This week’s session ended with great advice and well thought out critiques for our team. We were hosted at the WordSmiths: a company that has built a reputation as comprehensive strategists and implementers of award-winning internal communications, marketing communications and training. Diane Herbruck served both as host and guest advisor, while we also had the opportunity to speak with Amy Wellington, a recruiter for Campbell Ewald.
Campbell Ewald has four offices across the country, but remains headquartered in Warren Michigan. If you’re not aware of their work [Check it out!] you will probably remember the Alltel ads with the jingle “come and get your love”, [paired with the bumbling sales associates. Amy gave us insight into the company, as well as giving us some tips for job searches in general for the advertising field.
Here’s a few:
- Know your agency – It’s important to know their work, and actually have/show a desire to be working there once you arrive at the interview stage.
- Persistence – Show that you earnestly want the job, don’t stalk the company, but find the appropriate people to be persistent too and express your interest correctly.
- Network – Your resume has a better chance of floating to the top if you get a recommendation through a network connection; in addition the industry exists with networking connections, this shows an advantageous ability to work beyond the normal effort of the job search. (Start by exploring your personal networks!)
After learning about Campbell Ewald the team moved to presenting final concepts for the Creative Crawl, and then discussed tag-lines and logo concepts for the G.R Hopper. Next week the ‘final final’ concepts will be presented at the Highland Group, where the final campaign will be decided by our guest advisors and hosts.
A few takeaway’s from our advisor this week based on our work and presentations that may help fellow young creative:
- When presenting to the client, have confidence, sell – sell – sell. Many times ‘competence is lost by lack of confidence’. Even if you’re a creative and not the account executive you will still be selling things to clients: your ideas.
- One way to gain confidence with what you present: work it every way possible so you understand what you’re presenting to a client. ‘Destroying’ your concept, work it backwards, sideways, upside down, anyway possible that allows you see a creative angle you’re missing. This advice can help with media planning, and account direction as well!
- Great insight: Be able to justify your ‘end’ to the client. If you can, the account team will back you up. If you’re not able to justify why you chose a creative element, (I.E using blue instead of pink), you’re not selling what you created effectively. At that point you’re “on your own”.
Post contributed by: Andrew Rushmore
