From Hogwarts to Hunger Games: What happened to training the next generation in advertising? 

Picture a 22-year-old starting their first agency job this year. 

They’ve got a degree, a laptop, a Slack login, and a vague job description. Then, they’re dropped into a fast-moving, project-based environment and told to get on with it. Be proactive. Be strategic. Be immediately valuable. 

Some agencies still run thoughtful graduate programs. But for many young people, the experience is less apprenticeship and more trial by fire. 

That wasn’t how it always worked. When I joined J Walter Thompson in London at the iconic 40 Berkeley Square headquarters, it felt like arriving at Hogwarts. 

The building carried mythology. Inside were the wizards of our industry – the creative directors and strategists whose work we studied like scripture. As graduate trainees, we were mentored and nurtured. Senior people gave us their time. Not because they had to, but because they believed in the craft and in passing it on. 

There was money in the system then, yes. But there was also something else: a belief that developing young talent was not a cost centre, but the future of the business. 

I owe my career to that start. To the structure, and to the patience of the people who took the time to explain not just what to do, but why. 

Today, for many entering the industry, it feels less like Hogwarts and more like the Hunger Games. 

What happened? 

The collapse of the training infrastructure 

Some of it is symbolic. 

In their global quest for efficiencies, holding company dementors have sucked the life from the great networks that once stood as institutions, and crucially, training grounds. It’s been shocking to see JWT, once proudly proclaimed as The University of Advertising, and more recently DDB, succumb to that icy kiss of death. 

The big legacy shops weren’t perfect. Once alluring, they became bureaucratic, bloated, and expensive. And many independents built successful businesses by taking work from them with leaner, faster, more agile operations. The market rewarded that shift. 

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: those overheads funded something important: structured graduate schemes, international exposure, time with senior leaders, proper craft training. I travelled to Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur early in my career as part of programmes designed to broaden our thinking and refine our craft. That kind of investment didn’t happen by accident, it was baked into the model. 

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Today, margins are thinner, retainers are vanishing, and procurement is sharper. Many agencies now survive project to project. The first thing to go in that environment is often internal development. Training becomes informal, mentoring becomes optional, and learning becomes self-directed. 

Which is another way of saying: you’re on your own. 

Pictured: A 22-year-old advertising graduate, starting a new role

Apprenticeship requires proximity 

There was a magic that came with working in advertising. You’d never describe it as just a job. It was a craft learned in proximity to people better than you. 

You absorbed judgement, taste, political intelligence, and commercial acumen. You learned how to present. How to defend work. How to kill your own ideas. How to navigate clients. How to think. 

That kind of learning doesn’t happen in isolation. It doesn’t happen in Slack threads. 

Hybrid work has brought flexibility and better balance for many. But apprenticeship relies on osmosis, on overhearing how a senior handles tough client calls, on being there when a strategy gets dismantled and rebuilt. On the small, unplanned corrections that shape judgement over time. 

When proximity disappears entirely, so does some of that magic. 

This isn’t an argument against flexibility. It’s an argument for intentional mentorship in whatever working model we choose. If we’re not physically together, we need to recreate those learning environments deliberately — not assume they’ll happen by accident. 

We are all complicit 

It would be easy to blame holding companies, procurement, or the rise of independents. The reality is structural. 

Clients pushed for efficiency and flexibility, and agencies responded. Independents proved you could do more with less. Experience became expensive and the senior veterans – those with the most to give – were pushed out or moved on. Project-based work replaced long-term retainers. 

None of these decisions and outcomes were irrational. Many were necessary. But taken together, they hollowed out the apprenticeship model that once underpinned the industry. Smaller agencies often don’t have the financial luxury to build formal training programs, while big agencies increasingly lack the margins. 

The real danger isn’t burnout, it’s decline 

We’re (rightly) starting to talk more about burnout in young talent, but the risk isn’t just exhaustion. It’s erosion. 

If young people aren’t properly trained in strategy, creativity and commercial thinking, the quality of our output declines. If they’re never properly mentored, they don’t become mentors. If the industry becomes purely transactional, the work follows. 

This isn’t nostalgia, it’s sustainability. Remove the university function from the industry, and you weaken the entire ecosystem. 

So where does that leave the 22-year-old walking into their first agency job? If the answer is “figure it out”, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do. And then figure out they can take those skills elsewhere.

The truth is simple: if we don’t invest in young talent, the industry declines. Not slowly, not theoretically, but practically and irreversibly. 

The work gets weaker. The thinking gets thinner. The ambition shrinks. And eventually clients look elsewhere – not because they’re disloyal, but because we stopped building capability. 

Kenny Hill – author

So, what do we do? 

Rebuilding Hogwarts doesn’t require a London townhouse or flying graduates around the world. It requires intention, time, and care. 

It means protecting time for mentorship. It means pairing juniors with seniors formally, not informally. It means agencies, large and small, being honest about the responsibility they carry as custodians of the craft. 

It also means clients understanding that capability doesn’t materialise by magic. If we want better thinking, better work, and better commercial outcomes, we must invest in the people who create it. 

And it means veterans stepping back in. Through mentoring younger colleagues or through industry bodies and organisations like The Marketing Academy or The Aunties. The knowledge still exists, and the appetite from young talent certainly does. What’s missing is structure and prioritisation. 

The industry doesn’t need more survival arenas, it needs more teachers. If we don’t consciously rebuild pathways for development, in whatever modern form makes sense, we risk something far more damaging than a few tough years for graduates. We risk raising a generation that never had a chance to fall in love with the industry in the first place. 

We can keep blaming margins, procurement, holding companies, remote work, market pressure — or we can accept that the future of this industry is being shaped by what we choose to prioritise.  

An industry that refuses to train its young doesn’t get to complain about the standard of the work. 

If we want a stronger industry tomorrow, it starts with what we choose to build today. 

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