How To Succeed In Gradvertising
See that, there in the title? That’s my first advice, lots of puns … in this industry there’s no such thing as too many*.
So, what’s this whole grad program deal? Pretty much the good people here at Ogilvy selected a few young and highly talented graduates and myself, to let through their doors to experience the industry from the eyes of the whole agency. It was all very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except I think fewer kids died.
Once we were in the chocolate factory we got to meet the agencies equivalent of Willy Wonka, and all the Oompa Loompas (who are incidentally all my superiors and thus will not be referred to as Oompa Loompas any more). We started by meeting the heads of Studio, Creative, Strategy, Finance, Digital and Accounts as well as the CEO himself. It was then immediately into rotation, where we got to spend a couple of days in every different branch of the agency. To keep us on our toes we worked on our grad project, a live brief, where we spent weeks tossing about highly sophisticated theories on what the campaign should involve – but the result was this silly guy:
A KFC puppet show. An adorable idea which had me once spend an afternoon coming up with movie titles with chicken puns in them such as Bite Club, ShawSnack Redemption, Stranger Wings … feel free to ask me to show you the list if you’re interested. Still there was more to it than puns, it was truly something of which we four grads were very proud.
The final 6 weeks were dedicated to working within a chosen area of the agency, I chose creative, where I got to try my hand at pitching concepts and writing copy for KFC, Coca Cola and Hahn amongst others. These 6 weeks to work actually within the agency were the most informative and fun part, and working with such knowledgeable professionals was so inspiring as they were all so kind, nurturing and certainly not deserving of being called Oompa Loompas.
So, there we have my little take on a grad program. If you love advertising like I do, there’s really no better way in and to learn from the best in the business. Also there’s free KFC on Fridays and that’s freaking amazing!
*I’ve since been told there is in fact a pun limit, and I have in fact exceeded it!
