wurk»advertising {Your career. Your say.}

Just a quick one that I wanted to share with you. Are you familiar with the new VW Polo ad? It’s the one where all the guardian angels are walking around following VW Polos looking bemused as they have nothing to do as the cars are so safe:

Well, if you wonder around the Saatchi gallery (you can’t right now as it’s moving to Chelsea but opens later this year I think) his space is flooded with work by an artist called Ron Mueck. I’m quite a fan of his work. He makes life sculptures, some quite weird. Anyway, one of his best is Angel 1997. It’s a sculpture of a guardian angel sat on a chair looking down on earth and seeming quite bored. The point behind the piece being that life isn’t that bad and most of the time guardian angels are bored out of their minds as we wonder around unharmed:

I was wondering when I saw the VW Polo ad if Ron Mueck’s work had anything to do with its idea development. I think it’s DDB who do VW which is renowned to have one of the most famous innings for great creative work (I think quite a few ex old skool Saatchi & Saatchi creatives live there also).

Have a look at some of Ron Mueck’s work, what do you think?
http://www.creativepooldesign.de/mood_art/mueck.html

No summer fun for you becuase you lucky creatures could now be spending those days in an agency instead of by a poolside, now is the time you’ve been waiting for (unless you’ve secured a grad scheme already). It’s now SUMMER SCHOOL application season. So back on the application rounds we go. Except this time, you’re going to be up against it harder than the last round. Less agencies running summer schools than traditional winter grad interview rounds so you’ll have to be quicker, faster, stronger, hungrier and prepared to brown nose deeper than before.

So where are the first ports of call?

Well the famous Saatchi & Saatchi Summer Scholarship Scheme should be open round about now.

There seems to be little or no info of their website so you need to register your interest and when they’re ready they’ll send you your brief or application form. Give them a call on 020 7636 5060, ask to speak to HR and then visit www.saatchi.co.uk for a deeper understanding of what they do. Remember to read up on their bible ‘LoveMarks’ by Kevin Roberts. This is how they work and approach branding.

We then have Publicis who are available now for applications www.publicis.co.uk

I had a go on this and if you don’t pass the first bit then you don’t deserve to get in,it’s very easy. You’ll then have the chance to download the application form. I’ve had a look over this so let’s go through it in detail:

1.Why should we meet for a date?

This is really where you talk about how appealing your personality is, what you can offer and that being an exciting and personable person a date with you would be the best thing for Publicis.

2. You have just been appointed Marketing Manager of Coca Cola.
a) What’s the business challenge? (50 words)
b) What’s the marketing challenge? (50 words)
c) Address with Advertising and Promotions(50 words)

The distinct difference here is money vs awareness.
A) Where and why are Coca Cola losing money, who are the competitors taking market share? Is Mecca Cola the end of Coca Cola? Is the anti globalisation movement a concern?
B) In terms of awareness remember you’ve been appointed Marketing Manager, not head of the advertising account. So this may have to do with distribution (are there any venues, places which could give Coca Cola more kudos), this may have to do with a particular market (country) opportunity or you may wish to advise a more aggressive approach to your advertising spend.
C) A quick summary of your ATL strategy and BTL strategy

Also remember that Coca Cola have a number of brands from Fanta to Minute Maid so is this a potential trick question as they weren’t ‘cola’ specific.

3. Tell us about a website that made your heart beat faster and why? (100)

Well you could go down the funny route if you are articulate and witty enough as that will pardon a non career approach – websites such as the ones where you have to concentrate on something that’s on your monitor and then a couple of mins into it something screams at you. Or you could take on the digital critique route. A good idea here would be to use a client’s such as the Renault microsite which is an extension from the ‘French Car British Designers’ ad – up to you to find it I’m afraid. Here you can talk of how the digital work supports the TV branding etc which shows you understand integration which is what every agency looks for. For a number of examples of great websites visit www.gluelondon.co.uk these guys are brilliant at digital work and have some big clients.

4. What else could L’Oreal sell? (60)

Here we’re looking at brand extensions from what is essentially a cosmetics company. So we’re looking maybe at new types of shampoo, hair salons, hair dryers, hair straighteners, perfumes, make up etc. This is really in the justification of your choice, that’s what will stand out.

5. What would the one question you would like to be asked on a date? (20)

Has to be: My place or yours? (be honest as you’re gut answer will be the best)

6. Photo of something you love

Totally subjective, just try and make it funny or topical as opposed to your gran or cat

What is key is your delivery along with innovative answers, try and always put and original spin on your answers as you need these to stand out over hundreds of pther applications.

