In an act of industry support, Sydney Ad Agencies are getting on board and embracing Western Sydney Ad School (WSAS) by offering students internships.
The ad school, based in Parramatta, was created by industry veterans Rocky Ranallo and Matt Smith. The duo aims to offer the industry more diversity by creating an affordable and accessible advertising course.
Ranallo, co-Founder of the school said: “From the very beginning we’ve always had tremendous support from the industry. Kirsty Muddle at Cummins & Partners, Simon Lee at The Hallway and Marcus (Tesoriero) and Brent (Kerby) at BWM/Dentsu have all offered internships with 2 of our students taking up the offers.
“DDB, Paper Moose, We Collective, FLIPP, Cafe Cocoa, Gunpowder and now Agency of the Year CHEP have also offered internships and we’d like to publicly thank them all.
“Justin Hind said they’d like to take on an intern and offer scholarships. Who wouldn’t want to work at the Agency of the Year?”
Simon Lee, executive creative director at The Hallway, said: “When I heard that Rocky was training people in the Western Suburbs to be advertising creatives, I was interested.
“I had a cunning theory that if Rocky is doing the teaching, then by the time his students graduate, they should, in theory, have at least some of what I didn’t have when he didn’t hire me.
“So I hired the top graduate of the inaugural class of WSAS and my theory was validated.”
Kirsty Muddle, a founding partner at Cummins & Partners, said: “Encouraging a diverse pipeline of people into the industry is really important for creativity, for better administration, for many reasons.
“The boys are doing a great service to the industry and we’re more than happy to do our bit for them and the students.”
Justin Hind, CEO of CHEP, said: “Developing the future talent of our industry is of a priority focus for us at CHEP.
“Different people, different experiences and different backgrounds make ideas better overall and with Rocky and Matt at the helm, developing their creative skills and thinking, we couldn’t be happier to be involved.”
Co-Founder of WSAS, Matt Smith, said: “The next semester will start on the last Thursday in September and we hope, with enough students, we can start a Wednesday night class as well.
“It’s been an awesome experience teaching talented and ambitious students. They’re mostly Western Sydney based, but from all over the planet and their ideas are just as diverse and uniquely creative as each of them. They’ll add value to any creative department.”
