Agencies as Agents of Change: Considering Social Responsibility in the Advertising Curriculum

We were honored to be selected as participants in this year’s ANA Educational Foundation (AEF) Visiting Professor Program (VPP), which gave us a chance to see firsthand the inner workings of this ever-changing industry. Through AEF’s VPP Immersion Program, we spent a week with a team of 30 professors visiting eight agencies and internal advertising departments in New York City (NYC). Ten of the professors also stayed an extra week at individual advertising agencies to take part in week-long, deep-dive VPP Fellowships. There were many themes from the week, including, as expected, conversations around the infamous “advertising is dead” debate. This long-standing dialog continues to echo throughout the top agencies in NYC. Even the term “ad” agency was scrutinized; cases were made for and against this title from industry professionals and professors alike. R/GA, for instance, emphasized a focus on creative disruption and designing connected products that address consumer needs rather than just creating ads to boost sales and raise brand awareness. With an increasing number of advertising services offered by in-house teams and holding companies, ad agencies continue to “reimagine how business as usual is done” (Blakeman, 2018, p. 49). In response to this and the evolving