To succeed in the competitive advertising field you need an edge, something Johnson & Wales University professor Tom Monahan has taken steps to give, and ingrain in, his students.
Monahan, director of the university’s Creative Advertising Program, led the way to establish a unique portfolio school within the university’s regular four-year undergraduate program. He also set up a teaching space that replicates the atmosphere of an actual advertising agency, the Idea Lab.
Monahan is a seasoned veteran of the professional advertising world, having founded an advertising agency in Providence that was among the nation’s most successful for 20 years, he said. The Leonard Monahan agency, employing 80 people at its height, went out of business 12 years ago, but Monahan said he only recently realized the role he played in training young advertising professionals decades ago.
Monahan, who founded the agency in 1978 and worked there for 15 years, said there are more than 40 creative directors at major advertising agencies across the country, working for such clients as FedEx, AT&T and Cadillac, who got their start at Leonard Monahan.
“When I watch the Super Bowl,” he said, “I see no less than a half-dozen ads created by ‘graduates’ of Leonard Monahan.” (The Super Bowl is known for airing the latest, cutting-edge television commercials.)
After a short stint as an instructor many years ago, he gave teaching a second try two years ago at the urging of Oscar Chilabato, an old friend who is chairman of the school’s advertising department. “I fell in love with the classroom again,” he said. “They [Johnson & Wales] had a void and I could help them fill it.”
Working closely with Chilabato and other advertising instructors at the university, Monahan added to the Johnson & Wales curriculum what is, “to my knowledge, the first-ever portfolio school to be offered within a four-year undergraduate program,” he said.
Often, college graduates who majored in advertising found, a year or two after graduation, that they needed portfolios to show prospective employers examples of their work, so they would then go to a portfolio school for one or two years.
Incorporating a portfolio school within a four-year college program means advertising students at Johnson & Wales should be fully equipped and have the skills they need to begin work for an agency or other organization as soon as they graduate. “So, we’re saving mom and dad a year or two of paying for their children’s education and we’re allowing the student to get into what is a young person’s field at a young age,” he said.
Portfolios no longer are presented in three-ring binders, but are stored on the computer in digital and video formats, often with audio. Monahan said a well-presented, well-rounded portfolio is essential to landing a job in advertising. “It’s never been easy to get an entry-level job in the advertising industry because it is extremely competitive,” he said.
Because he wanted his students to know what it is like to actually work in an advertising agency, Monahan last summer had the wall removed between two classrooms at Johnson & Wales for conversion into the Idea Lab. Workers in charge of the conversion were provided with photos of actual ad agencies so they could, as much as possible, replicate a professional-agency environment in the college setting.
“It’s a mad-scientist lab for advertising people,” he said. “It’s not NASA, but it is a very open, creative atmosphere.” The production lab contains various kinds of computers, as well as high-powered photo scanners and other up-to-date equipment, Monahan explained.
Some 30 students are enrolled in Monahan’s creative-advertising program. The first graduates are scheduled for the 2012 commencement. Monahan spoke with pride of the eight awards Johnson & Wales students won last year in the Boston-based Hatch Awards for advertising excellence, more than any other university.
“We had only 12 entries,” he said. “We surprised ourselves.” •
