Client services or creative? Or both?

Or a creative suit.

Two new roles to tell you about, chaps.

1) Lambie-Nairn:

The good people at LN are after a client services intern; someone to start ASAP. They're after:

"A graduate that can demonstrate that they know what branding means, someone who is able to work under pressure, meet deadlines and has a keen eye for detail. The candidate will attend to the Global Executive Director a day a week, as well as routinely attending brand clinics. Enthusiasm is very important, as is being conscientious. A Spanish speaker is preferable."

2) Ogilvy's Creative Academy:

"Ogilvy have decided that as most graduate schemes (historically) focus on account handling and planning, that they'd like to run a creative version. Find out more here and here. You'd be working in the creative departments of Dialogue and Ogilvy Action, working with some of the biggest brands in the world - Gillette, Duracell, Braun, Venus and Coca-Cola, giving them access to some of the incredible talent and knowledge within the Ogilvy Group. Various top design universities are taking part, and while we have focused on key creative Universities, such as Kingston, Bournemouth and others, this opportunity is not limited to advertising students.

We know that creativity can come from any discipline or background. Any graduate who feels they can create and execute an idea that can change or reinforce consumer behaviour is eligible for this amazing opportunity. Partners in the scheme are DNA (a boutique specialist Recruitment Consultant) and the MAA(representing the industry). Ogilvy will also have the involvement of P&G in judging our future creative stars. Plus they're exhibiting the finalists’ entries in our Westbourne Terrace office wine bar from February 2012."

Good luck, chaps.

Ogilvy Fellowship...

You too could work here.

The Ogilvy Fellowship is acknowledged to be one of the best starts in the communications industry. And, happy day, they've just opened. I have just been sent a lot of information from the guys there, so have a butchers, and if you're interested, apply....

"Ogilvy Group UK is a communications agency that does advertising, direct marketing, interactive marketing, PR, design and promotion. We're the London outpost of Ogilvy's extensive global network of over 400 offices worldwide.

Every year we look for 5 stars of the future to join our Fellowship here in London. This year we have taken a slightly different approach to how we recruit for the Fellowship. We will be selecting 10 of the brightest and best applicants to join us at our Canary Wharf office here in east London to undertake two consecutive four-week placements. You’ll get great experience and have the opportunity to hear from some of London’s best talent in the industry while also learning about our 360 approach to advertising. We’ll then select five stars of the future to join our Fellowship programme starting in November 2010, which will see you undergo three year's training with a year in three different disciplines.

The timings for the 2010 Internship and Fellowship are as follows:

Closing date for applications: 4th May 2010 (Midnight)

Interviews: w/c 28th June 2010

Internship: 4th August 2010 – 1st October 2010

Fellows start date: 8th November 2010"

So there you have it. Best of luck.

Star Stories: Rory Sutherland

Our next Star Story comes courtesy of Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy One London's Executive Creative Director and Vice Chairman, and the Ogilvy Group UK's vice chairman and the forthcoming IPA President for 2009/10. Oh, and he also writes an excellent blog on Brand Republic.

HOW I GOT INTO THE BUSINESS

by Rory Sutherland

My story? A little similar to Jon Steel's, in that I thought I was going to become a teacher. A plan that was rapidly abandoned once I spent some time actually in a school. This experience terrified me. Not in the way you might think, though: it was rather a good school, and the pupils were well mannered and amusing - no, what frightened me wasn't the classroom but the staffroom.

Imagine your entire life since the age of five spent either learning or teaching in educational establishments. It's not a good idea. Remember, too, that this was the late 80s, a time when the lack of entrepreneurial spirit and ambition in much of the staffroom seemed completely at odds with the times. I remember one female teacher was married to a partner at a law firm in London. She drove to school in quite a nice car. Not a Bentley or anything, you understand, but something that wasn't an Austin Maestro. I think it may have been a Fiat X-19, if you remember the thing. Anyhow, once her back was turned she was routinely villified for having the temerity to drive this car. Sod this, I thought.

I applied to 19 agencies half way through the year, and had about six interviews and two second interviews. At JWT (which involved two days away at a place called Minster Lovell to check you held your fork correctly and owned the right part of Derbyshire and so on) and at Ogilvy & Mather Direct, the latter making me my sole job offer. From September 1988, and for about a year thereafter , I was the world's worst account man, then became a copywriter in 1990, a rare move (rarer still now, I suspect) which required great support from a number of people to whom I owe thanks to this day - Drayton Bird, Steve Harrison, Dan Gipple, David Watson, Andy Firth and David Nobay being many but not all of them. I also owe my job to an anonymous advertising copywriter who was the other candidate for the one available copywriting job in the department at that time, but who took one look at a long copy ad and a mailpack on the walls, loudly declared "I'm not writing all those words - I just do concepts" and promptly flounced off.

Two lessons, here. First, get a job at a good agency doing anything. After a while, if you're good you can probably choose to do something else and if you're bad (and I was a very bad account man, once even failing to turn up at a time management course because I'd got the date wrong) there's a small chance they may give you a chance elsewhere to see the back of you. It's only a small chance, but the odds are probably better from the inside than from outside.

The second thing? I can't help here much, but be lucky in the place where you start. We probably did not realise it at the time, but O&M Direct (now OgilvyOne) in 20 Soho Square was one of those supernode wellspring places you get in advertising and direct marketing (quite possibly it still is, but we won't know for another ten years). The assemblage of talent was tremendous: in addition to the above named were Rod Wright, Mike Simm, Randy Haunfelder, Derek Robson (now at Goodby), Miles Young, Paul O'Donnell (still here) and many more great people. Plus Drayton Bird had a Bentley Turbo even though he couldn't drive, which rather confirmed my suspicion that the automotive prospects were at least better there than in teaching.