And that’s it, the rest will be in the short listing. Get this done ASAP as the sooner you’ve got it out of the way the sooner you can look and apply for other Summer Schemes to keep your options open.

Feel free to leave any questions and good luck.

xx

Fancy writing about your grad interview experience or your opinion on how advertising theories are dated or how you would start your own agency? Well anything really, here’s your chance. Email me your article and I’ll post it here and credit whatever name you like to it (real or an alias).

This site is currently having about 400 unique hits a day, some from agencies so this is a great way to have your work seen by others in the industry. Closing date is Friday 24th Feb.

Email your word docs to me at ambitioustrainee@hotmail.com

I’m looking forward to reading and posting one of your pieces up here.

Xx

When you first rock up to your agency you are uncontrollably full of nerves. You start to climatise when meeting your fellow grad trainees but you’re still on edge. However, no sooner have you asked all the obvious questions (what did you study? what university did you go to?) you’ll be out getting wasted with your new colleagues thinking you’ve never had so much fun with your trousers on and been paid for the pleasure - what a sweet deal. Free lunches, easy 9 - 5 days where all you do is sit and listen to others, visits out of the agency and being expected to be the most hammered at any social gathering. Quite easy for those wishing to drag out their student days.

Well, it all comes to a massive grinding halt I’m afraid and this is usually the time you get put onto an account. Oh no more lunching with management for you, you’ll be lucky to stuff a 99p cheeseburger down your throat as you leg it back to the office to finish off that contact report that has been destroyed by the red pen of doom about ten times already. 5pm? HA, you’ve got more chance of curing Stevie Wonder’s eyes than seeing a 5pm finish as the shit always seems to hit the fan…that’s right…at 4.55pm meaning you’ll be formatting presentations, binding documents, composing emails and tasking a whole stack of admin that, you know, doesn’t have that much to do with advertising into the early hours. You’ll question yourself, the people above you, whether human rights apply in this building and if you ever get out what will be the best way to spend your 2 hour evening before bed. You will also have to pretty much bend over backwards to keep all those above happy and not get that much recognition….well most of the time none.

But it’s ok boys and girls, as like all things, when you hit rock bottom where else is there to go but up. It’s very easy to lose morale in your first year what with all your gimping and feeling like a poverty stricken factory worker. However, you have to put yourself in a mindset that this first year as well as the second is going to be gopher hell. It’s just the way it is and a way to earn your spurs. Big agencies are so nervous about client retention that they will only allow seasoned staff to get really into the nitty gritty. As a result you have to go through what may appear to be a career lobotomy - you join all ready to go and are filled with lots of bright ideas only to be hacked down have no real platform to voice what you think and then be given mundane admin as your purpose in life.

I’m making this sound really bad aren’t I? I don’t mean to, it’s all worth it and hey, of course there is fun to be had along the way. Just don’t sign up to be a grad trainee and think that it’s going to compare in terms of involvement with your buddies in management consultancy. Furthermore, many agencies are growing up and starting to appreciate that the young ones do have brains too…..and just keep telling yourself that once you get through those first two years it’ll start getting much more sexier…and it does. When you hit account manager level you’ll soon have a lowly grad to hand all that archiving and CD burning over to, it’s just natural evolution. The whole point of this post is to reassure you that whilst things don’t seem to be moving they are and while it seems like you’ll be at a photocopier for the rest of your life you wont be.

Enjoy the space to think while you work out your master plan, where you want to be and how you’re going to get there…..the binding machine will provide ample time to do this.

xx

So you’ve booked your lads holiday online, it’s cheaper as you managed to find it on lastminute.com (you were lucky), everyone’s at your house before the taxi takes you to the airport, you’re all buzzing with pre plane excitement and then this one armed dude comes on the TV and instead of images in your head of tits and tassels in the Dam you have a guilt trip imposed on you as you didn’t buy a poppy this year.

Eh? I mean what a ridiculous angle to go down. The whole lastminute brand name is taken so literally in this ad this guy says for the strapline ‘I’d give anything for one last minute’. What? Anything? Like your grandchildren’s health? World peace? The cure for cancer? Selfish bastard. Poking fun at how this ad plays on the brand name isn’t the real problem here. The real problem is that holidays are stressful as it is. You have to get the money together, you have to save or borrow the vice cash and then you have to get there, the one thing you want is to then imagine how much care free fun you’re going to have, not be confronted with a heavy message that uses an old one armed guy who has probably never used the internet let alone been a lastminute holiday.

Then have you seen the new Tiscali broadband?

