How to get a job in advertising (before the AI robots take over the world and we are harvested for our organs)

I’m still finding out what advertising is. Everyone is.

Blink and it’ll change again quicker than you can say ‘Magic Marker’.

Most agencies don’t describe themselves as advertising agencies anymore.

That’s because now it’s an amorphous, ineffable beast.

Back in the days of Mad Men, it was all about posters, radio ads and some black and white TV ads. That was advertising.

Then TV quickly became the boss media.

Some time in the early 2000s, the internet gate crashed what was a civilised party like a drunken friend who made everyone do shots and subsequently lose their minds.

Suddenly, everyone was trying to do all of the above plus whatever the latest online fad was. And every brief always had…

MEDIA: TV, posters, DPS, radio, banners, pop ups, landing pages, email… and a viral video.

My head still hurts.

Word up, fellow kids. Gimme some of that viral video shiz.

The word viral video was thrown around, by people who didn’t really understand what it meant.

Every client wanted their agency to make a video people would share as an attachment in their emails that would spread around the world faster than Covid.

It rarely did.

Especially when the brief was for a yoghurt and it mandated that the ad had to include a strong USP message and a PG theme, all fitting snugly within the 20-page brand guidelines manual.

And of course, hot on its trail was social and short form YouTube/TikTok/Snap! videos. And PR. And whatever else clients want to throw into the mix to make themselves feel down with the kids.

So where budgets used to be carved up between the age old trifecta — TV, radio and print, they were now spread thinly across 1000s of channel. Wafer-thin in many cases.

But if I sound down on advertising, I’m really not. Spend a few years in advertising and you become a professional moaner, which is funny because the industry really is an exciting beast that lives on the cutting edge of creativity. It embraces new styles, trends and technologies, and always keeps you on your toes. We don’t crush numbers on a computer. And we don’t have to clean toilets for a living (although some briefs do feel a little like that from time-to-time).

The people are nuts, but great fun. Advertising people are always people that you’d want to go to the pub with because the conversations are guaranteed to be hilarious and there’s always the sense something crazy will happen.

It doesn’t take long in the industry to end up flying business to some far flung place making a cool ad with a director and their production company, getting treated like royalty.

Shooting ads is a huge buzz. We call them sholidays because it’s a shoot-holiday. When a crew of talented people are making something you wrote a few months earlier on your computer, you get quite the kick of endorphins.

Not sure if you are a creative or a designer or a writer or an OnlyFans star?

I get solo students approach me from time to time who are not sure what they want to do and think that agencies will take them on and let them find out on the job. I can tell you now - that’s not the way to go. It’s a one way ticket to going back home to living with your mum and dad. Sure, if you get a job as a creative in a digital agency, you may one day move to what in the UK we call an above-the-line agency, i.e. the agency that makes nice TV ads and all the best brand ads that everyone still covets. But if you want a job as a creative, you better ditch that grey suit and don your best baggy trousers, ironic t-shirt and put a website portfolio together. Something like this amazingly gifted guy has made. Click here.

It doesn’t have to be long, or feature every product imaginable, but it needs to have some concepts on it. It can be just images of hand-drawn print ads if you like. It just needs to show you can write ideas that are good, interesting and make sense. 4 campaigns will do to begin with. And campaigns they should be. Not just one-off stunts - proper ideas that can run in any media for years. This is the sign of a good idea and a good creative. If you can do that, you can work for the best places around like AMV, Leo Burnett, BBH, etc.

Play to your strengths

So, you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, untarnished by years of alcohol abuse and jaded by the late, thankless nights. You will most likely have a penchant for music that sounds to me like a mix of bad tinnitus and a toddler playing on an electric keyboard. Agencies will want you for what you know and love and the markets you have the ability to speak with. So make some of your work sensible and grown-up. But also do stuff that makes you look on-point and different to all the other creatives gathering dust in the agency you want to work at. Do something that works in TikTok, uses generative AI or whatever is the flavour of the month. This will make you stand out. Use AI and future-proof yourself. Keep it simple.

Here’s a link to a website-builder I recommend using:

click here

Start basic. And start seeing people before you feel ready. Don your thickest skins and be prepared to get feedback you don’t like. When your book’s in an embryonic stage, get it out there. Avoid seeing ECDs and CCOs to begin with - instead show your work to as many young creatives as you can. They’ll be more than happy to help you out if you are nice to them. Then over time, you might start making stuff look more professional, even start shooting test ads. But believe me , the most important thing is to keep turning out good ideas.

