London Digital Week and Application Workshops

This is a little bit of a sneak peak, but I thought it's worth letting y'all know this early.

I'm involved with London Digital Week (also on Twitter @digitalweek - follow us!), which is scheduled to run from the 21st to the 27th of September. The plan is that on the 27th (the Sunday) there's a day of AdGrads; some stuff from industry heavyweights, some stuff on applications and some interview tips. It should be awesome and hopefully helpful as it's at just about the right time that applications will open.

Soooo if you can, try and be free on the 27th, more details to come soon.

And if you happen to go to Warwick University, we should be doing a workshop for a small number of people, totally ripping apart application form questions and some more in-depth advice. We're really looking forward to it. If you'd like to have some similar stuff go down at your university, shoot us an email and we'll see how we can help.

In the meantime, here's a little presentation I did for Brett and his homeys at Warwick. Criticism, comments and questions as always are most welcome. Have a great weekend everyone.

This Ain't a Job, It's an Adventure

View more presentations from Sam Ismail.

We Will Not Be Silent

Build from the bottom. Via Paul Goyette

I was having a look at the Facebook groups and came across a thread about how a London agency was handling graduate recruitment this year. I wasn't impressed so I blogged about it on my blog. But I think it's important more people read it, so here we go.

We started this journey just under 15 months ago, the whole point of it was to be a place where people could find out about a career in the communications industry - because as fate would have it a significant number of advertising agencies are ridiculously poor at setting their stalls out to potential new hires. They then aim to charge large multi-disciplinary corporations with the mantra that 'we know all about communication'. Ironic methinks.

A year on, we are fortunate enough to still be considered relevant; because of the fact that you guys take the time to read and interact with us - which is awesome, because of the generosity of some of those already in the industry, but also possibly because a vacuum exists that few have attempted to fill. As a result, the IPA have been touch a few times, some agencies have labelled it as recommended reading, others have elevated it to essential - which is nice.

You see hits and links and free lunches are great, but they're not the point.

The point was, and still is that advertising agencies are in the proverbial bucket of crap when it comes to the hiring and retention of the best that society has to offer. The reasons are too numerous for me to dive deeply into for this post, but essentially ad agencies have been dipping into the same bucket for too long, ignoring some kung-fu crazy people, and losing many other potential grads by simply not getting the word out about what an amazing career working in comms can be. People then go into finance and consulting and are miserable. I'm generalising of course. But it does happen. A lot.

This was an attempt to increase awareness about advertising as a career, and hopefully begin to be part of a change in the way advertising agencies recruit and retain junior staff. By and large we'd like to think that it has been a positive influence, agency websites are much more forthcoming about what advertising is as a career and the IPA are really pushing to improve this facet of the industry.

AdGrads is now a funky little community on the web, be it on Twitter, Facebook or the blog itself. So as in any community, people talk to each other about what's going on. And because of this, when an organisation is unhelpful, rude or plain ignorant to a member of the community, word gets around.

Many London ad agencies are recruiting at this moment so there are countless of y'all who are examining applications and websites and hoping to stand out; just as I was not so long ago. Many of you are studying as well as trying to complete obtuse application forms. I'm sure some of y'all have part-time jobs on top of this. It is only your enthusiasm and passion that is driving you. Of course it's a requirement to have these qualities for the world of work, but that doesn't mean that they should be ignored.

So imagine a London agency that claims its goal is to use creativity to solve business problems.

Now picture said agency running a grad scheme this year. Let's say they have a fancy flash website. Where do you think they should put information about the graduate scheme on it? Perhaps in a 'careers' or 'join us' or 'contact us' section? No no, they're far too cool for such silly things. Let's imagine they devote a tiny little link right next to the hugely popular 'T&Cs' link right at the bottom of the page to the future employees of their company. And let's imagine they use the grand font size of oh say 6 for this link.