The one where the workmen throws a granny in a skip and she yelps, “Broadband for £14”. Who the hell signed off those story boards? How did a respectful person on a salary be allowed to take that to a client? Is the client who agreed to it still employed? Do you think whilst filing it the director looked at the TV producer and say “We’re finished!”. When I see that ad I get the same shudder down my spine as when I listen to “Girlfriend in a Coma” by dirty Morrissey – who I also despise.

What do we have next, oh no, it’s that saga of BT ads.

That guy whose apparently a comedian is in a domestic situation and moved in with his new bird and her kids – who hate him. They show these kids fucking up his life and the women doing nothing while he suffers – c’mon – who would walk into that mess really? You wouldn’t be picking up a 14 year old brat from school, listening to him as he rants about you not being his real dad, thinking, “just get him on the internet so I can bone his mum”. Of course you wouldn’t, you’d be at your mate’s house waiting for that taxi to take you to the airport, even if it does cost an arm and a leg.

Well that’s my rant this Friday. There just seems to be so much waste, so much brand damaging communication and a number of big budget clients and big agencies that just seem to be making even bigger mistakes.

“Ya ya that idea is sooo media transferable” “How many markets can we conceive this campaign in successfully?” “I need that ATL TVC ASAP”

It’s quite shameful but I’ve actually said maybe one of those comments before…and been punished via humiliation for it. The thing is when leaving university after studying marketing you have such academic and conceptual bull shit rammed down your throat that unless every sentence in your dissertation has paradigm in it, you’re screwed.

I’ve also been in meetings with clients before where it’s total jargon frenzy. That’s ok, if you have a marketing background, you go into account management and then you meet marketing people everyone likes to have a wee go on complicated marketing speak.

But good old Schramm of the 70s just used terms such as sender, message, receiver, noise, created the corner stone of marketing theory and everyone takes the piss.

I think it’s just really a case of appreciating who you’re talking to. Creatives have been burnt many a time for being off brief and like to point at account services for not briefing them correctly. I think in future I’ll keep it simple: “Make it look like the TV ad”.

Client’s will think you’re a bit of a retard if you just point and talk like a 5 year old fresh out of the Early Learning Centre so I’ll up the tempo there I think “We’ve captured the conceptual elements of your brief and transformed them into a visual and information based journey”

Sorry, I only decided to have this rant as I’ve just been kicked out of a creative’s office for using the TVC comment instead of ‘tele ad’….I’m off to draw dot to dot and get in the mind frame.

There is nothing but rejection letters on your desk, your mates are asking in lectures how the interviews went, you have a dissertation to do and feel deflated or all you can see is another year ahead without a grad training job as you’ve held out for the previous round with no joy.

Well, it doesn’t have to be so shit. Firstly if you’re still at uni you will need to drag yourself up to focus on your finals, without a 2:1 it’ll be hard to find a grad training scheme anyway. If you’ve finished uni there is still a boat to catch.

There is an emerging trend where agencies don’t actually practice the usual grad recruitment which is the usual 2 stage interview process. Both Saatchi & Saatchi and Publicis now use their Summer Schools as grounds to recruit for their grad training schemes. These usually are made available to apply to between Feb - April so keep a close eye on their websites.

Also there is the other way which isn’t the traditional grad route. It’s to join an agency as a junior account exec. This is where you pretty much feel like you’re on work experience, don’t receive the training the grads get and usually paid a little less. But it is actually one of the best ways to enter the industry.

While the grads get pampered with training, you, as an account assistant, are thrown into the thick of it where you’re expected to be a strong support line to your account team. You’ll learn quicker than the grads and you’ll be under more pressure than the grads. If you’re worried that you’ll do twice as much work as the grads and not get promoted like they are think again. Agencies are very prude when making promotions and it usually is made on merit especially at the more junior levels so this is still a great chance to enter and climb the ladder of the ad industry.

So how do you go about becoming an account assistant if you’ve missed the grad recruitment boat? Well, firstly you need to have some kind of experience within agencies. Account assistants are usually hired because they were a close choice to being on the grad rounds and usually its experience that speaks volumes. So if you don’t have any get on the blower to some agencies and organise the odd 1 or 2 week stint or apply to the summer schools as you could still make a grad scheme. Once you have the experience and a paper reference from it, you can start approaching agencies.

Start by finding out which agencies have just won large accounts and jump on them straight away (large wins are usually screamed about in Campaign magazine or at www.brandrepublic.co.uk). What usually happens with a large account win is that the agency will start to organise moving key people off other accounts to front the new one, it’s pretty much all hands on deck - a perfect opportunity for a budding account assistant who rings the agency, tells them they are ready to go to work and help out where needed. Don’t be disappointed if the first few say ‘no thank you’, like all things it’s a trail and error process. If you really want it you’ll come across an agency that is looking.