If you’re not sure whether you’re a designer, a creative or a suit, putting a book together and seeing people will quickly make you see where your strengths are and what you love anyway. It’s a great exercise.

Team up or ride solo?

Advertising creatives used to work like this: the copywriter would take a brief then write an idea or line for a product, then hand that scribble to an art director who sat in a different office in the building and say: “Make this look pretty.”

Then along came Bill Bernbach (DDB). He realised that by making these two sit with each other, they would create better work by bouncing off each other. Since the 1960s, this has generally been the way all creatives in the world work. So if you want a job in a top flight agency, I highly recommend you team up with someone good because believe me, it’s so very difficult to go solo. There are some places that have solo creatives who they might want to team you up with but these are rare finds and you will make your life harder than that of a cobalt miner in Africa if you try and go it alone. So find someone whose work you like and team up. Quite often it’s best to work with people who haven’t got the strengths you have and visa versa. I can sometimes be a little low on the analytical side, but I’ve got loads of ideas that come out quicker than I can write, and sometimes are messy half-thoughts. So I work well with people who are the opposite to me and can craft my thoughts make more sense. That’s ADHD for you.

You can find solo creatives at your uni/college, but also at Nabs which is a great charity for us lot. They can help with a lot - from teaming you up, to help during hardship, or just advice.

Try singlecreatives.com

Alternatively you can call a recruiter who will invariably have some solo creatives on their books looking for someone good like you to team up with. The good ones in London are people like AK Creative.

And then there’s LinkedIn. Always a good place if you are connected with the right people.

When you find someone you like, stick with them. But if you don’t have the right chemistry, ditch that person right away. There’s nothing worse than spending a decade with someone who you get a shitty job with and the whole time arguing about whose turn it is to make the coffee or why you shouldn’t start a sentence with a preposition. Don’t be sentimental and worry about making them sob: this is business and you need to work with the right person. You career depends on it and there’s no more important time than now.

So make and keep lots of friends in the industry and you will be set for success.

Stick with a good partner till you get a job. If you’ve made a good relationship and piqued the interest of a few agencies as a team, you’ll be starting at the beginning again if you have a new partner.

I know of a team when I was last at BBH who made good work and wrote good ideas. But they hated each other. On placement, they wrote and great idea for a charity brand that BBH had which got them their first job. And once they got their job they told everyone they needed to split and couldn’t work with each other. This lost them a job in the best agency in town. #facepalm.

My final piece of advice on this is - if you can, make yourself a boy-girl team, do it. Agencies are crying out for women creatives in a drive to change historical biases. So do this and you’re already winning. Not essential but it’ll help you.

AD/CW

There are some teams out there who go against the grain and are 2 copywriters or two art directors, but while this may work, in my humble opinion, it’s a bad idea.

I started out with a chap called Simon and neither of us really knew what we wanted to be, other than multimillionaire creatives who were followed by groupies everywhere. I became the copywriter, and Simon, the art director. Over time we used to jump on each other’s toes by doing each other’s bits. We justified this saying our approach was more efficient as we could share the load no matter what. But what ended up happening was we ended not really putting 100% into our craft and honing our talents. It takes years to be a good AD or CW and by doing both, you will struggle to become the next Paul Belford or David Abbott. When you know what you are, choose one and stick with it. You need to take the blame for a spulling error or a bad bit of kerning, because if you don’t own it, you will never be amazing. After I split from my partner I worked with a legend in the industry called Martha Riley

I was the AD and she was CW. It was a key moment in my career and taught me a lot and made me fastidious about my craft. It was then that all the awards started rolling in again. So, if you’re an art director, get yourself on Pinterest. Follow all the greats, and your mates. Live and breathe incredible work. Trust your partner to do their job.

Hello??? Anyone there?

As a solid team, you will need to get noticed. In my early years, I used to call agencies and ask to speak with a team or CD who would be able to sort us out with some slave labour… sorry, a placement. Nowadays, you have myriad ways of getting a placement. You will need to do a placement before you get a job, too. Those straight-out-of-uni jobs are unicorns and usually they’ll be in shit places. So get on LinkedIn and follow all the agencies you can find from big to small. Then go to their People section and find people who can help you. Sometimes agencies will post on LinkedIn that they’re looking out for placement teams.

https://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/homegrown

creativeplacement@house337.com

creativeplacements@fcbinferno.com

theden@vccp.com

I want to caveat this - don’t be disheartened when no one or few people reply. Keep trying, without being a stalker. These days I am freelance and I have about 500 contacts (and 12,000 linkedIn contacts) of which only a handful usually reply each time I email.

