The school of advertising & marketing

Inspiring and engaging – that is what this course was for me. Interesting, high-quality and relevant theory was combined with a hands-on practical part, during which excellent professionals in their respective fields shared their experience. It was a great opportunity not only to create, but also to get answers to questions that arise when working with real clients. Special compliments to the course leader Clare McNally, who not only teaches the theory brilliantly, but is also fantastically inspiring! Even if you come up with 50 ideas and you feel that it’s all you can do, she will inspire you to come up with at least 10 more. These were intense months that strengthened the knowledge I already had and inspired me to create more and with more courage.

I trained at The Atomic Garden because I thought that later on, like on Mad Men, I would have a secretary and wearing a suit, with a cocktail in my hand, I would be explaining to clients what women want.

During the course, I realised that this is pure nonsense. It’s a good thing that my teachers and my creative partner helped me to notice these things when I was 22 and not much later in life.

Since my school days, I have dreamed of establishing a community that would have a positive impact on the world around me. While working as a programmer in a product team, I saw that product managers are a part of the community that controls the levers of influence, which made me want to try this position myself. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to look far for opportunities, as The Atomic Garden was just recruiting for its first class of people who wanted to become Product Managers. What I expected from the course was a demystification of the producer role, heated discussions with teachers, and feedback-dominated mentoring. Expectations met. I know the difference between a Project and a Product Manager, I managed to pit teachers against each other, and I don’t even know where to put the amount of feedback I received from mentors and teachers. As someone with a fairly high quality standard, I was pleased with the competence of the teachers and the level of knowledge of their craft. The most important thing is that they did not lack empathy, which is especially important in the training of new knowledge and skills. During the course, we went through the product cycle, taking away 3 practical works that you can put in your portfolio. The teachers kept sharing different career stories with us. It was very useful in forming a multifaceted perspective of working in product companies.

I would like to say that I discovered this school unexpectedly, however, it would be more accurate to say that it was the school that discovered me. The Atomic Garden is an entirely unique phase in my life, which has thrown me onto the merry-go-round of the advertising market.

During my studies, I met my teacher Arnas Aukštikalnis, who invited me to become the art director at DDB Vilnius, and just a few months after graduation, having gained the knowledge from The Atomic Garden, I won Lithuania’s Young Cannes Lions competition and went to Cannes to compete among the world’s best young talents. I came back ranked in Top 9 and very eager to catch my own lion in advertising.

My experience in Lithuania helped me to enrol in the Master’s programme at the Miami Ad School, where I am gaining international experience and striving for new achievements.

This course was like a festive binge for me. The more you put on the table, the more it jams. It’s bad, but you’re still stuck because you’ve awakened a masochistic, self-improvement-hungry demon somewhere inside you. I signed up for Atomic Garden as soon as I decided to return to Lithuania after several years of working abroad, hoping to gain self-confidence in a new phase. But the course pushed me out of my comfort zone even more than I expected. There were days when I doubted my abilities and even my professional direction. There were weeks when it seemed impossible to juggle so many branding components and get everything done on time. There were four months when, even at night, topics were running through my mind that I never thought I would be interested in: for example, the biodiversity of sea grasses. But relief came. Somewhere at the last presentation, when the results of intensive work turned into a finished project that you could put on Kickstarter. And after a couple of months after the course, you notice how you start telling your friends “that would be a good title for a product”, suddenly they recommend you to write texts in English (although you are a visual person anyway), and after half-jokingly offering to contribute to the development of sustainable packaging, you start and do it. And you realize that you know and can do much more now than it seemed at the beginning of the course, and everything is a little less scary.

For me, the course started at the same time with my new role as a Product Manager. This allowed me to put what I learned during the course into practice. The structure was well thought out, with an introduction and then delving into different areas. The teachers were experts in their respective fields, highly skilled and capable of adressing any queries, all the while making the 2-hour session seem like just 30 minutes. I also appreciated that the whole course was in English and all the course members made a great effort to maintain English communication throughout the course. Since everyone is eager to step into product management, the course is a great opportunity to connect with like-minded people and expand your professional network. The course provided a strong foundation for my future role. Now it’s on me to check back on the slides sometimes and remember all the strategies, dos and don’ts. In case you’re still hesitating, sign up now.

It was a real school of contemporary life. As I hadn’t been involved in advertising before, this gave me a basic understanding of the threads that go into one or another type of advertising and the kind of material that can be produced from a single sentence of a task. Our brain is an unstoppable machine if you just let it work. I have seen it hundreds of times. You can generate lots of innovative ideas that change people’s perceptions of what has been normal for them. And this, strange as it may sound, can be achieved even through the most concise, one-word advertisement. All you need is the creativity to find it.

In short, the course gave me the courage and the understanding that I can try and make mistakes over and over again, but that it only makes me more creative and productive. Not just at work, but also in my life.

This course was not only useful but also a fun challenge for me. I started it with a good understanding of brand strategy, but Clare’s lectures as well as those of the other teachers helped me to delve deeper into different concepts and gave me new tools, which I’ve already had the opportunity to use in my personal and professional projects. It was very interesting to create by looking specifically through the prism of a GOOD brand: from brand story to copywriting or innovative and sustainable packaging alternatives. For both those who have never created a brand before and those who have already experienced the creative process – this course will give inspiration, understanding of market trends or will even help to develop a new brand!

After spending some time at school, you realise that you know even less than ever. It makes you feel anxious that you weren’t previously interested in this horrible but wonderful thing called advertising. And then comes the real breakthrough. You become an avid reader, experiencer and listener of all things related to advertising. You become more open to life in general and, in the end, you start to create appalling, and maybe sometimes brilliant, advertisements yourself.

This course was a memorable experience for me, with a comprehensive, enriching process, lots of interesting insights and a quality outcome. It gives more than you can take: branding that critically touches all aspects in a way that brings different lessons, benefits and value to everyone. Practical knowledge, real-life examples and discussions with professionals in the field are what this course can really promise. The whole path is not easy, it requires commitment and active participation, but the end result and the lessons learnt during the process are even more rewarding.