Pete Ioulianiou and Ollie Agius who graduated from the University of Lincoln BA (Hons) Creative Advertising programme in June have recently taken a full time job with highly respected ad agency Archibald Ingall Stretton.
The boys posing for the paparazzi
This is quite an achievement when you consider that they only graduated from the course so recently. But it's not just the speed with which Pete and Ollie got hired that is noteworthy, the manner in which they landed the job was also unusual. In fact, the way the boys got the job was so different that even the industry newspaper Campaign ran an article about their hiring in last week's issue (3rd December).
Here's how they came to be hired in their own words:-
"The way we were offered the job was different to say the least. Whilst at University, we regularly procrastinated on Facebook and Twitter. We came across a competition AIS were running through Twitter: their 1000th follower would receive an hour with Steve Stretton and Matt Morley-Brown for a portfolio review. We carefully timed when to hit the 'follow' button on Twitter and were lucky enough to win! That was the first time we met Steve & Matt.
Following our placement at digital agency Dare we met with again with Matt and he offered us a two week placement. As soon as we started we were thrown in at the deep end and amongst other things worked on a major pitch for new business. Some of our work was chosen by the client and the work that we have done since then for O2 has been entered into industry competitions by the agency.That was enough to secure us an extension on the placement.
We were working on the best briefs in the agency through mostly luck and a bit of cunning. Our work was always chosen to go to client on these bigger briefs. This secured us another extension.
By now we were really enjoying our time at Archibald Ingall Stretton. Everyone made us feel part of the agency. We were playing for the work 5-a-side team and going out with everybody after work on Fridays. AIS is an incredibly friendly place with a 'work hard, play hard' attitude. It’s all about the work but when it’s time to party, we all go out.
Almost a year after our successful Twitter competition win, AIS offered us a job via Twitter.
A nice thing Steve Stretton mentioned to us was that he felt he had to offer us the job otherwise there would have been a 'war' at the agency. Apparently people from every single department were asking him to hire us which made us feel great."
The Campaign article on Pete and Ollie's recent hiring
Many congratulations to Pete and Ollie from the staff and students on the Creative Advertising course: it's no less than they deserve after all of their hard work and dedication. That's two more Lincoln Creative Advertising graduates employed in the industry's best agencies to add to the ever-growing list.
You don't need to be good at drawing to come up with good ideas, however being able to visualise your concepts effectively is an important skill. That's why the Level 2 students recently underwent a crash course in drawing during a mentoring session last week.
Pictures from the drawing sessions:-
During the workshop that was run by Mike the students explored various methods to re-evaluate and improve their drawing, such as not looking at what they were drawing and drawing with their whole arm rather than their hand. The strangest method, however, involved the students feeling their subject rather than looking at it.
Greg gets to know Artur a little better
Emma can now recognise Oona in the dark
The results may look, er, unconventional but the principles of what was learned will help the students approach drawing in a different manner in future.
Two weeks ago the second years visited the following top London agencies with Mike and Gyles: AMV BBDO; Isobel; Inferno and RAPP - a very wide ranging selection of different ad agencies who had kindly agreed to speak to us.
In the morning Mike took half the second years to visit Isobel where Account Manager Juhi Mehta had organised a superb session. People from all departments of the agency talked to the students about their roles within the agency and how Isobel approaches advertising. Agency founders, Paul Houlding and Creative Director Rob Fletcher gave great talks on the business and how to get a job in advertising. It was very kind of the agency to devote so much of their time and energy to the visit and the students even received a free goody bag! What more could you want?
The staff at Isobel go OldSkool
Whilst that was taking place, Gyles visited AMV BBDO with the other half of the second year group. Creative Director Mark Fairbanks showed work completed for the Metropolitan Police and Walkers Crisps and spoke about the 'extending' nature of advertising: how the digital revolution is transforming the way agencies work, the work they produce for their clients and ways that the industry is evolving to take advantage of the emerging opportunities. Amy Daniels then showed the group the Creative Department and the new ground floor 'snug' that has just been completed.
Gyles making his group freeze for a little longer before going into AMV BBDO
In the afternoon Mike and the AMV group went and visited Inferno who just happened to be having a 'Mad Men' day where everyone in the agency turned up to work in classic 60's Madison Avenue attire.
Inferno greet us all in style.
Despite having just finished a long meeting, Digital Creative Director Tim Palmer gave a great talk on the role of 'digital' in advertising, now and in the future, showing some great examples of digital at it's best. This gave the students a great insight into the huge potential of this medium. Lincoln University Creative Advertising graduates Ruud Kool and Brooke Cutmore, who are currently on work placement at Inferno, were also on hand to answer any questions.
