Kick "A" Blog

Although we don’t do a whole lot of traditional advertising, we often get requests from ad students to take a look at portfolios of fake ads. These portfolios cost upwards of $35,000 in tuition to create. I know, right? Some of us went to great ad schools like The Creative Circus , so we feel the student’s pain . It can be mind-numbing to spend two years making up a bunch of fake ads about real companies. However, it can be equally mind-numbing to spend quality time to give quality feedback on student work. It’s also tough being a student because we may think something is totally pirate parrot killer (which is really good), and some lifeless hack who spends his business week making Olive Garden ads (which we feel are assaults on society) thinks the student’s work is awful. So these poor kids get mixed direction, and end up doing nothing because they don’t embrace feedback from anyone.

To counter this, we have a simple ask of students. One of our creative directors, Cal McAllister , is a total panty-weight and gets beat up by his nieces and nephews each Christmas. When he returns from Houston, he fantasizes about being a karate expert. Karate is not only Bad A, but totally sexy. So if a student sends him a portfolio, he requests the student take the time to pencil a drawing of him using sexy karate to kick someone’s, or something’s, ass. They should spend about 20 minutes on it, because that’s how long he spends with a portfolio. When they send in the drawing, he reviews their work.

We have around 50 drawings now. Here are the Top Six. Because no one does a Top Six.