Now perhaps this would link to a section with a little bit about the agency, what they believe in, why grads should apply, what kind of training they should expect, maybe what they'll earn and other things like further reading that could be done, who to contanct with questions - that kind of thing. That would be useful, wouldn't it? But again no, our agency is perhaps far to busy or lazy to do anything of the sort (and let's remember that agencies such as BBH and Ogilvy HAVE gone to the trouble of doing all of this, and will probably get a higher number of quality applicants as a result). Let's say they just whack up a Word document of the application form. And nothing else.

But you see, advertising applicants - or AdGrads if you will, aren't put off so easily. We know this. So let's have one of them call up our agency to ask them for some further information about the scheme. Wouldn't it be bad if our agency was unable to tell an applicant the nature of the job it's offering? First telling them to look at the form, then claiming to not know what the form actually says, and finally resorting to telling the potential applicant to essentially 'apply and you'll find out everything if you get the job'. Doesn't sound like a very wise and informed bunch of people does it? Maybe not the kind of effort you'd want out of a company where you'd be expected to put your heart and soul into, to do all the little things that senior people may not want to do, but still need to be done.

And perhaps this wouldn't seem like the kind of company that uses creativity to solve business problems. Because it seems to me that this kind of attitude is exactly the kind of business problem that might need some creativity to get solved. Or barring that, maybe just some common sense.

Let's call this agency BMB.

If I could, I would tell the inevitably hard working men and women involved in this state of affairs that the funny thing about living in the age we do is that this kind of behavior, be it with your clients, your employees or your future employees spreads quite quickly. And the little student who you show disdain for may know some more students. And these students may know some people who used to be students, but now write a blog about getting into advertising. And maybe the guy who writes a blog about getting into advertising thinks that maybe this year, you don't deserve to get the best people, because as his dad often tells him "You get what you put in". And it doesn't seem like you're putting that much in this year.

"Power to the people, right on"
John Lennon

This is our 100th post. Quite fitting given the subject I think. Thanks for sticking with us.

Possibly the finest post on ad careers ever..

But not before the best chart ever. Via Jcniemeyer. Usual rules, etc.

I'd love to be able to claim that it's one of mine...but i'd be lying through my teeth.

No no, it's by an engagement planner at W&K, Jerome Courtial. He's written a rather special post right here.

It should be required reading for any ad person, or wannabe ad person. Be sure to look through all of the links too - he even references Claude Hopkins, someone only Paul Feldwick, me and the ad historians seem to know exists.

Short but sweet this 'un. Hope those applications are going well. Apply some of this thinking to your interviews and you'll go far.

(Yes, I have used that chart in a presentation. It went down well).

Star Stories: Charles Frith

After a long break, we return with a star story from one of my best friends - Charles Frith, rather than tell you all about him, I'll let him do that. Charlie's blog is Punk Planning, check it out here.

I donʼt think that this should be a guide towards getting into advertising - if anything it should serve as a how-not-to-do-it with a few nuggets picked up along the way.

As a friend of mine put it some years back when I declared my occupation, ʻoh thatʼs so 80ʼs” and she was right. We were among a handful of people dancing on a catwalk after a fashion show was over (while the music still was kicking off) and so I guess the glamour remains in pockets if you keep your eyes peeled. Burmese royalty links or so she claimed.
Nevertheless Iʼve always loved advertising and when a vacancy arose in a small below the line agency called Counter Attack in London on the Albert Embankment, South London at the end of the eighties. I not only applied for the administrative role in advertising but was elated to be given a position that exceeded my experience based I was told on how I conducted myself at interview stage.

I loved all the people there and it was my first full on taste of people who work within the creative industries. Iʼve been hooked ever since. When the ad business produces superstars they shine greater than any other business Iʼve ever know. Truly inspirational and clever people to work with.

I was however young enough to subsequently chop around and try a few different opportunities including a spell with a direct marketing printing outfit in Nottingham where I was a useless sales person in their London office. However no incentive could have been greater than to strike out abroad on account of falling in love with a young East German au pair from Leisnig in Germany not that long after the Berlin wall had come down.

