After completing a month on placement at Muirhoward, I have been asked to return to The Big Kick. Unfortunately I have been asked to return alone.
I have decided to take this opportunity for many reasons, which I won't go into now but obviously it means an end to mine and Vicky's creative partnership.
Vicky is to continue on placement with a different copywriter at Muirhoward (probably until the end of November) and I have the highest confidence that she will continue to dazzle them with her ideas.
I start back at The Big Kick on Monday 11th, where I will be helping out on well-known brands such as Walkers crisps, Becks beer and Nestle Kit Kats. After my experience there in the summer I have definately developed a love for marketing and I can't wait to get stuck in there again.
Week one of our placement at Muirhoward is now complete. We've managed to get a few of our Deloitte ideas picked for the next campaign, not sure whether the client likes them yet but will continue to update you all.
Here is some of Muirhoward's past work on Deloitte:
We've been working mainly on financial/banking type briefs, which aren't the most exciting products to advertise but are nonetheless, live briefs.
We are conveniently situated between some of the finest sandwich establishments in Farringdon. This is not good for our finances and definately not good for our health.
After just four days of our two week placement we have been asked to stay on for a further two months! That means they want us here until the end of November!
We may have to get ourselves some Ben's Cookies in celebration.
I (Charlotte) am still guarding reception at The Big Kick in Hatfield. However, I seem to be picking up more and more interesting tasks. For example, today I'm creating a moodboard for a pitch (can't tell you who) we have next week. Not the most creative task I could be doing, but still a bit more exciting than answering a phone.
I've also been ordering fun things like novelty phones and fancy light boxes for the creative department. If I wasn't so set on following the path to advertising creativity I could definately be persuaded to do this kind of job permanently
Also managed to get our portfolio looked at by one of the two Creative Directors who said something along the lines of, "Your book is really nice and simple, I'm probably going to steal that Robinsons idea". So that's positive. I'm still trying to corner the other Creative Director as everyone is so busy for the upcoming pitch (still not telling who the client).
In other news we have reworked our book a wee bit and given it in to The Cream Awards 2010 at The Talent Business, so fingers crossed for that. As far as I'm aware, the chosen few are given the chance to take part in a New Bloodesque show that is seen by industry types.
I also won a t-shirt from the wonderful Hello You Creatives. This was after a pun competition. My winning entry was:
Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was a salted.
Here is the offending article. It is very comfortable and so far I have been wearing it to watch telly and play Angry Birds. If you're not already following HYC on Facebook or Twitter then I suggest you do so. They're always posting interesting portfolios and opportunities.
And now for the exciting news:
Vicky and I have been selected for a 2 week work placement at Muirhoward. This was fantastic news as we really liked the Creative Director and loved some of Muirhoward's previous work. We don't start until the 13th of September, so the excitement will gradually become unbearable while we wait a whole month.
Last week Vicky visited St Albans again for a few days so we could go through our book, compare the work we'd done and go to a couple of book crits in London.
I thought it would be a lot more difficult to work seperately and talk over the phone but I think we're coping quite well. Obviously it would be much easier if we could meet up every week, but neither of us has any money booooooooo.
When Vicky arrives we always have a little show and tell, showing all the drawn up ideas we've been emaiing, texting and calling about for weeks and telling each other what we think. It's a tight squeeze to sleep two people in my bedroom, and probably a fairly boring trip for Vicky (I don't have a T.V. signal in my room), but the hard work and sacrifice will pay off eventually.
Last week we spent day one on Tottenham Court Road, firstly going to see the new Twilight film - Eclipse. I am an unashamed fan of the books and I have to say the film was OK, and probably good for the people who don't read the books. Personally I think it lacked some of the humour that was in the book, for those who know them well, I'm referring to that tent scene.
Later on we dropped into Saatchi & Saatchi to see a team. We had our book crit out in the large reception area. I've always dreaded having such an exposed crit but it was actually a lot more relaxed and gave us a lot more to look at while they were going through our work. We had some really constructive comments as always and got feedback along the lines of "your ideas are great but you're just not pushing them far enough". We shall be revisiting Saatchi's (hopefully) in about a month, so until then we will be "pushing" everything as far as we can go.
The next day we went to see our mate Brittony - Check out her blog she has moved into a house in Tottenham with some of the Dutch guys from our course. We were pleasantly suprised by the house and the area, in fact we were probably a little bit jealous of all their Ikea goodies.
Later on we went to Farringdon to visit an agency called Muirhoward, who are a relatively small agency that are responsible for those great HSBC "world's bank" ads:
We saw the creative director who was a really inspiring guy and obviously lives for advertising. He seemed really enthusiatic about all our work and offered some great ideas of his own. After showing him the portfolio he went and brought us some of the work he had worked on and we had an interesting chat about Crystal Palace and Ikea. Vicky and I both feel like he was on the same 'wavelength' as us and would love to get offered some work there! He said he'd get back to us so fingers crossed.