Sometimes I feel a little like the Peter Sellers' "Chauncey Gardner"character in Being There. I had lucked into an interesting place with great people at exactly the right time. We were lucky in other ways, too. in the 90s we picked up an obscure Seattle company called Microsoft. I can still remember meetings where anyone new to the account had have explained to them what the company did - "You know when you turn on your PC is says MS-DOS for about a second? Well the MS stands for Microsoft." Looking back, this was rather a stroke of luck. Having software clients (and later we had Compaq, too, to be followed by IBM) meant we took IT quite seriously. And when the Internet became big, there were some of us who already knew what it was.

Advice on first becoming a copywriter? Advice which, now I think of it, holds good for any creative person anywhere, and at any time, for that matter. Work very hard and look for opportunity everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Not only in the briefs you are given. And not only in the fashionable briefs. A few early breaks I had were a tactical ad for BT which ran on the evening Mrs Thatcher resigned and a wonderfully cute piece of work to small tradesmen for American Express. Mailpacks to small businesses - not promising. As Drayton Bird was fond of quoting (from Bacon) "A wise man makes more opportunities than he finds."

But a more important question than "how did you get started?" is "how do you stay interested?" What keeps you enthusiastic?

In the early days, I feel I must record my debt (a debt shared every one of us in direct marketing from those days) to Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury.

For the hottest agency in London in those days to do promotions and direct marketing because they wanted to not because they had to was an inspiration to all of us. Its approach to innovation was truly a revelation. I think, deep down, most British people in the business are either temperamentally BBH-ites or HHCL-ite - the school of "sexy" versus the school of "new".
Even though it lived less long, I think I am temperamentally a HHCL-ite. It's one of those Beatles or Stones things - everyone goes one way or the other - all, that is, except me.... I'm for Jim Reeves.

A little later (and what a shame it is HHCL never fully lived to see the digital age) , new media have added a new dimension to what we do, which has made possible innovation of a kind that seemed years off when we first started.

Subsequently? Well, I have been enthused by one simple fact, of which I remind myself every time I get a little low. This is one of very few jobs where doing almost anything of interest can make you better at your job.

Actuaries, bankers, acountants - their jobs aren't improved by watching people in a cafe, listening to conversations from bus passengers or taxi drivers, reading a book about history or economics or watching a film. We can become better copywriters in our spare time. Never forget what a rare and wonderful thing that is.

The Road Ahead

We are still..open that is.

We are still here. Honestly. But more importantly, there are more agencies to apply to if you haven't found yourself a job yet. Ogilvy, Leo Burnett and Iris deadlines are coming up in February, links to them are in the Application Deadlines box on the right, click 'em, fill 'em and get 'em.

Star Stories: Giles Rhys Jones

Our 2nd star story is upon us courtesy of Giles Rhys Jones who is the Director of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy UK. Giles' blog - Interactive Marketing Trends is here as well as in our links section. We also recommend you have a look at Ogilvy's graduate recruitment site.

HOW I GOT TO WHERE I AM NOW.

By Giles Rhys Jones

Nearing the end of my degree in Industrial Design and having missed the grad recruitment rounds, I watched all my friends picking up design or city jobs and had abit of a panic.

Not realising that this was a situation that I would replicate often in later life, this pressure seemed to bring out, if not the best, then a slightly above average performance in me. Being of a creative persuasion I produced a 6 page cv booklet to send to prospective employers with each of the pages focussing on a particular skill with a relevant photo of me, a description and examples. I bought a business directory and sent out 74 of these to the top advertising and design companies in the UK and US. This led to a number of interviews and some very interesting conversations.

At the same time the older brother of a friend of mine was as a grad at Saatchi & Saatchi and offered to take my letter to his boss. I got a call and was asked to come in to meet them. After a couple of interviews I was offered a 2 week summer job starting the day after my last final. A couple of weeks later I started work on the pan euro HP business as a ae.

A couple of weeks later I got an extension to stay longer and 2 months later they even started paying me £50 quid a week. After a few more interviews, quite alot of beer and some half decent work they invited me to join full time and be part of the coming years grad trainees.

After 2 years of spreading press, poster, wobblers, gondola ends and DM across 17 countries for HP, I shed the shackles of traditional channel thinking by moving into their emerging media group: Saatchi Vision. Amazingly lighting a 747 up with a laser, causing outcry with a graffiti campaign for Random House and plastering a talking 3D supermodel on bus stops for Playtex produced results as well as being great fun.

Three years helping to run the Digital Marketing Group at AGENCY.COM working on BA, Oneworld & Heineken gave me the ability to 'top-trump' interstitials, virals, CPCs and eCRM with the best of them and, more often than not, win.

Not able to find an agency I liked, I helped to create Agency Republic delivering campaigns that crossed wireless, traditional and digital channels, generated results and appalled other roster agencies on clients like O2 and Boots.

A year at The Brand Company in Asia followed, travelling, buying cheap gadgets and helping Vodafone/Smartone to work out that branding is not just what they say but actually what they do.

The opportunity to gain more line management experience running the global integrated HSBC account at DRAFT tempted me back to the Uk and into advertising.

As Interactive Strategy Director, I am responsible for digital marketing strategy across clients including IBM, Ford, Cisco and BT.

The only traditional title I have had was that of Account Executive at Saatchi, since then I have made pretty much made up job titles. Where once, not fitting into an advertising job box was a hinderance and headhunters struggled to come to terms with what I could offer. Now as advertising needs to become smarter in how it works rather than just bigger, there is positive descrimination for people who have a broad range of T-shaped skills.

Looking at how my career has moved across disciplines and companies I guess you could say I have ants in my pants but I am just passionate about how to better connect businesses and their audience.

There is always a better way.