I had a fascination with politics and particularly Communism, that in part explains why Iʼm currently inhaling deep lungfuls of power and bureaucracy here in Beijing with a view to getting a grip on global politics for the next twenty or so years. They will be important decades.

My German experience proved to be a pure blend of Victor Hugoʼs Les Miserables (something positive only occurs about 200 pages in and nothing happy happens until the end) and Franz Kafkaʼs The Transformation. Itʼs a book in itself, that part of my life and I shall enjoy sharing it as I kept a detailed and extensive journal of that period which never happened again till I took up blogging.

On my return to the UK I had no intention of working, given the weight of events I had experienced during this period which even took me out to the Far East for six months where I learnt Thai and worked for a Direct Marketing company. So back in England I felt pretty numb about life with no inclination to work for some time, and so I enrolled for a marketing degree at the age of 23. They let me in on account of my advertising and marketing experience (and secondary school qualifications) and I had three wonderful years of doing what came naturally to me. Studying marketing and design.

My only regret was I probably could have scored a first class degree if I put my mind to it. I was however diligent with the lectures and tutorials which compensated for my refusal to do exam revision, except for one memorable all nighter where an accountancy student took me through profit and loss, cash flow, and financial statements. Amazingly 3 months of lecturing on a subject that bores me to tears was condensed into a night of rough scribbles on paper and I passed with flying colours. Or at least just flying.

As ever with these things some serendipity is needed. Just before I graduated I went to a party and spent a whole night talking to a young woman who later revealed that she was a copywriter from the ad superstars of the day called HHCL and partners - I think she found me interesting as she ignored her partner for the night. I was in awe of a living breathing creative from the agency I most wanted to work at. Yes folks I slept my way to the middle.

Thatʼs categorically not true, but meeting people and being interested in them is a sure fire way of being seen as interesting. So is encouraging gossip like the anecdote above, and so when the opportunity arose to interview with HHCL. I grabbed it and was fortunate enough to have been mentored by one of the intellectually toughest planners I have ever encountered to this day.

It was Mark Piper who memorably gave me his copy of the Koran before it really mattered because he was that kind of guy. A voracious reader and a heavyweight intellect. If you donʼt know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims youʼre probably best off working in a bank or something. Planners are information whores. They suck it in any way they can get it and the best of them know how to process that information into something that matters. Youʼre either into it or not. The rest is down to accumulating experience.

A year later almost to the day I joined Howell Henry, I resigned. I remember it well because I could have stayed on a couple more weeks and secured my annual bonus but I wanted to get as far away from someone as possible. So I jumped on a plane did some interviews, secured a position, and moved back to Thailand, with its welcome tropical heat, the most awesome food, amazing culture not to mention Thailandʼs unique place in the DNA strands of the planet and undeniably the hottest women in the world outside of The Emirates and maybe Estonia.

I decided to accept DDB in Thailandʼs offer, and due to my London experience became one of the few Planning Directors in that part of the world. I had an incredible time sharing what I knew with people who had never even heard of planning. We won business, banged out some ads and life was good. I was 29 years old, earned a comparative fortune and lived like a king. There are few finer buttoned down yet buttoned up feelings in life than waking up knowing that your maid has crisply ironed to perfection every shirt in your wardrobe.

Moving on, about a year and a half after joining, our agency was mandated by New York to merge with a HUGE local agency that I knew I could never join on account of the Managing Director wearing a polyester tie. He wasnʼt trying to be ironic either so I took my severance and had the brilliant good grace to have a couple of clients that wanted to continue working with me. AXA insurance and my best ever client and later close friend VW.