Sometimes you can find people can be in unusual places, too.

I’ll give you an example - no one in this industry uses Facebook for work. It generally looks weird and desperate. When I was still on social media, all my Facebook friends were generally non-ad-people. (You know - normal humans.) But I posted about needing a partner and someone randomly knew a really amazing creative who was looking to get back into the industry after a 10-year hiatus. I got in touch and she replied, which that led to two of my best years in advertising in the best agency in the world making ads on TV that a lot of times won many awards. So my moral here is, think outside the box, and keep an open mind.

Find interesting ways to communicate with people. This is a creative industry - be creative. I know teams that have done weird things like bought ad space outside agencies. Or, I cannot remember why but one team dropped a load of stuffed birds into an agency’s reception. Not sure if it worked, but I’m talking about it now. Change your name by deed poll to the name of the agency (or don’t - this is just a silly example). Everyone sends emails, so why not a letter, hand-written, sealed with a wax stamp. I remember a creative did something really interesting with Google ads linked to the CD’s name a while back which got him a job. He bought their names in the search terms so when they Googled themselves, his message appeared.

https://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/14/google.job/index.html

Start the world’s smallest ad agency in a telephone box near Saatchi & Saatchi or some other great agency. One creative made a rap and posted it on LinkedIn. It was really funny and got him a job. Another chap got fired - a week later he jumped out of a plane asking for a new job (not to kill himself). He got a job and millions of views in the process.

Get your picture on a mug and send it to the agency you want to work at so they have to look at your face every time they make a brew.

Do something batshit crazy like…

Showcase your work on 1-minute Briefs.

https://www.bankofcreativity.co.uk/one-minute-briefs

Do anything to get you top of mind. And have fun doing it.

Mike Oughton, my writer of 2.5 years, did something during the pandemic which was amazing. And won a Sweet FA Freelancer Awards. It was called Famous PPE-ople. See images below.

Don’t use LinkedIn to moan. It’s with a delicious irony that many ad people are bad at self-advertising and take to the internet to talk about how shitty everything is. It’s not a good look.

If you want a job as a creative, it is not unusual for it to take 1-3 years of doing placements. I know that sucks, doesn’t it. But you could get one right away. Who knows. However long it takes, keep your chin up, stay positive and you will get there soon. When you do get a job, all this pain will make the job feel so much sweeter.

If you’re feeling low and you have friends in normal industries earning reasonable money while you’re still finding coppers down the back of the sofa to make it through to the end of the month, just keep your eyes on the prize. While advertising’s big money days are pretty much over, you should still earn more (or a lot more) than most people. You could be CD in 5 years and that pays anything from £100,000 to £150,000 in London. I started on £15,000 in 1999 with a mountain of debt. In 2001 I earnt £65k. This is a great industry that is truly rewarding. It can also punch you in the tits when you are down too, but it’s worth it.

Qualifications needed?

One of the best things about becoming a creative is you don’t need to have a degree in medical sciences to qualify for a job. You could’ve been an ice cream man/woman/their/person before and no one will care. Just be a nice person with interesting work and people will want to work with you. It’s a good idea, but not a prerequisite to do an advertising course. I believe Watford is still the top dog, but let me know in the comments where you think is best.

In-house or in-agency?

One way the industry has changed markedly (for better or worse) is the move to go in-house. In-house is when a company like Pepsi look at their incumbent, AMV BBDO who had their Walkers and Pepsi account for years making work that was fun and made them famous, and they said ‘NO! We can do this ourselves and make our ads shitter.’ And so they did.

Bye bye Gary Lineker and “There’s no more Mr Nice Guy.” And hello “Walkers multipacks. Yeah yeah yeah!”

No, no, no.

Or say bye to “It’s not just food, it’s M&S food.” Say hello to some pensioners singing “Savings all over the store.”

As you can tell I am not the biggest fan of in-housing. I’m not against it in principle and some places do it well. Take Liquid Death, the water brand. They do their own ads. They’re anarchic and irreverent. Most importantly their ads are loved and are so good they make people drunk with excitement and pay obscene amounts of money for water (like you get in a toilet) in a can.

So if in-house is your thing, try emailing these people. The politics are different in-house. The person in the cubicle next to you is the client. You have fewer layers of people and in theory less second guessing “Would the client like this, though?”. But often in-house is predicated by the shift to smaller and smaller budgets and clients who don’t like being told what to do.

Recruiters.

