Your portfolio, it will get you your first placement and job, but it will also develop upon seeing what others look like. On Friday we saw Craig and Paul and Blake and Will’s portfolios, these guys have been in the business 3-5 years and resemble our thinking, but obviously they are streets ahead at the moment, but we learnt so much off both of these 2 books.
Lesson #1
Your portfolio can be any shape size or colour and can have as many pages as it wants. They both had A3 coloured expensive ones rather than the St. Martins or Watford, whom when we see, are always A3 black boringness. We were the first team at Sunderland to go with the A4 plastic wallet, which everyone uses, these are great for carrying around but make yours stand out.
Lesson #2
What is in your book is up to you. Don’t let anyone say you need 3 press ads, 1 television spot and 1 other thing be it direct mail, ambient, web etc.
P&C and W&B both had one offs, 1 print, no print, all television whatever the hell you want. We have always wanted reassurance that sometimes 3 prints ads just don’t appear, don’t have 1 great print and 2 shitty ones.
Lesson #3
Nail your strategy. An insight with a human benefit, something that says this product does what for me.
People know chocolate tastes nice and makes you fat.
But maybe Inuits eat it to stay warm, or you find a solid fact that it boosts your sex life. They are more interesting, but that’s only half the thought. Now you have to turn that thought into a nice endline. Not Cadbury’s makes you horny.
Lesson #4
Press and television ads should never be 3 of the same. If the press says the same message 3 times, just with a different picture, that’s not good enough. Find a way to say Chocolate make you horny three times. If you can’t just do 1 press ad.