Last year, Jason Bagley, the former Wieden+Kennedy creative leader who helped steer groundbreaking campaigns for Old Spice, KFC and Nike, realized he wasn’t having as much fun as he used to. Having spent 16 years at the agency, most recently as an executive creative director, he noticed that in the task of leading a growing 550-person office, he was increasingly being pulled away from what he loved the most. “I missed being closer to the creative process, to creatives doing the work,” he said. “That’s my passion. There are a lot of other super important things that creative leaders do, but the work just got to be too small of a percentage of it for me, and I found myself waking up and not being excited about the job anymore.”

That realization spurred him to take a break from agency life in 2020, but it also became the inspiration for his new venture—the Audacious School of Astonishing Pursuits, a virtual mentorship platform designed to provide young talents the skills they need to excel in the agency world—and have a great time while doing it.

The school’s first program, “Creative Megamachine,” consists of two weekly one-hour Zoom sessions with Bagley over the course of eight weeks, during which Bagley will be teaching creatives how they can, basically, make the best work of their careers. 

In looking back on his own experience with agency life, Bagley says he noticed that the growing demands put on creative leaders—from evolving client needs to shrinking budgets and timelines—had a trickle-down effect on younger creatives. Such juggling deprives leaders of quality time to properly nurture those talents—an industry-wide issue that might be contributing to the widespread malaise creatives in advertising are feeling today. 

“Every single year, agencies are getting squeezed financially, the priority of speed keeps increasing from clients, and on top of that, agencies are not getting paid more, but less,” he said. “The result of that is that creative leaders are absolutely stretched to a limit that they've never been in the past and naturally, they don't have as much time to spend with creatives as they used to—even if they’re the type that does like to sit down and really teach creatives how to write a script or what makes a great headline.”

A recent survey from industry talent platform Working Not Working revealed that the charm of ad careers seems to be evaporating for young creatives. The study found that over the course of the pandemic, 61% of respondents felt less creative about their work and more than half who worked in advertising were considering switching career paths. In a survey from 2020, the company also found that of the top 10 companies creatives wanted to work for, only one was an agency—Bagley’s former shop, Wieden+Kennedy. The others were brands as tech firms such as Google, Nike and Apple.

“I knew that there was something missing for this new generation of talent, I could just see they were struggling, not for a lack of talent or ambition, but they just didn’t seem as passionate and fulfilled by their jobs as perhaps previous generations,” Bagley said.

The program

The Creative Megamachine program will run for eight weeks, with two one-hour Zoom sessions each week.  During the first session of each week, Bagley will present a lesson on a specific topic, such as finding your creative voice, thinking like an iconoclast, becoming an idea “megamachine” or mastering your craft. 

The second session will be an open Q&A, during which creatives will be able to discuss the lesson or any issue that’s dogging them in their current jobs—though Bagley said he’ll discourage participants from sharing specific information about real-world projects to honor their clients’ confidentiality.

Bagley added that the program is not a replacement for ad school, but more of a support system for current professionals. “I won’t be giving assignments or real projects,” he said. “I'm going to provide a ton of different ways of thinking about great creative, and different methods that they can use immediately in their day job—concepting methods, all sorts of techniques, and also the mindset and the philosophy that you should approach work with if you want to make amazing work.” 

The spots for the program are limited for now—just 14 seats, some of which will be available at a fee that Bagley is still determining. Others will be available to underrepresented talents for free via scholarship. 

“This is my favorite thing to do, to mentor and teach creatives how to do amazing work,” Bagley said. The wisdom he’ll be imparting won’t be just his own, he added. It will also include the years of knowledge he gained from other W+K vets and alumni such as Susan Hoffman, Alberto Ponte, Ryan O’Rourke, Hal Curtis, Callen founder Craig Allen, Opinionated founder Mark Fitzloff and former partner Eric Baldwin, among others.

“The successful ones had a certain way of thinking about the work, certain creative processes, so this is my chance to distill for young talents 16 years of the secrets and techniques of the world’s best creatives,” he said. “I want to be the Obi-Wan Kenobi to their Luke Skywalker, although I cannot grow a good beard like Obi-Wan Kenobi.”