baa baa h

sheepish

i always thought that i would be better suited to a smaller agency. i remember being deeply skeptical when faced with the statement that to work at bbh you need to be good and nice but from the 4 days that i was there everyone, bar none, was lovely and clearly very in tune with what they were doing.

on the first day of our strategy workshop we met ross and adèle who ran us through bbh's work, from that levi's ad to the recent british airways home advantage campaign. they passed on to the legendary jim carroll who talked to us about insight and the different places that it can be found.

"advertising shouldn't be a perfect demonstration of human behaviour."

jim reiterated that strategy is about story telling and that you need a narrative to take people on journeys. the process of condensing thought, distilling down and being concise are core skills for being a strategist. this compression will allow the creatives to think big. this advice was really useful as we were then briefed by agathe on our task for the week, which was to write a creative brief for axe and then discuss it with a creative team at the end of the week.

we then heard from carl and priyanka about their experience planning at bbh and tips on how to brief creatives. carl believes that natural curiosity and emotional intelligence makes someone worth listening to. i particularly liked this idea of the creativity within an agency:

writer        poet        painter

suit        planner     creative

priyanka advised us to get feedback on our brief from the creatives and not from another planner, to not be precious or defensive but to see it as a starting point. she emphasised the importance of always having a north star of the direction in which you want to head.

this was the first time that we were presenting to creatives rather than as if it were to the clients and dropping our guards to make it an informal chat was quite a challenge but we were given a lot of guidance and structure to get us there. going on the hunt for 13 year old boys was one of the mini adventures that made up a fantastic worksop week. bbh was not at all what i had been expecting, it completely lacked the holier than thou pretention and instead felt like a well constructed, exciting place made up of fun and interesting people. it is definitely a place that i would love to be a part of.

we're frukt

last week was spent at communications agency frukt, working on a live brief over the space of four days. on the monday we were given an introduction to the company by their one and only creative planner, flo page. she explained that her role is to harness peoples' passions and to give brands a meaningful role within their lives. the objective is to tell brand stories in interactive, immersive and entertaining ways that will live through channels and over time. frukt's mission statement is 'to entertain the world' and the brands on their books certainly reflect this ethos; from coca-cola to nokia to southern comfort, the heart of frukt's expertise evolves around music but with a definite digital edge.

flo said her skills are weighted differently for different clients, with one being mostly strategic whilst another may be more heavily creative. i felt that she finds it rewarding to have this variety and mix and i think that although we inevitably have to label our job, i hope that my role will allow for a certain level of diversity as well.

jim robinson, who is in charge of client services, and dom hodge, frukt's planning director, ran us through the structure of the agency and emphasised what i find to be true of many of the smaller agencies; the championing of mixed skills from everyone. their reasoning being that ideas can come from anywhere (even occasionally from the client).

the brief we were set had to be big, brave and long-term. each group was given their own creative starting point to work around, which was helpful and interesting because when we came to present we all had different approaches. our challenge really lay in trying to describe the feeling of the brand rather than the service.  our group spent the first day simply trying to define our audience and one of the most useful pieces of advice that i received was to consider it as one audience and then focus on one or two segments that won't alienate the other segments.

flo's top tips for presenting:

• clothing - don't wear any statement pieces that will distract your audience
• stand - it gets air to your head and gives you more presence
• be as visual as possible
• put no more than 3 bullet points on each slide
• don't use full sentences
• print stuff, stick it on the walls
• get clients up and moving around the room
• provide a hand-out so they have something to take with them

a lot of time was given to thoroughly running through the strengths and areas of improvement for each group, certainly the most detailed we have had so far. it was really helpful and we had the chance to ask lots of questions to flo and creative director and founder, jack horner. flo was really generous with her time as we were aware of the pitching that was going on and our student ability to get under people's feet. it was a fantastic chance to get a feel for the day to day of their agency and another steep learning curve.

