Students taking part in the IPA’s Ad School tell us about their experiences so far.
Client Services & Planning:
Chris Kneebone
“I’m entering my third week at Karmarama and I love it, not just because of the free breakfast, constant ping pong playing or convenient 9:30am start; but because the agency is filled with really great people, who are intelligent, dedicated to their job and great fun to be around.
My working day begins with a strategy book on the train. No, this is not ‘train strategy’ on how to get a seat during rush hour, rather books to expand my knowledge of what makes good strategy in the ad game, and how to develop all important ‘insight’ into the hidden power of a situation. I read yesterday that the most important thing a planner must be is deeply intrigued in human behaviour. At least that’s how I’m justifying reading The Metro’s ‘Celebrity Guilty Pleasures’ on the train this morning…
Fundamentally planners summarise business problems and decide how best to solve them, and when I got to work I too spent my day summarising. In my case summarising BBC programme treatments and the best ‘business to business’ ad campaigns then putting this information into PowerPoint. (N.B. Planners seem to spend most of their day on PowerPoint)
(WARNING: Pretentious Statement Alert) When completing a summarising task I try to keep a quote, apparently from German philosopher, Nietzsche, in mind but not because I’m familiar with his works but because it keeps me focused:
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”
And this quote to me is what planning is about, keeping it simple, adding value and not wasting words. So with Nietzsche in mind, how would I summarise a ‘day in the life of a planning intern at Karmarama’?
Ping Pong and PowerPoint.
Who knows, you might just make a planner out of me yet!”
Natnalin Thananan
“Two weeks into the IPA Ad School programme and I can’t believe how incredibly blessed I am to have this rare opportunity. A year ago, when I was back home in Thailand, it was only in my wildest dreams that I would be interning at one of the top UK ad agencies. Not only am I meeting talented veterans of the industry, but the participants of the programme are some of the brightest, young aspiring admen and adwomen as well.
At G2 Joshua, I’m witnessing first-hand the importance of good account handling, as well as learning how to work together with the creative, project management and planning departments. From the get-go, my mentor has ensured that I would have a full experience of the agency life, and although it has been a busy two weeks, I wouldn’t trade this for the world.
One of the best parts of the programme has to be IPA’s weekly sessions. This week, we met with Chris Jackson, Client Services Director at Leo Burnett, who spoke to us about ‘The Art of Client Services’. Not only did he give us useful advice about working in the advertising industry (such as ‘be the first in, not the last to leave’ and ‘don’t suck up, suck down’) but we were also advised on the do’s and don’ts of handling accounts and clients. Chris spoke to us about managing clients’ expectations, the importance of organisation, planning ahead and adding value to the team. The session provided us with an insight into how client services work within the agency as well as from the client’s perspective.
I’ve learned more about the agency process in the last two weeks, than I’ve learned in the last year whilst studying for my degree in Marketing Communications. Not that my degree isn’t useful; knowing the basic theories and their marketing implications certainly helps, but nothing beats learning how to do something by actually doing it.”
James Macrae
“Week two at Publicis has somehow managed to encompass every task, struggle and triumph that an internship can throw at you.
During my first day I spent most of my time working on Beefeater researching the brand and getting to truly know this iconic distillery, along with trawling through hundreds of copies of foreign defence catalogues for Airbus advertisements. Just as these tasks became systematic and I fell into a rhythm I was swept into a client meeting with Beefeater where I was able to experience an ad team working as a cohesive force meeting the client’s demands with creative opportunities and business based research.
Still jotting down everything I heard in my notebook I was then taken to a team meeting where everything was broken down and the budget was divvied up… and this was all before lunch on Tuesday. From then on I began to settle into the office structure, there was a constant stream of tasks and challenges and the paper began to pile up around me as my inbox began to fill up.
This week was mad and brilliant; designing cocktails for social media (including a trip with a couple of planners to ‘photograph’ them), meeting with directors and media executives regarding a band tour in Dublin and of course a Bastille day party complete with berets and moustaches. There was always several tasks to be done, initiatives to take advantage of and at no point did I feel like “just another intern”. Even though at times it was frantic and hectic after this week I can truly say that I can’t wait to go back on Monday.”
Creative:
Olivia Vane
“After a scorching weekend, I am now commencing my third week interning as an art director at multicultural advertising agency Here and Now 365 in the heart of the East End.
These past two weeks have been an exciting learning experience. As a creative team, Ahmed and I have been working on a large-scale rebranding brief. This concept-driven challenge has been a welcome opportunity. Rebranding from scratch has allowed us to play with being really imaginative and has stressed inspiration can come from anywhere, including exploring Whitechapel and beyond. Alongside this we have been juggling a number of smaller creative briefs: skipping from devising film commercial concepts to digital campaigns.
One of the most rewarding aspects of working here, however, has been learning about the cultural differences that must be considered when marketing to culturally diverse audiences. In these two weeks, I have already learnt a great deal about South Asian and British Indian culture. I only hope this learning curve will continue for the remaining six weeks and I get to enjoy more Whitechapel jalebi and burfi!”
Search:
Agnes Molnar
“After the first week training at GroupM University I was really excited to start my first day at MediaCom. There is so much to learn about search marketing and the tools of Google. On my first day I was introduced to my mentor and it turned out I will be spending most of my time working on PPC campaigns for Cancer Research UK. It’s a really exciting prospect for me because it’s a good cause and there are lots of interesting strategies that a charity can use to gain supporters.
First of all I got familiar with Google AdWords, but I am still learning a lot about this tool day by day. In my first week I was collecting relevant keywords and writing ad copy for Cancer Research UK. Finding new keywords is really interesting because you have to think about how people search and what exactly they would type into a search engine. I also had to look at a few search query reports and find queries that do not drive relevant traffic to the advertiser’s website. I enjoyed all these tasks because I got an overview of how campaigns work on a keyword level.
We’ve had some great evening sessions too. Every Tuesday we have an event called ‘Techjam’, where we learn about coding and new technologies such as Bootstrap, which helps to make building a website easier. I hope at the end of this internship I can even build my own website. Thursdays we have evening sessions at different agencies but this week we got an overview of the IPA Search Certificate exam. I’ll have to study a lot but it is going to be really helpful for working in search. I’m gaining a wide range of new skills in this internship, which is awesome!”
Read reports from week one of Ad School.