turned down by a lot of banks because banks had never heard of this. I was in one bank that said I had to be in Fitchburg. And (one of our volunteers) said "Yeah, we probably should have been because it would have been cheaper and you wouldn't be scraping to get money through." But the thing is I want to be part of Downtown. We're part of all these things that want to bring Downtown alive. And the mere fact that I have students walking out of here at 10 o'clock at night, I want people to be around. I want them to be able to go to a bar or get a cab easily. I didn't want them to walk out in the middle of an office parking lot in 20-below weather. Q. Why did you choose chief quixotic officer as your title? A. I always thought titles were and are ridiculous and usually mean nothing. I have been all the titles that were important in advertising; creative director, executive creative director, director of creative . . . blah, blah. So, this title says a lot about me. I am not the normal officer, never wanted to be. I am a dreamer and a visionary. I do things because I think they are right, not because they are in some guide book or rule book. I may not do things that are guided by reality or possibilities. Creativity, I guess, is thinking what could be and dreaming. nleaf@madison.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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