rapp it up rapp it in

bolly & cauli

bullshit bingo

last week MA advertising spent the day at rapp. we began with a briefing by planning director gavin hilton who set us the challenge of making people fall in love with cauliflower again. gavin handed over to one of rapp's junior strategists, jo birch, who gave us each a bingo card full of industry jargon to make sure we were listening to the key points that would be laid out throughout the day.

jo talked about the importance of having a consistent theme when defining your truths for a brand or product. she advised us to ensure there were no boring bits in the brief and to let the personality of the consumer shine through. jo ran through the structure that rapp use, beginning with establishing three sets of truths; the market, audience and brand truths. these would lead us to our strategic story and ultimately our proposition.

chris & marcus

jo handed over to ex-bucks creative team marcus and chris who told us about their journey from university to rapp and backed up jo's point about the importance of an interesting briefing session.

after a short break we went to sit around the large table on the roof terrace where global cco ian haworth gave us a really inspiring talk about his incredible adventure from helping out in a studio, having left school at 17, to becoming an art director at 19, winning his first award at 20, then becoming a creative director at 26 and a partner in his own agency at 28. it's amazing to see how his passion has sustained and daunting to think that i'm already 25... two of the key points that ian made, which stuck with me, were that lateral, original thinking is the creativity in planning and that creativity is only a guess unless you have an understanding of who you're talking to. ian gave some really sound advice and was a really interesting person to listen to.

jo, ed and mel then split us into groups to work on the cauliflower brief and came round discussing our ideas with each group. it was really helpful to have a clear structure and examples of how it had worked for previous campaigns. i enjoy analysing ads but although things like the target market may be very clear, the insight isn't always so clear. for example, budweiser's wassup ad's insight was 'when male bonding happens, not a lot happens'. i think that being able to dissect ads will make the building of them easier, i'm trying to improve my ability to identify the core structure.

we presented to gavin at the end of the day and my team were happily declared the winners and given a bottle of moët each! as i mentioned before; students love cake but they love moët!

on the last thursday of each month, rapp treat the whole industry to free drinks which we happily got involved with. sitting out on the steps in the sunshine we spoke to ben and rob, another creative team as well as creative director shelby meale. a massive thanks to everyone at rapp for putting so much effort in for us and for being so accommodating. this was undoubtedly our best workshop so far.

j walter thompson

over the past couple of weeks i have been up to the illustrious rooftop garden of jwt not once but twice. the first time was to bend the patient ear of global planning director shekhar deshpande. we agreed about how the primary objective of advertising is saliency and disagreed about meerkats. shekhar spoke to me about jeremy bullmore, which led me to find this assortment of essays and mp3s which have become a commute staple.

i asked shekhar what makes a great planner. he explained that an interest in brands is crucial, not necessarily marketing but being able to form an opinion on questions such as why people pay so much for a pair of nike trainers over an un-branded pair. he went on to say that people and their behaviour should be at the heart of a planner's interests - peoples' responses to different contributing factors. personally, this is the part of the advertising process that appeals to me the most and is why i have recently been enjoying books such as 'watching the english' and 'nudge'.

the interest in brands and people is complimented by an interest in ideas. shekhar explained how advertising is a subjective industry and i was impressed by how matter-of-fact he was with his statement that we strive for the holy grail of money-making in a creative and interesting way (which i believe is where our meerkat debate kicked off).

the second time i visited was for a workshop set up by creative team mark and adam. they gave us a compelling talk at the end of the day, reiterating shekhar's comments on awareness of how people are affected by things and how advertising is about making an impact and changing behaviours. from the creative perspective they emphasised the importance of responding to basic human facts rather than changing technology. in the famous words of deb schultz and the famous lines of hugo macleod:

the most sound advice that the ant & dec of advertising (their pun, regrettably not mine) gave was that "you are your own agency". breaking into ad land requires a mutual understanding between you and the agency in which you work. having a strong sense of what you stand for will make it easier when people within industry contradict one another. my ambition is driving me to forge my own unique position within advertising and i am trying not to be held back by the fear of being wrong and rejected.

