Advertising education and the Journal of Advertising Education: The 20-year evolution:

I started teaching as an assistant professor 20 years ago, and I met Brett Robbs at my first academic conference. Like me, he started in the professional world then moved to academe. And, also like me, he was a copywriter. I naturally gravitated to him. He was not only a limitless source of ideas and inspiration, but also a believer in making the next generation better - and willing to share. We became friends and co-authors and continued our exchanges until he retired from the University of Colorado after 21 years of teaching. It seemed especially fitting to talk with Brett about the past 20 years - how we evolved as teachers as well as the evolution of advertising education and JAE. This is a retrospective of our conversation.Our evolution as teachersAs we evolve as teachers, we seem to move from a content-oriented approach to focus on the bigger picture. That is, the longer we teach the less (content) we teach and the better we teach it. This was true for both Brett and me and, undoubtedly, for others. For example, in a 15-week semester there may have been 14 different assignments that were, with time, cut in half. Or five creative campaigns cut to three. The result is that there is more emphasis on the creative process and creative problem solving - something that is important for students as they move into their careers. It should be noted that "creative" is used in a larger context that applies not only to creative classes such as copywriting, but to the thinking and problem-solving involved, especially in upper-level classes.Perhaps more importantly, students have the self-discovery that everyone is "creative" (or can solve problems) and have a newly found confidence in themselves. Many may never actually create an ad after they leave our classes, but if they understand the process, they can apply that to any problem whether in their professional or personal lives.The same would apply to other classes. In a planning or research class students learn how to figure out what the problem is, then find the resources to help solve that problem. In media planning there is less number crunching - because computers do that for us - and more learning how to understand data and apply it. In campaigns, students learn how to pull a large project together and pitch it (aka presentation skills).Consider this: how much does each of us remember from the classes we took in college? Again, it isn't the content as much as learning where to find information as well as the larger thinking and problem solving we apply every day. Our job is to give our students the tools to fill up their toolbox that they'll use in their future. For students in our creative classes they learn that everyone is creative, which in turn gives them more confidence. That selfdiscovery is an important part of the collective experience we call college. As faculty, we see our goals for our students evolve as well. First we think we're teaching them how to create advertisements and later realize it's the process that's more important. Again, a move from "content" to a thinking process that is applicable to our student's larger lives. We, in advertising, teach this process: figure out what the problem is, gather information, come up with a solution then put that in a form that our clients/bosses/whoever can use.The evolution of advertising educationTwenty years ago advertising education in many ways followed the agency model. We structured our curriculum based on areas within a traditional agency: account management, research, media and creative, then brought it all together in a campaigns class. Today those in advertising have to solve a variety of problems, and the solution may or may not be an advertising message. This is a seismic shift in both the advertising industry and for those of us teaching the next generation of advertising professionals.Of course the biggest change - a second revolution perhaps with as big an impact as the Creative Revolution in the 1960s - is the reverberations of social/digital media. …