Sign up with some recruitment agencies, Google for the ones who specialise in advertising/marketing and be prepared to go with an agency in digital, marketing services, DM as well as the large networks.

The point being is that just because you didn’t get into a grad recruitment scheme it doesn’t have to mean that advertising isn’t for you. It could have been a number of things that just were not in your favour on the day and how can a lifelong career be judged simply off an interview that lasted maybe 30 mins? Well….it can’t so if you really want it go about making it yours through whatever means necessary!

Good luck

xx

W&K do it again with this brilliant new angle for Honda. I’ve heard many complaining about it’s length, it’s lack of target bla bla bla.

Again, people keep on thinking TV is to sell, sell, sell. I think this is a brilliant branding execution whereby people en mass are watching and engaging with this novel and clever association between a human choir and the sounds made by a car.

The previous Honda campaign to me was complete product line masturbation where we have the dinky moped turning into a super bike, a car into a sports car and a speed boat into a hot air balloon. An epic yes but I didn’t really feel it had anything to say about an actual product or the Honda brand - well it did just I thought it was lame and was an ad made for advertising people. This however is far more enjoyable and drives the intelligence and style of Honda

With ‘Choir’ what we see is a typical style of car advertising (focusing on features of the vehicle) but not in the usual winding mountain road kind of way.

Perfect and another testament to W&K that by remaining a modest agency with creative focus your ads will be talked about all over the place - despite the fact that some ad people may moan about them (probably because they don’t work there).

I was wondering over the weekend what I really want to be in advertising. At first I instantly thought ‘creative, creative, creative’ and an art director at that. But then after deeper consideration I remember having to spend a week as a creative during my training. I almost became bored with the freedom. Furthermore, I don’t think I have it in me to be churning out ideas for ads all the time as a full time job. I mean every now and again I’ll have what I consider to be an amazing idea for a random brand inspired by a tune on my ipod and staring out of the bus window, but this is hardly the criteria for a career in idea generating.

TV Producer, that would be pretty cool. Spending most of your time on set or in post production houses. But then the stress of having super pressure timing plans, requiring up to date industrial knowledge of filming as well as having to keep tabs on creatives whilst ensuring they (the most relaxed people in the building) make all their deadlines - nah.

Account Management is my current role as a newly born account executive straight out of my grad trainee egg shell. It’s a great starting point but really isn’t what I think I’ll do forever. Now don’t get me wrong I enjoy it, but like most things, certain aspects I love others aren’t for me. The creative sell I love, the research I love but the hardcore admin element isn’t my cup of tea really.

Account Planning? JACKPOT! This takes everything I love about advertising and sticks it into one job spec. It’s close to the creative development - you plan the brief and brief the creatives but at the same time you’re not locked into a room with someone bashing your brains in to think how it should look, feel and be shot.

You are part of the creative sell within planning. So once account management have had their say you pitch how the campaign WORKS on the consumer i.e. the juicy bit.

Yes there is the element of research to get your head around but once a seasoned planner you design your own research by briefing research agencies on how you would like a tailor made focus group to work, attend and watch and then discuss findings.

To me it just seems the ultimate fusion of creativity, real thinking and innovative reactions. A challenging career really as you become the eyes and ears of the consumer.

How do you get into it then? Well many have come from working in research agencies and these are the ones who can really crunch the stats early on and as a result get to become planners much more quickly. Then there are those like myself who wish and wish and wish to be planners. So they start in the only way you can in advertising - account management and whilst doing so you attach yourself to your team’s planner like a leach, do what you can for them and learn as much as you can from them. Whilst doing so you read the likes of ‘How to Plan Advertising’ (see previous posts) and you get stuck into other books such as ‘Truth, Lies and Advertising’ by Jon Steel. Absorb, absorb, absorb. Also drop to your head of planning ‘would it be possible to have 5 mins to chat about planning’. Then you’ve seeded your interest and you’re building your knowledge base.

Just hope it works as I get back to writing that contact report.

I dunno people. They seem to have taken the creative hot spot from Mother and have produced some brilliant work for Levis and Audi but is it now getting a bit too much.

When looking at the new Vodafone TV spot I can’t help but think, ’style over content here’. The community message is somewhat weak and it really is a bit wanky.

This now makes the work for the newly won BA account quite topical. Should be interesting.

What do you all think?