We get you up
to agency speed.
Here at DAD, we pack a lot into our intensive 15 month program to mold you into the most prepared, knowledgeable, and skilled junior creative an agency has ever seen — which is to say, we’ll help you stand out and be a hell of a lot more hireable than you were before.
In five quarters with us you’ll learn everything about the advertising industry, create an agency-ready portfolio consisting of deep, fully-integrated ad campaigns, and then we’ll use that portfolio to help get you your first big agency job. DAD is structured to be just like an ad agency, with active industry professionals leading our classes just like they lead their own teams at work, so when you leave here and begin your career you’ll already be up to agency speed.
The work,
the work, the work.
You start off your first quarter with us, Q1, mostly by taking discipline-specific classes in copywriting, art direction, or strategy. Experts in your chosen field walk you through the fundamentals of your craft and give you reps each week to start building your creative muscle. Assignments in these types of classes are all completed solo.
As that foundation progressively becomes stronger into Q2, you’ll see more action in campaign classes where you’ll partner up to concept big idea-driven storytelling campaigns that could ultimately end up as final portfolio pieces.
By Q4 your discipline-focused classes are done and your entire schedule is focused on campaign classes that will build your portfolio. Each week you’re working on multiple new brand briefs and spending a lot of time outside of class working with partners to create, refine, receive feedback, and continuing to refine.
Time is money.
Much like an internal creative review in an ad agency, your classes are more like feedback sessions where you present your work to the creative director and they give you detailed feedback. You’ll realistically spend 30-40 hours a week outside of class on all your assignments, both solo and with partners, with the expectation that when you get to class you’ll have work that’s ready for their feedback.
Because your schedule is so packed, it’s important for DAD to be your focus. Not just for us, but for your partners and most importantly for you. Nearly every student here works a part-time job to, you know, stay alive and stuff, but the students who see the most success for us are the ones who are available to their partners and have plenty of time to devote to the work. Which means if you’re working a full-time job and you want to go to school part-time, maybe we aren’t the best fit for you.
Learn from doing,
not from lectures.
Sick of college? Us, too. We don’t do long, daily lectures here – we put you to work on day one. This isn’t so much a school as it is a training agency. Think of this place like a teaching hospital, just without the whole saving lives thing. The more you actively do, the better you get. We treat creativity as a muscle and we flex it hard here. You’ll learn so much from the feedback on your work, which is why all of our classes involve real-world assignments just like you’d see in an ad agency. Plus, the feedback comes from real-world ad agency creatives – no professors here who’ve never worked a day in a real agency, all of your instructors work at some of the best shops in the country.
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Cut what sucks,
keep what works.
So you might’ve gotten already that we’re big on creative reps. We designed the curriclum so you’ll be creating a ton of campaigns in your 15 months here, hate a lot of them at the beginning, create a bunch more, start to find a few you like, and then make a ton more because now you’re on a roll. While at DAD, you can expect to work on between 50 to 60 campaign briefs to varying degrees of completeness.
Twice in your time at DAD – after Q3 and again after Q4 – we hold what we call “cutdown days” where we evaluate all the work you’ve made so far. In those sessions we’ll cut everything that sucks and leave you with only the stuff that’s worth continuing to work on. If you’ve ever wondered why our student’s portfolios receive constant praise from agencies and colleges alike, this is a big reason why – all student work here is constructively critiqued under the watchful eye of multiple creative directors through multiple stages. Just like an agency, we make it our job to make sure your work is the absolute best it can be.
Get ready for
your big debut.
You’ll begin week one of Q5, your last quarter, with your final 4-5 campaigns as picked on cutdown day. Each campaign will be assigned to one of our creative directors who will guide you through the final stages of blowing the ideas out more fully, refining every ad and execution, and then finishing up the portfolio presentation.
And while you’re assembling your killer website, we’ll get you ready to get out there and start interviewing. We’ll guide you on how to brand yourself, present your work effectively to agency recruiters and creatives, and how to get a job. You’ll learn what to say in emails to recruiters, what not to say, how to effectively navigate LinkedIn, how to negotiate salaries, and all the other secret tips and tricks no one told you in college.
Then, once your site is 100% finished and it’s a portfolio we are all super proud of… it’s time for your big moment. The premier event of your time at DAD is our private, invite-only agency debut. Always well-attended by the biggest and best agencies in the country, this is your chance to present your best campaign to an audience who is just waiting to hire you. After that, you’re officially a free agent and the job hunt begins.
Our contacts are
your contacts.
Because our placement rate is effectively 100%, we prefer instead to measure our graduate success by the amount of offers our students receive. And because we have a huge network of agency friends and partners, as evidence by the massive wall of logos below, DAD grads get a lot of offers. Our connections span the entire country at just about every shop you can name, which means if you finish DAD with a killer portfolio and are completely open to working anywhere in the country, your chances of receiving multiple agency offers is pretty damn good.
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How can you justify one more year of school and 27k in tuition? That big sexy number up above is why. That’s the average starting salary for our students when they sign with their first agency after leaving DAD. Try finding that kinda job right out of college with zero industry experience and a below-average creative portfolio.
This is a big reason why students come to DAD immediately after graduating college. Portfolio school helps you start your career off at the best agencies in a role you actually love at a salary you really deserve.
A DAD that’s always around.
Once you’re a DAD Grad, you’ll be a part of our network forever. We’ve got countless students at agencies all over the country, giving you an instant friend on the inside if you’re looking to apply or just get some advice. You’ll also stay connected with us in a lot of ways, too, with monthly emails containing job opportunities, alumni events, and whatever else is going on.
And if you ever decide to move to a new city and want a new job, whether it’s a year after you’re done here or ten years later, we’ll help you with that, too. You can always call us, text, email, or send up signal flares for help and advice. Yep, this is a forever type of thing. We’ll always be here to help for as long as you need it, even decades into your career.
Relax, you can do this.
This isn’t school in the traditional sense, you’re here to work. And the more time you put into your portfolio, the better it will be. We’ll do everything we possibly can to help you along the way, but how good your book ends up largely depends on you. This means never missing a class, treating every brand assignment like a potential book piece, participating in class discussions and critiques, churning out work day and night, and being a really good partner. This is a highly collaborative environment and no one wants to work with (or hire) a jerk, so help out your classmates and they’ll return the favor.
We know it may sound tough, but it’s really fun. It’s the kind of work you’ll slave over because you really care about getting it right. As long as you show up each day curious and willing, you’ll be in good shape.
