New workshops for advertising professionals

Many professionals are now under relentless pressure to improve their personal levels of performance and delivery, but no one tells them how to do so, and the few individuals able to provide guidance and training are generally too busy striving to improve their own performance, he says.

Cooney adds that recent discussions he has had with several client companies and agencies have made it crystal clear that the need for training to improve on-the-job proficiencies is an urgent priority.

"The senior managers I spoke to pointed out that many of the courses presently available are clearly inadequate as there is no discernible improvement in job performance at the end of the training. This is frustrating both for the employee and the employer, who usually foots the bill, especially if a great deal of time and money has been invested in the training."

Some of the obvious shortcomings are that the courses are too theoretical and offer no real hands-on experience, and are too long, Cooney says.

To bridge the gap, the Red & Yellow school will this month launch its first industry training course, comprising a series of workshops designed to equip professionals with needed skills that they will immediately be able to apply in the workplace and which will noticeably improve their performance.

The workshops, to be run in collaboration with industry partners that are leaders in their fields, will be short and intensive, he says. Most modules will range from 10 to 20 hours, depending on the scope of the subject.

They will typically comprise four two-hour evening classes and a four-hour Saturday morning session. "A fundamental principle for all the workshops is that they must take place after hours as our discussions showed that potential delegates are too busy to take time off during office hours. We've also deliberately kept the workshops short so they won't be too draining for delegates to cope with, on top of a full-day's work."

The first workshop will be held on August 25. Titled "Taming the pythons and getting more sting from the bees", it will teach delegates how to harness crisis management and buzz marketing to build and maintain "bullet-proof" brands.

Presented by Alan Arguile, MD of PR company Meropa Communications, the course will cover topics ranging from managing the reputation of companies in the marketing communication mix to an examination of crisis case studies.

It will include the principles and practice of effective issue management, a module in which delegates will be given practical guidelines to ensure that their brands don't get into trouble and, if they do, how to make them disappear off the controversy radar quickly, says Cooney.

Entertaining "buzz" word-of-mouth case studies that demonstrate the power and potential of non-media brand communication will also be presented. In addition, the principles of buzz marketing will be covered, bringing together approaches, vocabulary and research from the Harvard Business School, McKinsey & Co, and four marketing authors.

Future workshop offerings will include topics such as Basic Research: where to find it and how to use it; The Brief: understanding the process and not just the execution; and Adding Value beyond what was asked for but relevant to the brief; among others.

Cooney says that while this is the first time that Red & Yellow is applying its knowledge and drawing on its extensive external network to provide training for people in the industry, similar workshops with professional partners have been run regularly for advertising and marketing students within the school "so we know that it works".

"The workshops will be team-based, interactive and hands-on, with delegates given practical assignments and presentations to do, to reinforce what they have learnt," he says. "The courses will also be very much in tune with what is required today, not the sort of tired theory and practice that has become irrelevant."

Click here for an outline and timetable of the Taming The Pythons; Getting More Buzz From The Bees series of workshops.

For further information, contact The Red & Yellow School on 021 462 1946/8.