You pay us and
we'll get you paid.
That big sexy number is the average starting salary for DAD Grads. Try finding that kinda job right out of college with zero industry experience and a below-average creative portfolio.
This is 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.
Strategy
Denver Ad School tuition: $27,000
Average starting agency salary: $65,000
5 quarters | 15 months | full-time workload | online or in Denver
Agency strategists best express their ideas with critical thinking.
Part anthropologist, psychologist, complexity simplifier, problem identifier and most importantly, muse, strategists thrive on solving business problems through creative solutions. They mine for insights and develop creative briefs to give creative teams a launch platform for advertising ideas. They research audience demographics to determine who ad campaigns should target, track trends in business and culture, identify insights into human behavior and how they relate to brands and products, set up focus groups to test hypotheses, write project briefs that help inspire the creative teams to develop an ad campaign, and work together with the account and creative teams to sell an idea to a client with reasoning. Strategy is the exact intersection of art and science in advertising. If you have a subscription to both PAPER Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, routinely crush even the nerdiest of nerds at trivia night, often hear someone question “why” and respond back with a 10-page Keynote deck, pick which trendy sneakers to wear each day based on the brand’s opening bell valuation, and you enjoy being a cultural anthropologist who strives to find the human truths that fuel big ideas then you’d probably make a good strategist.
Part anthropologist, psychologist, complexity simplifier, problem identifier and most importantly, muse, strategists thrive on solving business problems through creative solutions. They mine for insights and develop creative briefs to give creative teams a launch platform for advertising ideas. They research audience demographics to determine who ad campaigns should target, track trends in business and culture, identify insights into human behavior and how they relate to brands and products, set up focus groups to test hypotheses, write project briefs that help inspire the creative teams to develop an ad campaign, and work together with the account and creative teams to sell an idea to a client with reasoning. Strategy is the exact intersection of art and science in advertising. If you have a subscription to both PAPER Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, routinely crush even the nerdiest of nerds at trivia night, often hear someone question “why” and respond back with a 10-page Keynote deck, pick which trendy sneakers to wear each day based on the brand’s opening bell valuation, and you enjoy being a cultural anthropologist who strives to find the human truths that fuel big ideas then you’d probably make a good strategist.
Strategy sometimes feels like...
Living in a creative commune and being an artist’s muse • Anthropology • Psychology • Investigative documentary filmmaking • Market analysis • Doing the weather on the local news, but instead you’re forecasting cultural trends • Being a hotshot celebrity lawyer
Are you secretly a strategist?
creative, but not hands-on creative
Are you a good writer, but penning quippy headlines is not your thing? Can you spot good design, but aren’t a Photoshop wiz? Strategists help inform and guide the creative work at its inception, they don't make the final creative themselves. Maybe you make art outside of work, but in an agency you leave that part to the creatives.
culture vulture
Do your friends ask for your recos in movies, TV shows, food, fashion, music, or art? Do you routinely crush even the nerdiest of nerds at trivia night? Do you know about past trends, what’s trending now, and what will trend in the future? Guess what – that's a big part of what strategists get paid to do.
explore humankind
Do you often wonder what makes people tick? Why do they like the things they like? What fuels their fiery hatred for certain brands or products? Are you not a licensed sociologist, but you could play one on tv?
get hype
Are you persuasive as hell? Can you rally a team and give a rousing locker room speech? If someone in your life needs convincing, can you make a powerful argument that gets them hyped beyond belief? Great strategy inspires great creative, so can you channel your inner inspirational public speaker?
never stop digging
Do you ask a million questions? When presented with a "why?" do you search for a concrete answer? Are you an expert at thoroughly researching every single little goddamn decision in your life? Do you enjoy talking to people so much in an effort to get to know them better than they know themselves?
The strat curriculum.
The Big Idea
Strategic Planning
Research Design I
Adobe I – Design
Q1
Q2
Brief Building
Research Design II
Culture
Brand Architecture
Adobe II – Layout
Campaign Brief
Brand Storytelling
Campaign Development
Comms Strategy
Adobe III – Motion
Q3
Q4
Campaign Brief
Thought Leadership
Campaign Development
Campaign Assembly
Getting a Job
The High Art of Selling
Adobe V – Portfolio Prep
Q5
Look like fun? Click below to get more info along with in-depth class descriptions. Or if you can’t wait don’t let us stop ya, go ahead and apply below.
How does
DAD stack up?
If you’ve researched portfolio schools, then you know – they’re expensive as hell and all basically seem the same. Well, until we came along and started shakin’ things up, of course. With our consistently killer portfolios quarter-after-quarter and big agency job placements, why exactly are you paying more at those other schools again?
Denver
Tuition
$27,000
Program Length
5 QTRS
Active & Experienced Teachers
ALL
Breweries Per Capita
10
Big Agency Job Placements
YEP
School Kickball Team
AWWWW YEAH
Full-Time Online Option?
ABSOLUTELY
Weather Situation
BEAUTIFUL
Miami
Tuition
$38,800+
Program Length
8 QTRS
Active & Experienced Teachers
SOME
Breweries Per Capita
2
Big Agency Job Placements
YEP
School Kickball Team
DOUBT IT
Full-Time Online Option?
NOPE
Weather Situation
HUMID
Virginia
Tuition
$55,502+
Program Length
8 QTRS
Active & Experienced Teachers
SOME
Breweries Per Capita
5
Big Agency Job Placements
YEP
School Kickball Team
DOUBT IT
Full-Time Online Option?
NOPE
Weather Situation
SEVERE
Don't forget to check the work.
Choosing between post-grad portfolio schools? We get it, there aren’t a ton of options out there. But if you can’t decide, let the work speak for itself! After all, what better way to judge a portfolio school than by the quality of the portfolios they put out? We’re so confident in ours that we wanted to make it super easy for you to compare, so smash the links below and decide for yourself what kind of standard you want your own portfolio to live up to.
Strategy Application