mark and adam's talent is self-evident and their strong personalities and faith in their own abilities have undoubtedly propelled them to their position at one of the world's leading agencies. i am just pleased that people like skekhar, mark and adam stand by their word of being interested in people by being as generous and tolerant of those of us making our first steps into this dynamic industry.

say what you see

another recent agency visit was to razorfish to meet william lidstone and dan bonner. they had lots of advice to give and even set us a live brief to work on during the afternoon but almost as importantly to any self-respecting ad student; they had cake! william and dan started by giving us a presentation showing previous campaigns that razorfish have worked on including the dealership without cars, created for audi. i was particularly impressed by the augmented reality calendar, combining with an app, could be kept up to date month by month as new audi models came out.

william explained that razorfish offer 'expertise, experience and scale' and believes that big brands want a larger agency. he talked to us about razorfish's current approach to advertising and marketing as one of the leaders of digital and also where he saw the future of digital. we learnt about omni-channel retail which seamlessly knits together the consumers' experience across many different platforms, big data - using social, behavioural economics to build a service geared around you, multi-screening - based around the idea that certain tv is better experienced with your friends, remotely but collectively commenting, as many people already do on twitter, mCommerce - not only shopping from your phone but combining it with your in-store experience and near field communications (nfc) - the technology in oyster cards, being applied to phones, keys and other portable items.

once we'd had our fill of tech-talk, coffee and cake we split into three teams and worked on a live brief. with only 15 minutes to come up with 5 to 10 ideas based around the factors laid out about the brand we were then scored against brand new thinking:

• did we capture what the brand stands for?
• how new was the concept?
• did we apply the thinking to the components that the client had specified?

it was the first time that we had such a short time frame to work on a proposition and we were all keen to impress (not to mention the incentive of a prize for the winning team) and with the adrenalin pumping (don't judge - we're planners) i was the first up to present my group's ideas. it was nerve-wracking and although our group didn't win it was a great experience and we were provided with helpful feedback.

it was inspiring to see the way razorfish combine ideas with digital technology and was a really motivating and challenging afternoon. a big thanks to william and dan for their time... and cake.

sunday summary, on a tuesday

in my defence i have no defence; i need to get back on top of it. one month in, we were asked to make a 1 minute video about our experience on the course so far. i don't really think in film but taught myself imovie (yes yes i know) and made this:

coppola eat your heart out.

this week george boyter, creative director extraordinaire, set a two day strategy project. our task was to help farmers by-pass the big supermarkets and sell their fresh-to-market produce from the local farms. we teamed up into pairs and attempted to decipher a customer profile of the kinds of people who would buy vegetables and meat from this fictitious company. after some eager brainstorming we went to george for some advice, only to be knocked back to the beginning as he coaxed the insight out of us with some well worded questions. we spent the evening getting as far as the proposition only to see george again the next day and be informed that we'd gone off on the wrong route. with two hours to spare before the final presentation we managed to pull it all together having started over for a third and final time.

stephanie and i are currently working on making it shiny and presentable and i'll upload it once it's done. the workshop taught us to get used to turning ideas around quickly, it also taught us not to stereotype and make assumptions when determining the target market - the importance of going out and getting amongst people is invaluable. it was really helpful to have a clear strategy outline to build around.

on friday i polished my shoes and took a few of my classmates with me to the plush offices of dlkw lowe in kensington to meet zoe verrion. we hoped to gain a different perspective on the current state of the industry and to learn more about the role of an account director. zoe spoke to us about the tight timing of pitches and broke down the roles of planners, the accounts department and the creatives for us. she spoke to us about dlkw lowe's current clients and the rewarding challenge of working for a company like domestos in india; targeting women about the very personal topic of toilet hygiene and teaching them the importance of basic sanitation. zoe enjoys being an account director because she's involved right from the beginning of the process to the end. she explained how all the agencies are currently racing to get a clear picture of how social media can actually be profitable for a brand. zoe was very generous with her time, engaging and answered all of our questions.

the course so far is very much to do with what you make of it but i feel that i have a weekly confirmation that i'm doing the right thing.