This was a very productive visit and Inferno was a great contrast to the morning session at AMV.
Meanwhile, in west London, Gyles and the Isobel group visited full service ad agency RAPP in Hammersmith. Executive Creative Director Barney Cockerell showed us the work they have recently completed for Cancer Research UK, Unicef, NSPCC, Bacardi, Crisis and Skype. After that Barney had organised a full afternoon of speakers from a wide range of departments in RAPP including Media, Data, Account Management, Planning, User Experience, Operations and Creative. It really was an incredibly informative (and sometimes complicated and scary!) insight into who does what in the agency and the range of relationships between different departments.
Here are some shots of the RAPP offices:-
As you can see from all of this, the second years experienced the full range of London ad agencies and learned a great deal from the senior people in some of the top companies enabling them to understand what it takes to land a job in this wide ranging and exciting industry.
Thank you to everyone who made these great visits possible.
Two of last year's University of Lincoln Creative Advertising graduates, Emma Greenwood and Rachael Lawns, have been very enterprising in their quest for advertising fame and fortune.
The girls have created some very good work for The Petwood Hotel in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire with a couple of ads targeted at very specific audiences. The first ad appears in the Good Food magazine at the food fair in Lincoln and highlights the quality of the food on offer at the hotel:-
The second ad, demonstrating some very sophisticated art direction and copywriting skills, is aimed at the local RAF bases in and around Lincolnshire. The Petwood Hotel has a long association with the RAF and was a favourite place for the famous Dambusters who were based at Woodhall Spa:-
Emma and Rachael have been very proactive in their quest for success and have been working directly with the hotel and the printers. This level of enterprise bodes well for their future success and it's great to see such good quality work being used in local advertising.
As regular readers of this blog will know, the Lincoln Creative Advertising students hold fantastic themed parties and last week saw the third instalment of 'Lincoln Ink'.
And just like previous years' parties the posters were excellent, this time featuring level 2 students Darina, Rob, Jack and Elliot:-
The creativity and quality of the 'tatoos' were once again very impressive:-
A fine example of what we are continually telling the Creative Advertising students: creative opportunities are everywhere and show themselves all the time. In work as well as play!
Part-time University of Lincoln Creative Advertising student Will Winder has recently had some of his work published in the local press and, due to its success, it will also appear on posters around the region next year.
Will, who works for South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, regularly produces promotional material for the local bus network. Local transportation advertising is not generally regarded as a great creative opportunity for advertising but Will has been changing all of that with a new campaign.
Will's campaign makes South Yorkshire Transport's work significantly more engaging with a series of ads that clearly and very cleverly highlight the benefits of using their Park & Ride service.
It's clear how the Creative Advertising course has helped Will in his creative thought processes and made the Park & Ride in the South Yorkshire region that little bit more tempting.
Yesterday the third year's were treated to a half day workshop titled 'The Creative Detox'. Here's level 3 student Adam Smith (@AdamTheSmith on Twitter) to explain what it was all about:-
"Wandering into Studio 2 of the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, I felt like I should've packed my ballet shoes: the windows were big, the floor was tactile and grippy and the ceiling was high enough to chuck a ballerina as high as you like.
Ten minutes later and Mandy Wheeler, co-founder of Punch It Up and wise one for the day, had our group pointing at things and calling them whatever they were not. Simple, right? Not so. Trying not repeat ourselves, say something totally unconnected, funny, random, not saying whatever other people next to us were saying, started making it tricky. Needless to say, it was frustrating.
But who placed these rules on us? They were not externally imposed. No-one but ourselves.
Sounds quite 'Jerry's Final Thought', but it's a pertinent point that relates to how we work. When coming up with ideas, why are we naturally restricting ourselves?
By naming and shaming these factors, most of which are internal, they can be dealt with. And this would lead us to fewer restrictions in idea generation, thus mapping out a path to the holy grail... better work! Champion.
The rest of the session was devoted to getting rid of these barriers.
The 'Yes, and...' technique works great with (creative) partners, stopping criticism and blocking comments dead in their tracks. Think now, edit and refine later. There's nothing more thought-busting than someone going against your grain, so go with it, in other (longer) words. So what if it leads to more thoughts that are crap? There's still a greater chance of having 'eureka moments' if you do it.
Following this, we were pulling objects out of boxes, questioning what they were, painting a mental picture about it. Idea progression, again importantly without the thought-blockages.
No need for ballet shoes after all."
Thanks Adam. To add to this post, check out Ash Billinghay's (@Ash_Billinghay) post on the CAInspration blog here.
