Ed and I have been hired, again. And we were offered something we felt we couldn't turn down.
After freelancing in London for the last few months, we've taken a permanent role. But not in London. Instead, we're off to Leicester and BIG Communications.
What?!
Yeah I know right.
Who?
They're called BIG Communications. They're in Leicester, which is a city (honest). It's an hour north on the train from London - so I'm not going a million miles away. And they've got some cool clients, won lots of awesome awards and have lots of in house departments that we can make the most of.
Why?
It's an opportunity that we weren't expecting to get. A role where we're hopefully not on the bottom rung, and one where we can work on all their major clients from top to bottom - including TV. The likes of Dominos, WKD and Tuborg sound like a student's wet dream. And there are plenty of smaller brands that we hope to get our teeth in to.
They're also being very considerate around all the other commitments we have in London, showing they're interested in us, not just with filling a job vacancy. And that's the exciting bit.
When?
We're starting on the 15th August, which is a week on Monday. Although we've known about it for a week or two, we wanted to wait until we had the contracts signed before saying anything. Whoop whoop!
Yes, believe it or not, no one has even thought about buying a fairly obvious URL. We've even got our SEO in mind - we're always thinking digitally you see...
As with every folio site, it's a work in progress. But we've got plenty of stuff in the pipeline so keep your eyes peeled for some even newer stuff in the next week. So feel free to have a flick through our stuff. And, if you like what you see, drop us an email.
Has had a little makeover. A new logo and hopefully in the near future, a new website.
I'm looking to give it a massive makeover. And turn it into something a lot bigger than it currently is. But there's a downside. It needs a lot of ground work doing by people that have a business head and I also need a web developer for a custom build. Both require money or funding, which I'm currently in short supply of.
Since it launched in November, Ad Job Wall has grow to having over 500+ eyeballs on Twitter and Facebook. Not bad, when you think how many ad students there are in the country.
It targets only the intern, placement and junior job market, which I guess puts it in a niche market. And I'm not looking to be like the traditional recruitment agencies that take a large cut when they place people in employment. I have an idea to make it different but also offer the agencies the best possible choice of applicants. But I can't do it all myself.
So, what am I looking for?
More agencies, a clever person or another industry organisation (along with the lovely folk from the YCC) to jump onboard to help boost and build on the profile that Ad Job Wall is gaining. Is that much to ask?
There have been some developments over the job front since the start of the year.
You may have seen our big push at the end of last year with our site takeover, which worked perfectly. Apart from one thing. Chris and I wanted different things. He wanted to stay up here in Scotland. And I wanted to head back to London.
Having exhausted all the possible opportunities up here, which for a team is currently non-existent, we've reluctantly decided that we're going our separate ways.
After teaming up at uni over four years ago, doing three years of work in agencies AND living together for two years, this wasn't the easiest of decisions to make. But, we both feel we're in strong positions to move onwards and (hopefully) upwards after the work we've done and experience we've gained.
As of writing this post, Chris has got some work in Edinburgh as a designer/art director at a digital agency. And I'm currently looking at opportunities in London. I have a couple of interviews lined up as a copywriter/digital creative, but I'm keeping my options open.
My heart lies in digital and being creative, but I want to see what's out there before committing to anything. So feel free to contact me if you've an interesting position available.
As for the name of the blog, it'll eventually swap over to something else, but fear not. The AP of (formally) CR.AP will still be pumping out more posts of weird and wonderful things on a near daily basis.
Having spent the last week getting a new portfolio together, as well as building a new site. I now feel I'm in a position to share it with the world. You'll find my work at andymarkpeel.com
This morning, I finally joined the masses on Quora. I won't go into the ins-and-outs (because you'll probably be aware of them already), but I did notice one nice thing about the site.
It's a great place to find a job.
Now I'm thinking you'll have to get in early, because I can soon see this becoming a Yahoo Questions type thing that'll all get very similar. But as the two shots I've taken show, both have some very good answers.
You never know, you could find a great job... just by asking.
P.S. I still need one. Thanks.
P.P.S. This popped up shortly after I posted this.
Well, it's not actually a written one. More of our portfolio launch.
This week has been a bit mental. Since launching the new feature on our site (plus the new portfolio), we've had over 1,200 views of it. And, have had plenty of good publicity from all sorts of places.
As well as a few iffy ones (you don't want to see the link for the first one!):
And, have a couple of meetings set up for next week. Not bad compared we've emailed about three people so far! Hopefully something might come out of those, but there's still time to throw your hat into the ring too. Just drop us an email with something tempting. I'll keep you posted as always.
Within two days, it's been seen by nearly 1000 people. Not bad considering it's pretty much been a Twitter only push.
If you fancy playing around a bit, have a go and then take a screen grab and link us to the screen grab. We'll start you at Google and go from there. Go on, do your worst.
I know plenty of people that moan when they get no time at all to work on a brief. Especially if it's something completely new and they know nothing about the product.
Well, one plucky student decided to do 24 of these non-stop, over 24 hours. One brief an hour.
Christopher Ross-Kellam, from Leeds College of Art, set it upon himself to ask Twitter for a brief every hour, which he was to complete, scamp and then move onto the next one. All of this had a purpose of course. To attract attention of the creative industry to secure a placement.
