Monday, September 7

Nabs Graduate Workshop

Nabs and JWT hosted a really informative, dynamic workshop a few weeks back. Everyone (incl the audience) was really responsive and there were a lots of questions and answers flying around which was great.

Here are my highlights:
- (to account handlers, mainly) "Show them (CD) that you care. Show them that you understand how fragile an idea can be and that you are as scared as them."
- the more responsibility you take, the more you will get.
- idea generation process (by James Webb Young): immersion, synthesis, incubation, birth and life.
- be the last person to give up/ work harder than everyone else.
- find out what people (in the industry) are talking about.
- have a perspective and be ready to justify it.
- keep sharing ideas
- test how good your ideas are. Do they spread?

Siobhan L, Lucy C, James S, Will H and Sam I.

Sunday, August 23

Albion

Busy week last week. I finished my job application for Albion (which consisted of me faking it as a poet and reciting my qualities in the 3rd person). It was filmed on my rooftop (hence the wind) by my lovely flatmate Tamara (thanks for the patience and the artistic eye).
Do you guys like it?

Poetry in a hectic city from sol wei on Vimeo.

Cwoffee XIII



great initiative started by Russell Davies and followed by Will and Sam from Adgrads.
http://adgrads.blogspot.com/

Rich Hall

I met up with account manager Rich Hall from JWT a couples of months ago who gave me plenty of advice:

- When speaking to someone senior, don´t be intimidated. Remember they are just another person with more experience.

- Now more than ever, we need innovative people with an entrepreneur flair.

- Expect challenging questions in an interview, if you don´t get them, you are doing something wrong. How do you react to them? Turn the challenge into your advantage.


Rich was kind enough to talk to me for almost two hours after a late meeting. What a legend!

Dave Trott



I attended a talk organised by "Under The Influence" a while ago. Dave Trott was giving the talk and he was fantastic. Really dynamic and straight to the point.
At risk of misquoting him, I found the following really useful.

-The answer to your client problem lays either on the product or on the consumer.

-Bad advertising goes from "impact" to "communication" to "persuasion". It should be the other way around. What is the persuasion?

-Client briefs can be confusing, but it needn´t to be so. Ask yourselves the following questions:
a) brain share or market growth? if you are a market leader, you want market growth.
b) trialists or current users? if you are market leader, you should aim for current users (because most people have tried your product already).
c) product or brand? if you are NOT the market leader, go for the brand! make sure there´s no confusion about which brand is being advertised, if there´s confusion, consumers will automatically assumed it´s the big player who advertised.

-products build brands, not the other way around.


I will leave you the link to URL if you want to explore further.
http://www.irisnation.com/undertheinfluence/