There’s no guaranteed career path in advertising. And at some point, we all need help, mentorship, or just a sympathetic ear. David Burn and Dan Goldgeier chat with Wade Sturdivant, longtime Creative Director and Copywriter and the founder of NowAndThentor, a free service to provide feedback as needed to ad professionals of all kinds.
In this 35-minute Ad Chatter, David, Dan, and Wade discuss:
- The importance of mentors and the lack of agency career development
- Why creative directors don’t automatically make effective leaders
- The difference between agency and in-house creative environments
At one point in the discussion, Wade says this about his motivation to help others:
Going onto forums, and social media, and Fishbowl, you see all these really general questions from young creatives, and they’re not getting good answers. They’re crowdsourcing all this advice. It kind of drove me nuts. For every good answer they would get when they post a question to the world, to all Fishbowl users… Anybody can reply. Everybody does. For every good reply, there would be 10 that I would disagree with completely. I just felt like there’s got to be a better way. I also got a lot of great help when I was younger.
Wade has worked in-house as a copywriter/creative director at Twitter and MGM Grand. He also worked at The Richards Group and Leo Burnett, among others. Wade also started writing articles for Adpulp in 2005. His most recent piece for the site, published in 2018, is about the career growth a person can enjoy when working for an in-house creative team.