From his website, onedayinnovember.com he set up a live stream for the 24 hours. With lots of briefs flooding in from Twitter, the stunt was going well. But once the 24 hours was up, the work went up and the networking began.
@1dayinnovember's feed was full of plugs to all the right people in the industry. And, this morning it took off.
Dave Trott saw what had gone on and took matters into his own hands. With a fantastic outcome.
And other offers of a different kind have appeared too.
There's so much to be said for social media nowadays. This kind of stuff didn't exist a few years ago. And this is the reason why if you're not on it, you should be. This is the kind of exposure you can't buy.
Great stuff Christopher. Nice to see students being creative in every sense.
The geekiest way to get hired. Well done @aislondon and @polliecreatives. And, definitely the best way to spread good news fast. Were they ever going to say no?
This ad appeared last week in the "What Next In Digital" supplement of Campaign (25/6/10) and the digitally savvy people would have recognised the #joinglueisobar hastag at the bottom of the page.
Well, for those looking to "Quit Advertising" all you have to do is contact Glue Isobar on Twitter (with some links or details) and some of their lovely people, who are watching the #joinglueisobar hashtag, will contact the responders directly.
Simple. Easy. And very digital. Love it.
And if Glue Isobar want to know more about me, everything is here.
With the release of Scamp's book, I wondered how people thinking outside the box get hired. And, not always in advertising. Yes, there's always the portfolio, CV or interviews to back up a great stunt. But, what's been done, and does it pay to think differently?
I can think of a few stunts that have caught my eye, some work, some don't. Here's all the ones I can think of.
Alec Brownstein
Alec Brownstein used Google Adwords. Brilliantly simple, and by watching this video, very effective. So much so, it earned him a Gold Pencil and a Clio award. The simple fact of getting Creative Directors to Google themselves is also quite amusing.
Michael Checkoway
Headhunters and agencies work on a commission, but what if the general public did too? We all know most companies offer a finder's fee if you get someone you know hired. But what if you recommended a random stranger, and then they paid you in gifts (on top on your company's bonus)... sound good?
"All you have to do is provide me with good, qualified leads and referrals, and if one of those leads gets me a job, you'll have your choice from a number of exciting prizes including vacations and cash. The better the job I get, the greater the reward for you. And if you hire me yourself, then you can cash in on the rewards."
Of course he dropped a few legals on about working for a certain number of days, where he worked and what he was intending to gift you with. But, that's all the simple stuff.
Fabian Berglund and Ida Gronblom
Back in 2006, Fab and Ida stuck life-sized images of themselves pressed against the glass of Wieden & Kennedy, with a sign reading "still trying to get in". Having successfully navigated a book crit and a short placement, they were hired.
Since then they've worked across many of Wieden and Kennedy's accounts and picked up numerous awards. Early this year, they swapped the East end of London for the sunnier climbs of R/GA New York.
Hollie Belton and Amy Jackson
These two girls decided to put themselves up for auction on Ebay in an attempt to land a job.
Their ad said: "Two young creatives, conjoined in body and soul are selling their wares for one lucky creative director."
When bidding finished, they'd managed to get a year's salary of £30,050 each. Sadly though the mystery bidder happened to not be a Creative Director and on writing this they're still on the hunt for for that elusive job offer.
David Rowe
Over five days roaming the streets of London wearing a sandwich board David Rowe, a history graduate, attracted widespread media coverage and generated 250 enquiries from interested employers. All this before JCDecaux hired him.
He was spotted in Fleet Street by the managing director, Spencer Berwin, and hired him as a junior sales co-ordinator, working in the billboards (see the link there?), street furniture and StreetTalk phone boxes team.
Berwin said: "I was very impressed by David turning himself into a human billboard -- he's displayed a natural talent for outdoor advertising.
Funny that.
If you can think of any more, let me know and I'll add them.
More than 360,000 jobs have been listed on Twitter in the past 30 days. And now TweetDeck has just launched a beta version of JobDeck, it scans Twitter for jobs and then tags them according to category or location.
I must say networking has taken a new meaning after seeing this. I'm always seeing retweets of job openings from people in the design industries and now there is are websites to help make that even easier. TweetMyJobs and TwitJobSearch both work on a similar basis.
Take TwitJobSearch; I type in a job I'm looking for, eg. junior creative team, and then it finds all the matches it can. Apparently on the 21st January, Major Players had a junior team opening in an award winning integrated agency in London.
And it's as simple as that. What's great is if companies send out a post and don't use agencies to hire, it means you can find jobs that 'technically' don't exist. Awesome.
Isobel Advertising is using Facebook for it's recruitment drive.
I'd never heard of them before, so the inquisitive me decided I would do as the ad told me to and clicked on it.
It took me to the contact page, which was a bit of a shame as a recruitment page would have helped seen as there was actually no mention of any jobs going on the site. But hey, you can't please everyone. This is them... Facebook seems the way forward with selling yourself.
This is constantly up on my profile.
Diana Caplinska wants a job too.
If either can be helped, please do. This is my christmas appeal, and a poor one at that.