This launched what Iʼve retrospectively called my ʻexecutive freelance careerʼ (thanks Rob) which took me round the world from Europe to Asia. The freedom of working for oneself is great as it allowed me to take some self indulgent yet also enormously rewarding lifestyle decisions like pile the rum and books in equal measure either side of me; shoulder high, and plough through the stuff that I believe has contributed to my intellectual calibre with more validity than any degree ever could. I cherish that more than any 73% increase in year on year sales ad that I was ever involved with. I probably thought I was Hemingway or something.

Iʼm thinking the likelihood of anyone having read this far is very low and highly likely that those same people if they exist are asking, ʻyeah but whatʼs this got to do with me?ʼ is high.

Bear with me.

Towards the end of 1996 I decided to relocate to London and get to know all these amazing people who were sharing their ideas and thinking through blogging. Those people were single handedly responsible for me falling back in love with communication theory, business and creativity all over again. I had been getting more and more stale with the more interesting work projects coming from things like market entry reports for multinationals into India, than cracking out another ad with superlative families, beaming superlative white shiny teeth and all the other things that I have talked about which are directly related to media literacy and is the most important subject to learn about if considering a career outside of the M25. Or rather how to challenge it.

I learnt something else while I was in London and that is the interaction of online and offline which is I believe not only the most critical relationship to be managed outside of the monologue to dialogue shift. Its the reason Iʼve set forth once again to take the next stage of my life here in China. Iʼm not sure if I can handle another winter here but whatever happens Iʼve learnt something important and met the people who matter because despite thinking this would be home for a while I now know I need to tick off a few more boxes before the energy begins to ebb.

Many young people have asked me how I could have led such a wild and exciting life. The truth is that I had the energy to do it when I was younger and was frightened of it all at the time. Now that Iʼm older there is little that fazes me but the energy to relocate once more diminishes with each passing year.

So what are the most important lessons I can share? Well read the 48 laws of power and there you have a comprehensive list of 48 immutable laws I have broken. Donʼt do that please. There is one maxim that is important and will help you in a planning/advertising career more than any abundance of intellect, more than any charisma or creative surplus or rock and roll lifestyle:
Itʼs nice to be important, but itʼs important to be nice.

Lastly if youʼre considering a move into the marketing communications business and you have no regard for the great challenges we face as a planet you will always be restricted by the limitations you have set yourself. Selling stuff is easy. Selling the right stuff the right way takes courage, vision and patience.

I know because Iʼm still waiting.....

The 1st Conversation

Would you hire this guy? Probably not...(weird eyes courtesy of bad red-eye reduction)

Something I say quite often is every first conversation is an interview. Now I don't know where I got that from but we are now officially in interview season with Raineys interviewing people as I type this up (in the middle of a finance lecture).

So you have an interview, how do you prepare? Let's talk about some general things first, like appearance. More specifically, what do you wear? For guys a safe bet is either the suit/shirt look or a combo of trousers/blazer (and shirt please). But we'd say no ties, this ain't a banking interview y'all. Girls have it easier (or harder, depending on who you ask) with the general 'look smart' mantra.

Now we know how you look, what's it going to be like? Generally first round interviews will be conducted by 2 members of the agency and they'll last between 30 minutes and an hour. You might get a good cop / bad cop routine, you might get no cops or you might get we'renotreallysurewearecopssolet'sseewhatthisfoolknows. But you can't control that.

What you can control is your research. This is where I go to numbers:

1. Read your application form at least enough times for you to virtually memorise what you wrote. And remember why you wrote what you did.
2. Have some answers to these questions ready
• Why do you want to get into advertising?
• What's the coolest / most iconic thing in your world and why?
• What advertising do you admire and why?
• Which brand's ads aren't doing it justice?
• How do you see the futures of TV and digital advertising?
• What is a brand?
3. Be ready to have to sell an ad to your interviewers, think about:
• What the brand is trying to say, what are they trying to achieve with the ad?
  
• Who they should be talking to? Are they talking to them?
• How effective is their conversation with the person paying attention?
• Why does it work? Is it funny? Is it totally removed from the competition?
• Is the idea transferable across different channels?
  
