I'm just about to start my final year at university and am standing on the edge of the real world hoping adland is the place for me. I stumbled upon advertising as a career choice 3 or 4 years ago (the truth being I can't remember exactly when) with Andrea Neidle's How to get into advertising and the old Brand Republic forums. It was there I first met Anton and JB, the meeting with Anton ultimately responsible for The AdLads, but it's important to remember (for me at least) that we're friends before bloggers - I don't know why it's worth saying, but it is.
So I read the book and I liked it, and I thought now what? Need some of that work experience. My first place (which I won't name) they tried to make me do PR stuff. So I did the foolish thing and didn't bother going back after one day. I had the problem of not going to university in London as well as the fact that vacation time is often spent in the Lone Star State so I had to be well organised and lucky to try and get a couple of placements lined up.
I applied to BBH's work experience scheme twice and got the standard rejection letter, which annoyed me no end. So I decided to ask why I wasn't getting anywhere with them, and within an hour of sending the 'why not' email, I had a week secured. Bingo. I spent a week there with the Audi and Levis teams, doing work experience stuff but trying to soak everything in, I talked to a couple of planners and pretty much made my mind up right there that adland was it for me.
The next vacation time I had, I had a week at Saatchis and a fortnight at Leith London. Saatchis was good because I actually semi-knew the account director I was with, in that she had gone to the same university as me, I got my hands dirty with designing the application process that Will completed for his scholarship and generally had a pretty good time. The fortnight I had at Leith was probably the most valuable thing I did, because it's such a small agency that you really get the chance to see what goes on everywhere, creative / production / accounts / planning etc. They had just lost the Carling account so it was a place in crisis as well and you all know that crises really tell you about people / organizations.
My ultimate goal with the work experience stuff was to get a years placement (because I was doing one as part of my degree), I got close but the agency that offered me one was going through the blender money-wise and I heard no more from them. So I took the offer that I had on the table, from one of the top 3 car makers in the world and spent a year in their digital marketing department, learning about this internet thing.
While the year client side was good, I felt disconnected from adland and thought I should apply for summer schemes to get back in the groove of things (at this point Anton and I had started to write AdLads as well). The Saatchi Summer Scheme application ended up being my secret weapon, as I created a fake eBay listing for the job (with, as the song goes, a little help from my friends), which got me into Campaign but eventually got me a rejection letter as well. But the silver lining was that I met a ton of cool people over the course of the next few months, and eventually I got myself onto a summer school type thing (Omnicom's), which I'll be at next week (if you are as well drop me an email).
So I talk too much, sleep too little, have an unhealthy obsession with the Dallas Cowboys, Superman/Smallville and Heroes, use the word 'awesome' too much and am pretty much totally crazy. And I'll see a lot of you come grad recruitment season in the Fall (yes I call it Fall, in real life). I'm Sam.
A razor and the light is what I seek
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