In today's creative fields of photography, advertising, graphic design, web media and copyrighting, access to the best education and training may be the key to success in a long and dynamic career. Miami Ad School has established a reputation as an innovative training school with a strong track record. MacTribe caught up with Founder and President Pippa Seichrist to get her insights into the ever growing program she helped to create with her husband Ron Seichrist.
MT: What are your educational objectives?
Pippa: To be the school that is not afraid of training our students for a world that hasn't happened yet. To be willing to innovate, change and embrace the technology-- as well as the ideas that leapfrog the status quo. We're not a portfolio school. We're The School of Pop Culture Engineering. We're a paperless school, all digital. Our graduates leave as digital creatives who move easily between words, still and moving images, sound and silence breaking the old boundaries of titles and territories. We are the future of the business, ahead of the business itself.
MT: What are the key elements of the program?
Pippa: Students take a digital core of classes geared to prepare them for the new realities of the business, with concentrations in their particular fetishes. Here are a few: Ideas First, Visual Impact, Stand-up Comedy, Experiments in Digital Photography, Interactive Concepting, Video Storytelling, Everything is Interaction, Flash: Design and Sound, Thinking Strategically, Social Media.
MT: What is your single 'breakout' offering which is the calling card for recruiting students?
Pippa: We're not just one school--we're a network of educational options and cultural experiences in just about every major ad and design capital in the world. We give students the chance to study advertising in different cities around the world learning the trends and styles in that culture. So, the minute someone steps into Miami Ad School they know they are leaving the world as they knew it. They will have creative teachers/speakers from all over the world. They will study inside agencies in what are called Greenhouses allowing them to experience every day agency life. They will intern in ad agencies in cities as varied as New York, London, Beijing or Moscow.
MT: Is the program a classroom experience, or virtual, or both?
Pippa: The program is everything imaginable. Actual client briefs and participation, classroom, Greenhouse, internship, telepresence, whatever.
MT: How long is the program typically?
Pippa: We have several different programs.
- Two year diploma programs: digital design, copywriting, art direction, digital photography and video.
- Year and a half masters degree program in mass communication: art direction, copywriting
- 12 week Boot Camp diploma programs: account planning, communication planning
- Three day Digital Reboot workshops for industry professionals: digital and interactive
Pippa: Miami Ad School is active with the Advertising Federation. One of our board members was president of the National organization for the past two years. Our school president has been on the local AIGA and AdFed boards. The school is very active with the AAAAs. They are actually cosponsoring the Digital Reboot with us.
MT: Do Miami Ad School students win awards?
Pippa: Miami Ad School students win more awards than students at any other top advertising school in the world because our students are exposed to the latest in global pop culture. They learn all the crazy advertising trends, fads and forms of communication. According to the Gunn Report, which ranks agencies globally, Miami Ad School is the most awarded school in the world and has been for many years. This year alone the students won the top awards at the three major, global student competitions:
- 2009 International Andys - gold (and silver and bronze)
- 2009 One Show - gold (and silver)
- 2009 Clios - gold (and silver and bronze)
Pippa: Somewhere between 20 and 40 years old. Our student is likely to speak a couple of languages. Most already have a college degree. Our school is likely to be far more international than other schools in our category. When we team our students on a project, it's likely that at least one of the team is from outside of the USA. That's a terrific advantage for our students. They are daily exposed to all the latest trends in pop culture all over the world.
MT: What is a pop culture engineer?
Pippa: A person who sniffs out what's happening anywhere, everywhere in all the stuff of everyday life. The trends in movies, music, art, fashion, sports, food, sex, language--the extremes that seed what's going to happen an hour from now.
MT: Who would be an ideal candidate to enroll in Miami Ad School?
Pippa: Our ideal candidate is a misfit. They could hold a job as an accountant, doctor or lawyer but that's not who they are in their soul. They have a burning need to create and communicate ideas. And they are willing to break all the rules, and do something different than their parents or society planned for them.
MT: What makes Miami Ad School an International experience?
Pippa: Students can study in up to four different advertising capitals and then spend their final quarter putting into practice what they learned interning in an agency. And these aren't coffee-fetching internships. Our student interns have created TV commercials, web sites and almost any other medium you can think of. Our graduates leave school with an online portfolio and real world industry experience. One creative director told me he liked hiring Miami Ad School grads because they are instant profit centers for the agency.
MT: Do you have any graduate success stories you can share?
Pippa: Our graduates work at every major agency in the world. Here are a few of the companies in alphabetical order: AKQA, BBDO, CP+B, Deustch, EVB, Fallon, Goodbye Silverstein & Partners. There are hundreds and hundreds of agencies in our graduate network. Our graduates are creating all sorts of cool things including video games for Burger King, web sites for Volkswagen, TV commercials for Axe deodorant and Bud Lite, online projects for Nickelodeon, NYT.com and greeting cards for Starbucks.
MT: How is your offering developing over the next year?
Pippa: On September 28 -30th 2009, we're launching a Digital Reboot taught by some of the industry's most brilliant digital minds. This Reboot is designed for those people who missed the digital revolution and who understand that they must learn this new language and all these new skills. It really is possible to turn a print dinosaur into a digital transformer.
Please visit Miami Ad School at www.miamiadschool.com
More Apple
More News
iPad Costs
iSuppli Corp., which generally waits until it can actually get the new Apple product to estimate its production cost, has decided to forgo hands on examination in the case of the iPad. They have--from just looking at it, it's amazing--decided the base model only costs $219.35 for Apple to produce. According to AppleInsider the base model won't make Apple anywhere near as much profit as the 32 GB model with 3G wireless priced at $729...that one reportedly costs only $287.15 to produce.
That's some profit! No wonder Apple execs have said they'd stay nimble on pricing! With demand for the iPad under scrutiny and this week's news that the "Take Picture" hint was removed from the Address Book app in the iPad simulator even we are starting to wonder if it's not worth waiting for the 2nd generation.
Trust us, it's painful to say.
Google Challenges the Internet
"Think Big" indeed. This time, Google is setting its sights on the very way we transmit information and asking people from around the country to nominate their city or state to be included in an ultra-high speed open internet network of Google's building. Set to include anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people, this network will boast 1GB per second fiber optic connections that Google reps are hoping will bolster developer creativity, test new ways to build the infrastructure and challenge internet service providers to band together to create a better internet instead of shunning change to maintain their bottom lines.
This is huge news, and we hope our city is on the receiving end of the new interwebs...here's the official Google Blog if you want to read it all in detail or submit your community.
Dogs on Twitter
From the country that's given us karate and karaoke comes the newest iPhone app: that's right, Japan's Index Corp. has announced the release of "Bowlingual," the dog emotion translator. Latest in a long line of technological advances, this app (to be released this summer) analyzes Fido's bark and puts it into one of six categories, like "needy." Or "happy." Then it adds a caption based on the emotion and allows you to snap a photo of your pooch in its current mood; as if that weren't enough it can modify that photo to enlarge your pet's eyes...oh...so cute.
Seriously, the app is set to sell for $5 and will post your pet's barks to Twitter. Silly? Yes. Fun? Probably!!
Will you let your dog speak his mind? Tell us here.
