Max Learmont, a strategist at Ikon Communications, has been named Top Dog at Miami Ad School’s 2019 Creative Planning course.

Learmont (featured image) also won ‘Best Campaign’ award for his work on a live brief for client Hahn Super Dry with his team partner Willow Ennen.

Ennen is an art direction student from the San Francisco school, in Sydney on internship at R/GA.

‘The Pitch’ class is lead by Ogilvy’s head of planning, Ryan O’Connell and creative director, Jenny Mak.

The class works like an agency pitch where teams create campaigns based on live briefs and present them throughout the course in a competitive setting.

Miami’s head of school, Helga Diamond said that Learmont earned the Top Dog award for the consistent quality of his work in each of the four boot camp workshops; Creative Toolbox, Creative Strategy Essentials & Specifics and The Pitch.

Diamond said: “Holding down a full-time job as well as completing the work for this demanding course at a high standard is a big achievement and Max fully deserves the recognition.”

Learmont commented: “It was three months of being repeatedly humbled by the best minds in adland.

“I’ve come out of this course in awe of the multitude of ways to solve communication problems.”

The 12-week Strategic Planning Boot Camp consists of four weekly evening sessions taught at Sydney’s leading agencies.

It is designed to accelerate or jump-start the career of planners, strategists, creatives, account managers and anyone working with brands.

Participants acquire strategic as well as creative skills taught in hands-on sessions by Sydney’s top planners and creatives:

Jenny Mak, Creative Director, Ogilvy

Ryan O’Connell, Head of Strategy, Ogilvy

Will Edwards, Creative Director, TeamRed

Nico Smith, Senior Art Director, CHEP

Rob Dougan, Head of Strategy, Clemenger

Rachael Fraser, Head of Strategy, M&C Saatchi

Dom Hickey, Planning Partner, DDB

Tristan Burrell, National Strategy Director, Ikon

Ian MacDonald, Strategy Director, McCann

Will Allen, Managing Partner, Social, One Green Bean

Alexandra Roubine, Senior Connection Strategist, Leo Burnett

Stuart Malcolm, Senior Consultant, Strategy and Insight, The Leading Edge

Kara Byers, Head of Editorial, Edge

Julia Vargiu, New Business Methodologies

Darren Woolley, Director, Trinity P3

Robert Harding-Smith, Planning Director, Clemenger

Karl Bates, Executive Planning Director, BWM

Richard Spicer, Marketing Consultant