In the 2021, I helped conceive, launch, and direct the Barkley/OKRP Creative Accelerator, a 1-year intensive creative advertising program where students RECRUITED from under-represented backgrounds learn and earn the skills and experience they need to win sought-after creative positions in our industry.
For an industry that brags about its ability to generate new ideas, it’s ironic that advertising has forever recruited talent from the same predictable places. In 2021, we were bound and determined to make lasting change with a new model. But we were truly flying the plane as we built it. No one involved in the program had ever done anything like this before. The results?
In the spring of 2022, all four members of the inaugural BOKRP Creative Accelerator class were offered (and accepted ;) full-time positions at BarkleyOKRP. One year later, in 2023, Kim Chungong won a Clio for her work on Planet Fitness.
As proof we always intended for the Creative Accelerator to change our industry, not just our agency, Co-Director, Sam Bonds and I shared the blueprint for the entire program with the advertising world at The One Club’s Creative Week in NYC. The recruiting approach, the syllabus, the work to instruction ratio, everything we learned the hard way.
The Class of 2025, Moustapha Tall, Ryan Wilson, Julisa Medina DelReal and Anita Ngo, are now close to graduating.
SPOILER ALERT: Before graduation, Class of 2025 Copywriter, Ryan Wilson, was offered a full-time position by competitor, VML. We were thrilled to be poached.