• How will it build upon where the client is right now business-wise? Do they want to create market share? steal market share or maintain their lead?
  
4. Watch their showreel on their site, soak in as much as you can about their site and head over to visit4info to watch ads they've created that may not be on their showreel.
5. Give yourself an hour's margin when traveling long distance, it gives you time to compose yourself when you get there, rather than crapping yourself that you're late.
6. Have some questions for them. But don't ask questions for things that are on their website or you'll get shot down. Ask them about what they think about one of their questions, or about how they see advertising changing in the future. Having a well thought question could be the thing that makes you stick in their minds when it's time to make the cuts (Thanks to Alex for this point).
   

And finally, the most important, crucial and underlying thing that will dictate your success in your interviews is being yourself. Try to relax and answer the non-advertising questions as normally as possible (obviously there are some boundaries, if you swear like a sailor put a sock in it, or use replacement words). And be yourself. Be confident that being yourself will get you the job. Seriously.

It’s well known that individual agencies have individual cultures etc, but that by no means means (how many times can I use means in this sentence?) that you should try and conform to a type. Go in and do your best. Chances are if you’re well informed, enthusiastic about ads and able to back up your opinions you’ll get through.

And if you don’t? It's the agency’s loss. So don’t mope around, ring them up and ask for feedback, if it’s something wrong with the way you delivered your answers, you can fix it. But if they say you're not the right type, move on. Don’t try to be their type - because eventually you'll find out it's hurting you and them.

This is the part where I'd like to end up on something profound. But I'll defer to Anton who told me a while back: 'Don't be a lemming'. That pretty much says it all.

As always comments/criticism/abuse are welcome.

Sam

Consciousness meeting Consumerism = Success in Advertising

A quick one really as it’s getting late and I need to pack up my pseudo hippy gear for what looks to be quite an amazing weekend at Bestival.

No ranting this time, which, if you read my over opinionated drivel must be nice.

When getting into a mindset of working in advertising, what it is to be successful in advertising and what criteria make up the minds of great ad people I’ve come to observe, well, the very obvious actually, but always apparent elements which are a high consciousness and grasp of commercialism.

Totally fckn obvious really, but when in large ad agencies it really comes through in those who get on and command respect.

Breaking it down further I don’t mean some chump throwing around research debriefs and claiming to know the consumer (ah-hem) and I don’t mean someone who reads every marketing magazine out there and can tell you which FMCG is topping the shelf charts.

What I mean is a thorough understanding of one-self as a consumer, the ability to make accurate assumptions of others who are consumers and to really, in essence, be a psychologist when getting to the grass roots of certain conscious consumption actions – knowing that Tango is consumed by an older demographic than any other carbonated drink due the hay day of ‘being Tango-ed’ existing in the mid 90s and these kids are now your twenty somethings. Being able to understand that really, the real denim wearers go for Wrangler over Levis as they are the cornerstone of authentic rodeo denim and not simply a string of (consistent I might add) well produced high street fashion advertising.

I could go on, I will, no I wont actually. My attempt at a point here is that by reading your Campaigns, checking the Brand Republic news alerts and knowing your agencies and their client lists are all the essential bases you need to cover to get in. To take you a step further beyond the competition (and not just get in but excel in terms of a career – especially in Planning) there is a strong need to be fully aware of yourself as a consumer, take note of why you act the way you do and then apply it to what the commercial world is doing – it’s no fckn coincidence that you bought an ipod or that you found your girlfriend playing on your Nintendo Wii and thought ‘that’s odd’. All these little observations you should question and mine down to a ‘why’. At the end of the day you’re in a much better place to comment as a consumer than people in advertising are, most of which are way too busy to watch TV and have to Youtube good ads at work to stay abreast etc.

So, umm, yeah, whatever the above was about do it, or dismiss it at your peril.

