By Louis Devine, National Top Student, AWARD School 2026
I won AWARD School, went to Vegas looking for the formula, and came back without one. That might have been the best lesson of all.
Winning AWARD School had the one unfortunate side effect of making me wonder whether I now had to be good all the time.
I know that sounds ridiculous. I don’t even work in advertising. I did AWARD School online from Tasmania and somehow I finished first out of nearly 200 students across APAC and ended up with the Ray Black Pencil and a ticket to Creative LIAisons in Las Vegas.
So suddenly there was evidence I could come up with a good idea. Which was great. It also meant there was now evidence I could fail to do it again.
The timing of LIAisons felt suspiciously convenient. Surely if I spent a week around people who had been doing this for decades, someone would tell me how to do it properly. Consistently. Maybe even quickly. Ideally they’d also tell me whether to go indie or network, copywriter or art director.
Nobody did. What I got instead was a week of successful people contradicting each other.
One speaker told us you can’t teach instinct or taste, you either have it or you don’t, and then suggested we copy out great ads, word for word, until we got some. I’d speak to someone and then pivot my direction slightly, because of course the newest answer would lead me somewhere closer to where I needed to be.
The judging room made it even more obvious. I watched the same piece of work split people who were far more experienced than me. One person would fight for it. Someone else wanted it gone.
One of the judges made a point that stuck with me, and I’m paraphrasing: sometimes the work isn’t bad, it’s just in the wrong room. That doesn’t mean everything you make is secretly brilliant. Some ideas are just, frankly, shit.
But maybe the wrong room applies to each of us as creatives, too. As far as I could tell, I was the only person there without a job in advertising, and I’d admit it whenever people asked, but I never felt out of place. I’m naturally curious, and I was asking the same questions and thinking the same way as everyone else there.
Then one of the mentors was asked about imposter syndrome, and said some days they drive home telling themselves they can’t do it. If there was a formula, they wouldn’t still be worried. There’s no secret formula that has been kept from me. And I am free to create my own.
The closest thing to a formula all week came from Pancho Cassis: stick your idea on the wall, and if you’re not sick of it in a couple of days, it’s probably a good one. Susan Credle’s version was to play. Make the client meeting the most fun meeting they have that week. Stay a bit naive, because knowing every rule can kill an idea before it’s had the chance to become good.
AWARD School didn’t give me the answers either. It gave me something a hell of a lot better: the ability to just keep going. Brief after brief. Bad directions. Dead ends. Ideas that look brilliant one moment and embarrassing the next. You learn to enjoy being punched in the face and coming back for more. Then, every now and then, something clicks and you make something great.
So, to my fellow young creatives: the grass isn’t greener, there’s just more grass. I sat in a room for five days with people I thought would have all the answers. They didn’t.
A few months ago I was sitting at home in Hobart. Then I was in Melbourne, Sydney, then Las Vegas, and now I’m in London, looking for my first job in advertising. So if you’re thinking about AWARD School, stop thinking about it and have a go. You’ll doubt yourself whether you do it or not, and then you’ll doubt yourself for another 30 years anyway.
Winning AWARD School made me feel like I had something to prove. Creative LIAisons made me realise I probably always will.
I just don’t think that’s a bad thing anymore.
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