Finally, thank you very much to Enterprise@Lincoln for funding this innovative event and Kim in LPAC for sorting out the most perfect location to hold such a 'hands-on' workshop. The LPAC rehearsal studio was SO appropriate!
And....relax.
It's really busy in the Creative Advertising studio at the moment and here are a few photos of what's going on.
Justin is with the second years reviewing documentaries that they've made exploring human stories and empathy; Mike's with the second years critiquing some Hubba Bubba Tape press ads that explore product/target audience relationships and communicating benefits; and the third years are working on big ideas to solve the problem of people not reusing plastic bags when they go shopping.
And, as usual, all this is happening at the same time. It's a very busy department and there's a really exciting, vibrant atmosphere. It's excellent.
Although this post is a little late, here are some photos of our students and recent graduates at the 2009-10 YCN Student Awards ceremony held at Shoreditch Town Hall on 28th September.
As you'll know from earlier posts, a total of twenty second and third year students from the Creative Advertising course were successful in the awards. It was our most successful YCN year to date. See the full list of our students and work here and the overall competition results here.
You can also see even more photos from the evening here.
As John Nash may or may not have said in real life (but definitely did in the film 'A Beautiful Mind') "Good morning, eager young minds!".
Well, it wasn't morning, but the minds of the new first year were very eager to impress with t-shirts they had been asked to design before the first lesson. The brief was simple: 'produce a t-shirt which says something about you, where you are from, your influences etc. and communicate one of these things clearly.
From 'Communist Clingons' (oh, yes) to a 'ray of sunshine' each t-shirt gave us another clue about the passions and background of each student.
Congratulations to Becky Chapman and Liam Nicholson whose designs were voted as the winners.
More great alumni news from the University of Lincoln Creative Advertising course!
Creative team Tom Smith and Darren Urquhart who graduated from the course in 2008 and now work at Ogilvy, London have just completed the new Ford TV ad:-
According to the team the idea of the 'ampersand ad' was to show that customers get more as standard with Ford, such as alloy wheels & air conditioning & quick-clear windscreens & Easy Fuel technology &, &, &...
The TV shoot took place over two days all across London, including an overnight session with a time-lapse vehicle also filming separately. The ferris wheel was created in post-production and tracked-in to the real footage afterwards. Two versions of the ad have been created, one for the Fiesta and one for the Kuga, featuring the music 'Rockist Part 1' by School of Language.
In addition to the TV ad that's showing on a TV near you at the moment the pair also created a special-build billboard to further enhance the campaign:-
An effective, simple idea that has been very well executed. Nice one, chaps! You're doing us proud.
Check out page 13 of this week's Campaign magazine featuring past graduates Darren & Tom, showing their "See Hidden Things' ad for Ford Mobility vehicles and their free parking sensors.
It's great to see the industry using University of Lincoln Creative Advertising students as case studies. Click on the ad below to see it in greater detail.
As part of Welcome Week, we ran a quiz for our new first years based around the theme of 'communication'. Clearly a strange and wonderful bunch, our new first years presented us with fine performances in the three rounds of pictionary, sound effects and, as you can see in these photos, a bit of mime. It was good to see how open they were to doing things differently. It bodes very well indeed for the future!
So far, so good: a little creative expression never hurt anybody. Just wait until they discover that we teach through the medium of modern dance: that should really test their metal!
It's Monday 20th September 2010 and that can only mean one thing, it's the start of the new academic year.
The summer's over so Gyles can put away his gardening gloves, Mike B can put away his DIY tools, Justin can unpack his furniture, Mike Murphy can leave his passport at home and Annie can measure up for some new curtains.
Last year was a great success for the course and has set a very high benchmark that we will have to meet this year. The graduation ceremony had a great turnout and was a fitting end to the students' time on the course. This isn't of course the end of our ties with the graduates because we are very proud of our their achievements and keep in touch with them on a regular basis.
Although all the ex students seem to be doing exciting things at the moment, notable mentions are Neil & Stefan who are about to start a placement at Publicis; Ollie & Pete who have worked at Dare Digital and who are presently doing very well for themselves at Archibald Ingall Stretton; Charley and James who have been working at Team Saatchi since the beginning of the summer and who look to be carving out a niche for themselves there; Steve and Josh who had a great placement at Abbot Mead Vickers and who are now at VCCP; Charlotte & Vicky are working at Muirhoward and Alice & Ade who are currently on placement at Isobel.
Apologies if we have missed anybody out - please let us know where you are so that we can update the blog.
