Breaking In

In case you missed it, check out some great work from Greg Bell.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

GB: Here’s the truth: the vast majority of student books suck, so students are already going in with a strike against them. Usually, you’re opening it thinking, “Oh God, here we go—a bunch of stuff that will almost certainly be hard to understand, almost there, and rough around the edges.” So usually, your expectations are pretty low. You just see so many books as a creative director. It’s mind-numbing, really. I’m looking for something that wakes me up. Something surprising. Something that screams at me to pay attention. Even just one ad.

WS: Are there any traps that you feel a lot of students fall into? Or what would you not look for in a student book?

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Greg Bell was formerly Co-founder and Creative Director at Venables Bell & Partners and is now a commercial director signed with Epoch Films. Here is some of his recent directing work.

Google “El Vendór” Part 1

The entire “El Vendór” series can be viewed at trappeddave.com.

Old Navy

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If you missed it, check out some great work from Nicolas Roope.

WS: So what impresses you in a student portfolio website? What do you look for?

NR: Originality and raw ideas, and some ability to form them into something usable. Communication is really a mix of all kinds of things. It is a mix of some kind of idea or concept and then that is channeled in a way to deliver a message or persuade somebody to do something. So really the evidence of both those things is important, i.e., the ability to have ideas that feel fresh and interesting, and appropriate, relevant, and resonant. And then the ability to use those ideas as a kind of vehicle to deliver a message. It’s very, very simple.

A fluency with digital is also very important. Thinking digitally requires system thinking, which is never really there with traditional ad creatives. We don’t just put pictures and copy lines together, we’re designing complex applications to bring our ideas to life. If a creative can’t think that way then it’s a big limit on the scope of their thinking.

WS: Do you have writers and art directors or designers? What are the different creative roles you have here?

NR: We don’t have creative teams as such, we have a number of floating creatives who plug into different people for different types of briefs, a kind of “hot teaming”—like “hot desking.” It works like this because both problems and the solutions we have at our disposal are so broad that a single team would never be able to cover the necessary ground to think through every instance. One day they might sit with a strategist, the next a coder, the next an art director.

Poke does have art directors but not in the ad team sense. They’re attached to the design department, although, as I said, they get put into the conceptual, creative work too when it’s appropriate. We have a writing team too that works both on concept development and on the delivery side of things, so again, quite a different setup. 

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Check out some great work from Nicolas Roope, Founder & Executive Creative Director of Poke London and Hulger.

Hulger

Hulger lets you attach an old-school handset to a mobile phone or computer.

Plumen – “The designer energy saving lightbulb.”

Barnardo’s

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In case you missed it, check out some great work from Eric Silver.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

ES: Something that displays a unique way of thinking. Creative directors at “creative agencies”—and there are not that many—see tons of books every day and, unfortunately, many of them start to look alike. Perhaps because ad schools are teaching with the same methodology or perhaps because ad annuals and award shows tend to all look similar. The truth is even just one brilliant campaign can lead to a hire.

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WS: What do you think about including “non-ads” in a book?

ES: Again, it’s subjective. For me personally, “non ads” will go further than any advertising that’s in a portfolio. Again, the job of the applicant is to set themselves apart from the competition by any means necessary. When I was hired at Wieden in Portland, I had a decent book but Dan Wieden hired me based on a comic strip I worked on called “Smear.”

WS: How did you get into the business?

ES: I went to one year of law school and then did a clerkship in Los Angeles. During that job I was reading a statute and just couldn’t digest it. It dawned on me that I had zero aptitude or interest in my chosen profession. So I quit that day and started working on a portfolio. I always loved the idea of being able to create mini-movies. It’s a career perfectly suited for my attention deficit.

I took my first advertising job at a day rate of $25 a day. It’s very hard to get that first gig but, like any profession, it’s on the job that you’ll really learn the craft. So it’s critical that you start out at a great agency with smart mentors who will steer you in the right direction. It’s cliché, but don’t worry about money when you first start out.

WS: Do you have any tips for someone who wants to get into advertising?

ES: I would study all of the advertising annuals you can get your hands on. You should at least be familiar with all the work that has been done previously. Once you’ve done that…then forget it all. Go about the business of charting brilliant new avenues.

Check out some great work from Eric Silver, Chief Creative Officer of Silver & Partners, New York.

Ben & Jerry’s

FedEx

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WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

KW: First I look for clarity of thought and simplicity in the presentation of that thought. So for instance, I like to see an idea and sometimes it could be set up with, “This is what the idea is, and this is the execution of it.” I don’t need to see a thousand things in a book. If I see three to five strong ideas, contained, then that gets my attention. And if I want to see more, then I’ll ask for more. But I’d rather have less than more.

The ideas should be clear and expressed clearly. Also identify the media and how it would work, in print, online, TV, or radio because it’s not enough to have an idea, I want to know how it lives. And it should feel real. So it doesn’t matter to me if something is spec or hasn’t run because the idea, once it’s produced, it’s produced. It’s born. And that’s what I like to see.

And I personally like things that do not feel “ad-y.” And you see a lot of that in student books. But that’s also probably a symptom of how they’re taught. And I think the whole approach has to be revisited. And I think that needs to start at the teaching level. The teachers need to be more in tune with what’s happening outside of school, and how agencies are producing work, and the challenges that they’re facing as well. And the new buzzword I suppose is “integrated.” But for me, that’s still just multimedia.

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If you missed it, check out some great work from Vince Engel.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

VE: I think probably the first thing is just smart ideas and I think something a little bit different. And usually that tends not to come from a lot of the ad school students because I think they get set into a program of…They all seem to have, in my opinion, a similar look and feel, everything like the type is very, very small and the logo. And there’s very little copywriting today and that’s what I miss. I mean, I want to see examples that someone can actually write. Not that every ad is a long-copy ad by any means, but you seldom see that in writing anymore. There’s a clever headline and that’s as far as the writing goes, and I like to see a lot more than that. I think it’s more just showing off their creative thinking—anything that shows off their creative thinking, whether it’s a story they’ve written or paintings that someone may have done or a cartoon that they’ve…whatever. I just want to see how they think and solve problems…

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Check out some great work from Vince Engel, Partner & Creative Director at Engine Company 1, San Francisco.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula

Doc Martens

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In case you missed it, check out some great work from Val Klump.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

VK: I look for a book that has a lot of good, realistic ideas. Pretty obvious, right?

“Good” is a given, of course, and fortunately advertising offers a million and one ways to make a good book. You can create clever print ads, shoot funny videos, build mind-bending websites, comp ridiculous outdoor billboards, record your own radio spots, or anything else you can think of—a mix of media is advisable, but good ideas are good ideas, period. So fill ’er up with goodness. And remove anything you’re not into 100 percent. They say your book is only as good as the worst ad in it—it’s a tired truism, but there’s something to it.

Realism is a personal pet peeve of mine. Student books will often be filled with ideas that the client would never buy or that feel totally wrong for the brand. Be smart; go crazy, but be smart. And make extra sure that your digital ideas are realistic. Working at Google makes me especially sensitive to this one. Think about the constraints of the Internet and work inside them. You can’t click a button on “Snickers.com” and have a Snickers bar eject itself out of your optical drive—that would be a great idea if it were possible, but it’s not. This is especially true for any idea relating to Facebook, which is a very locked-down platform. Maybe I’m being crotchety here, so please don’t limit yourself…just be intelligent about it.

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