Have a great weekend

Anton xx

Omnicom and Facebook and University Career Services

Kind of like Sesame Street. Which is still Awesome.

I've got 3 things to say. Firstly I'm going to be at Omnicom's Summer School from Thursday, so if you're going I'll see you there (say hi, I swear I've had my shots) but if you're not - fear not as I'll be blogging about everything that goes down right here later on.

Secondly, we've had a gazillion emails (okay more like -4) asking about Facebook - whether we're going to set up a group or something like that. Well we're not. The main reason being Musa Tariq (who works at JWT) has set up a group already (which you can find here) and it's coming along well, so to start a new group would be pointless. So join the group.

Finally, we've had some contact from universities and students about coming to talk to you guys come term time. If you think you'd want to hear us talk a little about the ad industry, the different job roles, application form technique and all the rest of it, fire me an email and I'll get the ball rolling.

That's pretty much it for now, we've been online for just about two weeks and have over 1000 hits. So thank you guys. Seriously. It's been awesome hearing from so many of you, and there's definitely more to come, so stick with us.

Social Intercourse

Yes it’s a cringe worthy neologism but it gets the point across and often raises a smile yet leaves me looking like a right filthy basstad.

Anyway, being a socialite; liked by many and good to be around can be a valuable skill for any walk of life, but especially so in Media Planning and to a great extent in Account Handling.

As a graduate you are likely to be entering at an assistant level and it’s been mentioned here countless times of how we can not lose sight of that ghastly A-word.

Assistants Assist. Fact. Please do not lose sight of this!

Whether it means you have one manager to get bitched around by or you end up being spread over various accounts, the likelihood is that you will come into contact with a whole roster of agency staff – from the meeting room co-ordinator to the Eastern European cleaners that, if you keep smitten will promise to keep your monitor extra dust-free (shout to my man Gustav)

And as your career progresses you will be liaising with the Media Agency, the Digital Agency, the Experiential Agency, the print supplier, the PR agency etc etc … and of course the greater lord him/herself THE CLIENT.

So what I’m trying to say here is that Adland is a very people-person job. Being Nice is an essential pre-requisite (as Will has talked about below) but being a social, out-going person is perhaps the second most important trait to master after the polite manners, firm hand shakes and good eye-contact.

Sure, you may not be in an agency yet, you may not have even started applying. But it’s definitely worth keeping this in mind now as it will help you in your first stages of contact with agencies and as you progress through the krypton factor that is the telephone interview, psychometric/aptitude test (media) and grad assessment day. Simple things such as tone of voice used in the initial telephone call, just imagine how many grads have called through to the HR team about work experience or placements – (Empathy!) it will be easy for them to spot who’s just had 6 rejections and have now just completely given up just from a 18 second telephone conversation.

The Grad assessment day is a topic we will cover in much more detail very soon, but as cliché as it sounds the usual body language, projection and tone of voice, and ability to be-friend that 2:2 Bournemouth grad that currently works at Weatherspoons as well as the Oxbridge toff who doesn’t really trust anyone that isn’t into rugby really does matter in these situations and even more so in real actual life.

Now, there is no need to get to caught up about how socially perfect you are, its not a matter of how many Facebook friends you have, nor is it worth evaluating how popular you are. Leave the sixth-form leavers book on that Ikea shelf.

But you do need to consider a few things for account handling roles;

- How confident am I?

- Am I an introverted person?

- Do I get on well with others and am I open to a range of types of peoples horizontally and vertically?

- How well do I carry myself when presenting?

- Do I need to stuff a gram up each blow hole in order to be interesting?

These might seem very obvious things to think about but do you really know the answers to these yourself? What would your friends say..honestly!?

Who's up for a pint then?