Love them or hate them, they can be useful. As mentioned, they can help you partner up. And they can give advice on where would be good to work based on your style and ambition. Make friends with them. Call them, meet them, find the ones that work for you and cherish them. Disregard the ones who ignore you all the time. (There are plenty of these.)

Some will have live briefs for teams and if they do and they want to put you forward, their backing can help. Others might offer to send you to all the agencies speculatively. I wouldn’t agree to this or they’ll be onto you and said agencies for a fee for sending you over if you get a job at one later. Some might ask for a fee upfront for having you on their books. Avoid.

You will never find a good advertising creative job on one of the big recruitment sites like Reed or Monster.com. Your best option is all the small recruiters who specifically know about your role.

Try: Salt, Jo Joseph, Major Players, Cogs, AK Creative, etc.

London or nothing

London advertising is arguably still the best in the world. Nowhere else is so consistently award-winning. It’s where the finest minds in the industry work. Or want to work. People from all over the UK and the world gravitate here. The pay is better in the USA and Australia, they’re just not as good. Hell, even Amsterdam and Vienna pay better freelance rates than in London. Don’t ask me why.

But if you get a solid foundation made in London, you can work anywhere in the world. Well, thanks to Brexit, you cannot so easily.

Spread your net wide though. Don’t be a tunnel-visioned snob. Other places make great work. Dubai is a global hub full of Brits, Lebanese, Europeans, etc. And while there are fewer agencies and the production budgets are mostly smaller, they punch above their weight and win awards at Cannes, etc. And you will stand a chance of getting a job there much quicker. You will learn a lot and fast. But coming home to a rainy UK where you have taxes on taxes, will be a tough call.

But don’t be fooled into thinking the money is much better in Dubai. It’s not. They pay what they do while factoring in the absence of taxes. And the cost of living is higher. A pint of lager is still £13-15 everywhere. OUCH!

Australia is another one to look out for. If you’re young, the opportunities are there and the visas are easy to get. This gets harder and harder with each decade you add to your life as they stop welcoming you with open arms. So if hot weather, a better work-life balance, and animals that either want to poison you or eat you or both, appeals to you, go for gold. I’ve got mates who have made the move and never looked back.

Try Canada. As a Brit you can live there for a year without a visa, so give it a go. They do some good ads.

So you’ve got yourself a placement

Well done. I mean it. It’s taken laser focus, talent and steely determination. So kudos, you legends. Now just promise me one thing - you will read the brief and answer the brief as it is written. Don’t decide the brief is wrong and do your own thing. By all means show a wild card if it’s something that you can do that for, but if the brief is for advertising a car that has a range of 300 miles on a single charge, do something about that, not the fact that it’s got whizzbang AI technology. Some times, you can be a bit crazy, but if the agency wants an email campaign, write emails not videos and stunts. Not unless they explicitly told you to do this.

And if you get a big budget 360 campaign, be grateful. If you get a shelf-wobbler brief, look grateful.

Poker face. Smile.

Do the job and keep being nice till they give you your big break. Always do what your CD tells you to do. Never ignore them as this is a surefire way to get the boot. They’ve doubtless done this job years longer than you have and know the client inside-out, so whatever they say, do it and you will go far. You might not agree with them so raise your hand if you have anything you want to ask or think they’re missed, but don’t be a dick. When you get a few days to write a campaign idea, write loads. Show plenty of range, especially when you are still getting to know what floats his or her boat. But make sure what you’re presenting is good and makes sense. Test it on your friends or colleagues. We can all be too close to the brief sometimes and forget that people might not be privy to certain facts and therefore your poetic lines and metaphorical imagery might just be like hieroglyphs to someone seeing your ideas afresh.

So you still want a job in advertising?

I cannot say this with enough emphasis. Advertising isn’t for everyone. It lifts you up and brings you down. You can be flavour of the month and then get Turkey of the Week in Campaign the next. And while the job can be great fun and rewarding, if you ever decide you want a change of course, it’s hard as a creative. Our skills aren’t easily transferrable. I’m not saying it’s impossible but once you have the car and the mortgage payments, quitting to start at the bottom doing something else is tricky. So if you love it, do it. If you are lukewarm, press the ejector button and run for the hills.

Here’s a The Guardian article on the subject more generally-speaking.

Onwards and sideways

If you liked this article, please pass it on to anyone you might think will benefit from it. Get your university and lecturers to share it if they like what I have said.

I am available for lectures, speeches and book crits, on-site or over Zoom thingies. Please email or call 07966361458.

Good luck.

Richard Glendenning