We had some truly fantastic visiting lecturers and visiting speakers last academic year and the trips to the London ad agencies were equally memorable. Emulating this success is going to be quite a tough task but we've got a few surprises in store that should keep the momentum going.
Here's to another great year.
Congratulations to level three creative team Charley Gray and James Hobbs on winning top prize in this year's Shelf Awards.
Praise also goes out to Neil Ritson and Stefan van Zoggel who came second.
This is a great achievement by Lincoln's Creative Advertising students who were up against some very stiff competition from the top advertising students in the country. Charley and James said of the evening, “The Shelf Awards was a fantastic opportunity for us to meet some really amazing people. It has opened lots of doors for us and we are really grateful for that. Here's to another 10 years!”
Charley and James collecting top prize: an oak veneer shelf on which to place their future awards.
The Shelf Awards (as featured in Campaign) are unique in the way the competition is run: there is no set brief - instead the students portfolio's are judged as a whole by an assembled audience of 200 people from across the advertising industry, including Steve Stretton, creative partner Archibald Ingall Stretton, Barney Cockerell, executive creative director, Rapp and Mike Cavers, executive creative director, The Marketing Store.
This was the 10th anniversary of the Shelf Awards so it was particularly satisfying to win such a milestone event. The event was held at Getty Images Gallery in central London.
Gary Sharpen who runs the awards said: "What swung it for Charley and James was that they had a real strategic insight to their work. Then it was executed in an eye-catching and highly relevant way. They were very integrated in their media thinking and you could also run a lot of their campaigns tomorrow."
He added that he was "pleasantly surprised" at the high standard of copywriting in the entries. "Fewer and fewer students know how to write well, so when it happens, it's great."
The competition was the closest fought yet with Neil Ritson and Stefan van Zogel also from Lincoln University coming a close second. They said, “It was a brilliant event. We would advise any student to get involved if they can – The Shelf is such a good opportunity.”
Tuesday 29th June saw the D&AD Student Awards 2010 ceremony at Old Spitalfields Market and the University of Lincoln had a lot to celebrate!
Creative Advertising students Josh Dando and Steve Dodd got a Commended for their Mini work in the Advertising/Direct Response category (see the work here), whilst the Graphic Design programme had a lot to celebrate too: Scott Oxley & Stewart Linton won the Integrated category (see the work here); Ellie Carter & Nikki Simpson were Commended in the Typography category (see the work here); and Ryan Van Kesteren, Stephen Ball & Tom Pollard got a second in the Microsite Design category (see the work here).
As well as the above winners, there were plenty of 'In-book' awards for lots of Lincoln students. See the D&AD Student Awards site for all the selected work.
Many congratulations to everyone that was successful in this year's D&AD Student Awards - this is the most competitive and most respected award scheme in the world and it's fantastic that the University of Lincoln regularly performs so well in it. More photos of the event can be seen here.
Creative Advertising made it's annual trip down to D&AD New Blood last week. This year the exhibition was held at the Old Truman Brewery just off Brick Lane in the heart of London's advertising and media quarter.
The event was open for four days and there were two private view evenings which were attended by the great and the good of the advertising and graphic design industries. The building was home to all of the leading design and advertising courses from around the UK as well as institutions from abroad.
The comments received from visitors looking at the Lincoln Creative Advertising work was very positive indeed and Paul Brazier, Executive Creative Director of AMV BBDO and Chairman of D&AD was full of praise for the course and its students. Here's a photo of him talking to Ollie:-
Although New Blood is a great showcase for the students and a fantastic opportunity to network it is also home to a large number of workshops and lectures which many of the students took advantage of:
• Amy & Pieter took part in the Portfolio Surgery and had book crits with DDB and Digitas. • Neil & Stefan took part in the Portfolio Surgery with ad agencies Mother and Kindred. • Brooke & Ruud took part in the Grey London workshop and in the 'Get to know Poke' workshop. • Lara went to Cogs Agency, attended the '10 magic tricks: a master class in enchantment' lecture and workshops with Navy Blue and Digitas. • Ollie had a highly coveted book crit with Paul Brazier. • James visited the ad agency AKQA and took part in their workshop. • Sophie & Keighley visited Grey London for a talk and took part in a workshop brief and also went to Digitas for a talk. They also entered a competition to create a 12 second ident for Morph London and were shortlisted finalists. • Alice & Ade and Sarah & Rachel had a portfolio crits from 4Creative. • Vicky and Charlotte took part in a workshop with R/GA. • Ruby took part in the Digitas talk on 'Earning the right to have a place in people's lives.'
This year's D&AD New Blood was a great success for all involved and well worth all the hard work.
See you at next year's event...