If You Ain't Got Grit, You Won't Add Up To Shit

Probably one of my worst attempts at a rhyme but lets move on. Will covered off the nice stuff on empathy but lets get to the nitty gritty of getting you in. You first of all have to love to compete and more to the point love to compete when you’re confident that you’ll win, why else bother? Remember that this is all about you, your future career will take about 70% of your life away from everything else so it has to be right. Also, don't you dare be intimidated by ad agencies whether it's calling them for an internship, having an interview or just thinking you're not good enough. In Paul Arden's words you're as good as you want to be so it'll be survival of the hunger (and witty). Also, ad agencies like a bit of attitude, it's what creative people generally have in advertising, don't be an all out know it all wanker (like I am) as you'll get slapped down very quickly, but it's okay to be playfully cocky which I'll come to later. This post really is about a level of self confidence, having a total disregard for the competition when trying to get into advertising and (although not really mentioned in this post) also when you do get in don't you ever let anyone talk to you like a piece of shit ever ever ever no matter what you've done or forgotten to do. Pick your fights wisely but at the same time don't allow some insecure twat to take out their inferiority on you. Sorry about that, was getting a bit ranty.

When applying for your grad schemes there will be approx 5 places for new grads. There will be on average about 300 initial applications. You would think that most of these will be at a high standard, wrong, the majority of applications I’ve sifted through are nothing short of being proper shit. However, that’s no excuse for you to take this as notion of comfort. Oh no, this is really an opportunity that can’t be missed. While your counterparts will be answering questions regarding their favourite ads with examples such a Transformers for Citroen or of course Sony Balls you have to think, maybe I should be different. Why not go back in time to some of the classics, Hamlet advertising for example or Iguana for Benson & Hedges, YouTube it, then google it and research it, get a few insights, facts into how they were made, what they did and then bullshit a rationale as to why you love it. You may of course like them in reality but this is application time so will require some verbal sugar around it. Always, always think of what the chump in front of you will be saying and working out how you can come across smarter.

Have any of you read Paul Arden’s 2nd book? ‘It’s Not How Good You Are It’s How Good You Want To Be’ was his first book but his second is ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite’. I don’t care what anyone says about Arden claiming the obvious, the guy is a fucking genius and is so right on pretty much every page. You should get a read of it really if for no other reason that it’s quite motivating.

Anyway, back to the original idea of this post and my next comment may sound quite controversial so apologies in advanced. I really don’t believe you will have that much success in advertising unless you have (or harder to do, but develop) a slightly dark and cynical side to you. For one thing it allows you to cope with the everyday knocks and falls you have when you’re a grad. Secondly, it’s the currency of banter in the upper circles of ad agencies. The guy or girl with the slightly sick sense of humour seems to either have better ideas or gets more laughs and either of those two are what essentially advances your career. I don’t subscribe to a twee, lovely, sweet and oh so joyous outlook on life (like some of those famous for blogging do) and prefer to think of the inappropriate. I wont insist that you do this, it has gotten me into trouble more times than I care to remember. The very very very very long winded point I’m trying to make is that humour and colloquial verbalisation of natural thought are often key in this industry. It’s okay for you to maybe have fun in a dark way with some of your questions in applications, remember, these are colourful people, they have to sift through 299 other applications that usually say the most mundane tripe in a really dire way. Like a planner think of your audience, think of what state your reviewer will be in when they read your application, usually pissed off they've been given this job, hating the guy from Cambridge who thought it would be creative to write everything upside down, more than likely looking at emails whilst trying to care what you've written. So take artistic license, this isn’t an exam and this isn’t a job at a bank, enjoy writing them. Listen to nasty electro while you write them, whatever it takes. Anyway, I’m off, sicko night at Turnmills awaits. Speak soon.

I Am Sam

Target market. That's what I'd say I am in two words. In relation to this blog that is. I am the type of person that we're all trying to help. The desperate, poor student that yearns for a job in the glamorific world of advertising. Or something like that.

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

FAQs

Jack wisely started some FAQs yesterday that we're gonna put on the wiki by the end of next week. As September begins, the wiki will be fully operational. So keep checking back here.

