bye bye h

what a climactic end to the year! in the same month that i acquire my master's in the art of advertising (Em M. MA) i have also come to the end of a three month placement at one of the world's most notorious agencies.

i really enjoyed my past few months at bbh. really enjoyed them, they flew by and i'm sad to have left.

i entered into bbh through their home grown scheme along with three other 'home growners' and was placed on the second floor in sprint (the office is divided up into six, sprint, mint and penthouse - it makes sense once you're in there...) my first tasks included researching how people are using nfc for barclaycard and delving into social media for virgin media. we were lucky enough to be given talks by both charlie rudd and jon peppiatt in our first week who gave us a sense of what bbh is about and the kinds of attributes they seek in the people that work there.

in my second month, as building work began and the agency transformed into a submarine, i was kindly taken under the wing of the research department on the premise that as a junior strategist the way that i could be most useful would be if i can find things quickly. richard helyar and his team opened up google a new for me as well as giving me a clear breakdown of their tools, including tgi, sysomos and warc. during this second month we also got a talk about insights from jim carroll (as mentioned in a previous post, a man who evokes huge respect), he explained the importance not only of condensing thought but also expanding it, setting tasks which may be worth a post in themselves.

throughout our time there we had the homegrown team, including abi and rishi, to go to with any concerns or queries and many other people were also generous with their time to have a coffee and impart their advice. i never took for granted the power of the minds in that building, as well as how nice everyone was. the old paradox of being good and friendly really holds true there (at least in my experience).

in my final few weeks i worked on a weekly digital zeitgeist for audi and a mobile thought piece for nick fell, which i'll be posting shortly. i also shadowed the prodigy that is tim jones. i helped him and the virgin media team on a commercial strategy and got to go to my first focus group.

the great thing about doing my placement at this time of year was that i got to go to the company meeting in the guardian building and the office christmas party. the less great thing is that it's not the best time for hiring and although it had always been made clear that there wouldn't necessarily be a job available, it would have been the perfect end to the year. i shouldn't have drunk so much of the kool-aid but this hopefully won't be the absolute end to my time there. as i said to john hegarty on my last day "i hope this is more 'au revoir' and not 'adieu'", yes, i actually said that to him. goals for 2013 include working on my inner monologue and being less awkward around advertising legends.

founded

the shard to the left of me, tate modern to the right, here i am, at founded with the richards.

i have been lucky enough to have spent the last month at start-up agency founded at the tippedy top of the iris building in southwark. set up by richard perry and richard mabbott at the beginning of this year there is a positive, productive atmosphere from a young, fun, motivated team.

as my first advertising placement i couldn't have hoped for a better opportunity. being a part of a small group, i have been given a chance to produce work that is actually getting used in presentations. i may sound shocked but i set my level of expectation at tea-making and photocopying, not wanting to be disappointed. on top of this, i've had the chance to help nearly everyone in the office at some point with research and i'm much more ready to pick up the phone and call companies to get the answers i'm looking for than i was before.

asad shaykh's been an amazing person to learn from. he's been encouraging my skills at picking out key facts and compiling them in a way that tells a story. his patience when running me through branding basics has been saintly. i now have a much stronger idea of the structure that goes into a brand strategy and can hold my own in a conversation about umbrella brands and brand architecture.

commonly used marketing/business lingo that i have learnt from founded:

top line - the fundamental facts, the biggest statistic that can then be broken down, the bigger picture/the picture from a distance.
best practice - something that a lot of people are doing but the person who does it and explains something the best.
capacity - as in "do you have capacity to work on x for a couple of hours this afternoon?"
crm, ecrm & scrm - customer relationship management, which is concerned with improving customer satisfaction and their ownership experience as well as resolving concerns.
p2p, b2b, b2c - peer-to-peer, business-to-business, business-to-consumer
atl & btl - above and below the line communications
mgm - member get member

my month at founded has given me a much clearer sense of what planning is about. essentially i see it as problem solving and data processing. the sense of satisfaction i get when i find a graph that backs up the point i'm trying to prove tells me that planning is the way forward for me. i know it tells us other things too about evaluating my priorities in life but at least i'm not alone, mintel 5s!

asad's top tip when stat hunting:
stick the word 'infographic' on the end of your search.

it has been an interesting challenge to dip into an area that has been of no particular interest to me before and to then really immerse myself in as many facts and points of view on the business as possible. sustainable urban drainage systems being a good example. i am beginning to know where to look for the information i need but need to build an ability to form my own conclusions and insights based on these facts.

i particularly enjoy researching competitor reviews and i'm getting quicker at skim reading and picking out what's relevant. i'm also really pleased that i have had the opportunity to work with a couple of the creative teams that have been in in the past month, being able to encourage them and to (hopefully) stimulate some ideas is a really rewarding part of planning.

i have dispelled my fear of the word 'integrated' in the same way that i did with 'digital' (see previous post). basically integrated just mean 'everything', which i suppose makes me an integrated intern.

the office 9-6 and commute is taking some time to get used to but i'm getting there, luckily i've been offered the next month to keep improving and learning. if founded can form a fully functioning agency from scratch in six months, i think i can adapt to a new routine.