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.

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.

june redemption

hello reader peeps. not many posts in may but with very good reason, i was offered a full time placement at an agency called founded, which you'll be hearing all about in my next lengthy post on wednesday. full time MA + full time placement = cut down in posting. to soften the blow of these lengthy adland posts and to sweeten the deal because it's been a while, i provide you with a bit of em punning at its finest (ahem).

attention sikh