Anton, Unmasked

Anton started out at the funky hot shop that was Leonardo for part of his university placement year. After which he went on to experience life at Leo Burnett working on McDonald’s loving the return to his home town, Newcastle and getting into arguments with ‘alternative’ friends in fields on the topic of global fast food brands. When not holding a shield with a phat yellow M on it he was contributing to the launch of Salads Plus and Maccy Dee’s Euro 2004 Sponsorship.

Wanting to finish his placement year on a high note Anton applied to the Saatchi & Saatchi Summer Scholarship Scheme. Not happy with his brief to take an A4 poster with ‘Nothing is Impossible’ and put it somewhere ‘interesting’ he and two friends convinced the industry that they had hacked M&C Saatchi’s website and animated the poster over its homepage. Anton attracted attention from M&C’s lawyers, a Gold DMA Award (2004) and a place on Saatchi’s Summer scheme working on Visa. Returning to University for a finale of studying and indulgent abuse he applied to numerous agencies for graduate recruitment, accepted 1 of the 3 offered for reasons such as ‘greater training’ and ‘a more integrated approach to a heavily fragmented media space’ but we all know it’s because they offered him more money.

Anton is now a Planner getting filthy in traditional and non traditional media, can’t stand networking but loves to bore those who he finds natural and good with his visions of how to fuse TV with digital and theories of restructuring agencies.

About The Wiki..

...we had it planned, and you asked for it as well, so a wiki is on the way. We'll stash our guest contributors' stories on how they got into adland there along with a meaty reading list, graduate recruitment deadlines and whatever else you guys put on it. Remember, this site and its content are yours, so keep telling us what you want.

Just give us some time to make the wiki look cool.

Jack Bauer? How did you get in here?

I HAVE DEVOTED MY WHOLE LIFE TO PROTECTING MILLIONS OF AMERI - okay thats about all the Jack Bauer you're gonna get here I'm afraid.

I'll get the ball rolling with my entrance into adland as its easily the least glamorous of all of us.

Present: I'm fast approaching my first year at a Media Agency... Lets keep it at that. It is major one though, one of the top5 - lots of new business, lots of awards, lots of krispy kremes. I'm on the comms planning team working on a major Automotive client, an FMCG and until recently I was working on a major high street bank advertiser.

I got in on the grad scheme after an interview, aptitude test and grad assessment day (more on these later). I reckon most of it was knowledge and talent - rest was the agency needing to fill their ethnic minority staff quota!

Past: Prior to this I had a month experience at a small content creation agency in Brixton called Ramp (now Up-comms). Although it was unpaid, the work was good and I was involved in some tidy projects such as Channel 4's UK Tribes, Guardian's Digital Nation and Puma's Adopt a German campaign - all of which gave me sound understanding of 'yoof' and exposure to the rise of new media.

Future?: Media is where I am now but who knows if it will be where I end up.

And that's about it for an introduction... I've plenty to share on getting into adland and keen to help anyone.

JB

The Road Ahead

Right it's August. And grad applications don't open until say mid-September. So until then, we plan on getting an all-star cast together and letting them tell you their own stories of how they got into the advertising industry. If you have any requests for people you'd really like to hear from, put 'em in the comments box and we'll do our best to oblige.

And yes, we'll have a reading list as well.

Baby Steps

So on a strangely summer-like Friday morning we begin. This blog will be, (we hope) the start of some collaborative career related goodness for all of you out there applying for graduate recruitment places for September 2008.

We plan on getting an all star cast of adland together to share their experiences of getting into advertising, as well as giving you tips on interviews, application questions, keeping you up to date with agency deadlines and anything else you want.

A Facebook group will also be set up (who doesn't these days) but the bulk of the good stuff will be here, so check back often.

You guys will drive the content we put up, so any requests, questions, abuse or freebies are welcome.

And good luck to you all.