Breaking In

Check out some great work from Greg Hahn.

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

GH: I’ll tell you what doesn’t impress me, which might be easier, is super-finished ads. Because that’s now the price of entry. Before, when you’d see a super-finished ad, it’d be like, “Wow this is really cool.” But then you see so much of that now that it’s like people dress up bad ideas. I’d rather see a really unpolished great idea than something fully blown out that shouldn’t have been. So what do I look for?

WS: Yeah, what do you look for?

GH: I look for a big idea because anyone can do one little joke. Anyone can write a headline, but if there’s a thought that changes the way I feel about something, then, to me, that is bigger. It seems like a lot of ads you see in student books are just one-off little jokey things. And maybe they’re all tied together because they have the same sort of punch-line setup. But if you can do something that really positions the way you think about something completely differently, like, “Wow. I never thought of it that way. But I should have.” That’s what I look for.

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Greg Hahn is Executive Creative Director at BBDO New York.

Lee Jeans – Buddy Lee – “Car”

EDS – “Cat Herding”

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Check out some great work from Nick Strada.

NS: [ … ]

I think advertising agencies are no longer just doing advertising. The job has changed. And we’re thinking of events and we’re thinking of interactive installations and we’re thinking of galleries and we’re thinking of exhibits and sponsorships and uniforms and letterhead. And I think that the more ways you can express your talent and creativity and ability to solve problems, the better.

And, as I’ve said, you want to see someone’s personality in a portfolio. If I see your book before I see you, I want to feel like I know you a little bit, or a little bit about you. And I think other projects are great. In fact, it’s really dry when all you see is a stack of ads. I think it’s not competitive because what people trying to get into business need to remember is, the business is crying out for fresh, new talent but it’s still a buyer’s market. There’s still more demand for places than there are places. For the top 10 agencies in London—take your top 10, whichever 10 those are—they will probably, between them, hire seven to eight junior teams this year. And there’s however many hundred junior teams looking for work this year. And so it’s super, super competitive and anything you can do to give yourself an edge is definitely smart, I think.

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Nick Strada is a Creative Director at AKQA San Francisco.

Audi – Road Frustration Index

Redbull – Launchpad

Check out some great work from Akash Das.

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

AD: Freshness. Freshness in terms of the projects they have done and also how they have compiled their book. I remember hiring two people onto my team…one just showed me some thought-through book covers and the other a scrapbook full of ideas. Newness in the idea is what I look for.

WS: How important is finish? If ideas are the most important thing, can sketches be enough? Do you look at physical books anymore or is it all websites?

AD: I believe skills can be learned over time, from your seniors and from people you admire in the business. As a newcomer, people should focus on ideas. And for the second part, I get to see both websites as well as physical books. But I feel a personal interaction is always better.

WS: How important is writing? Do you need to see long copy?

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Akash Das is Executive Creative Director at Lowe Lintas & Partners in Mumbai..

HCL Technologies – The Employees First Effect

Publicis Perspective

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Check out some great work from Greg Farley.

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

GF: Talent in the basics. Show me a writer that can write or an art director with a unique visual point of view and I’ll gladly work with you. I’d rather see a perfect print ad than a poorly written or designed social media idea. Being good at your specialty doesn’t make you a dinosaur.

WS: How important is finish? If ideas are the most important thing, can sketches be enough? Do you look at physical books anymore or is it all websites?

GF: Finish is a fact of life. These days there are stacks of near-professionally crafted books lining the offices of every recruiter. Take the time to make your book sing, but do it online. No one should be killing forests for advertising anymore.

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Greg Farley is a freelance Copywriter/Creative Director in New York.

Toyota

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Check out some great work from William Gelner.

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

WG: Fast ideas. You’d be surprised at how many books have slow ideas. Intricate flow charts, multiple steps, a confusing and tiring journey. Yes, I want ideas that are whole and 360-degrees. But tell it simply. That said, the other issue that I see with books is the flip side of that: a lot of books coming out of school that are all visual solutions. That’s really tricky when you’re trying to hire a writer. Maybe it shows that they can think visually and can distill things down, but what about when you need an idea that is simple, well written, and to the point? You’d be surprised at how many writer books don’t have good, concise writing in them. Just verbal diarrhea. That says “lazy” to me. I don’t like lazy.

WS: That was actually one of my follow-up questions: do you think long copy is necessary? And, you sort of answered that, so let me ask it this way: do you think writers need to demonstrate writing in ads, or could it be in something else?

WG: I think it could be something else, as long as it’s not 30 pages. I don’t want to—again, we’re looking for people who can write well. That means simple, concise, insightful. We are in the digital age. And digital takes many forms. It’s not just websites. It’s more about content and conversation. And content needs to be articulated somehow. It can be mobile, for example. Or it can be on-demand content, or it could be television shows, or whatever.

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William Gelner is Executive Creative Director at 180 Los Angeles.

Axe – Gamekillers Case Study

Sony – The Rocket Project

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