Akaash from India talks about his life at Edinburgh Napier University.

Akaash Ampili, MSc Creative Advertising

“We immediately knew that this course was going to be something exciting”

On my first day at Edinburgh Napier, we had an informal meet-up with the professors. We immediately got the impression that this was going to be something really exciting because they had achieved everything you can achieve in advertising across the UK.

They made sure that we knew what life would be like in advertising because it’s a very cut-throat business and you need to stand out. I had some experience of agency life in India but it was very different from how it is over here. When you get first-hand experience from stalwarts of the advertising world, it’s marvellous.

These days, the first thing you do when thinking about an ad is social media. The automatic thought is: “If this goes on Facebook, what happens?” or “If this trends on Twitter, what would happen?” On our digital module, every week a person was brought in from the digital industry to speak to us about how things work. That showed the level of commitment that Edinburgh Napier has to giving you the right knowledge.
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“We were encouraged to go to their events and have conversations with people”

The good thing about the course is that the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) supports it. We were encouraged to go to their events and have conversations with people. If you do not network and you sit towards the corner, nothing is going to come to you. You have to go and collect it. My internship at Union came through one of these events. I formed a creative team with one of my course mates and we started talking to the creative director of Union Direct. She invited us to the agency to present our work, including our portfolio of videos. We were ecstatic to get an opportunity like that because Union is one of the biggest agencies in Scotland.

“You won’t get the experience that you get here in your own country”

We’ve been lucky enough to work on a huge client, and both of us are extremely proud of the work that’s gone out because that work has been taken as the official pitch from the agency. In the end, an initial two-week placement was pushed to two months.

The experience and knowledge that you get here, you will not get that back in your own country. I did not think in a million years I’d be able to learn this much in such a short span.  If someone was to ask me if it was worth going to study at Edinburgh Napier, I would 100 per cent stamp the course and say it was absolutely brilliant.

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