In search of the advertising dream

And so it continues! After a good start on our northern advertising trek last week, we set about giving our portfolios the mash-up treatment - 4 dollops of Hayley doo-doo, with 4 splodges of Sarah sparkle and we finally had a joint book of stupendous advertising to present for our crits this week. I'm sure many would scream in terror at some of the things in there, but for now it's serving us well until we have more time together and develop as a team to produce new campaigns. Our line-up at present is:

*Play-Doh
*Organ Donations
*Best Beginnings (breastfeeding)
*Slavery
*GHD limited edition black and white straighteners
*Andrex Moist
*Talk (Department for Transport)
*Royal Opera House

Yes, there are indeedy two charity-type campaigns in there. And only 3 products. Of course we'll constantly be improving our book as time goes on, and any advice or feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to set your disgust loose on us! : )

Anyway, back to this week! Not quite as many miles traversed in search of the dream, nor as many crits to attend, but we've been left feeling even more excited than last week!

Our week only began on Tuesday this time, with a visit to Phil Howells at The Raft in Wilmslow. Phil was one of the original partners at Pravda when it was just a wee bairn, but last winter he headed to The Raft in an attempt to create a thriving creative department there over the coming years. Pardon my common northernism, but he was a top bloke! As we've found with all of our crits, you have to be a sociable lot to do what we do - true to form, Phil continued that fuzzy advertising feeling that we love so much. A fair chunk of praise with some good advice thrown is more than we expected, and we were really happy to find that he was interested in us as the bright young things that we are, and the prospect of a junior team adding a little something more to the mix at The Raft. We left with the possibility of a placement, and kept our fingers crossed as we headed over the road to Driven (the agency founded by the likes of Graham Drury and Chris Lear) to see whether anybody was free to see us. Unfortunately they'd just been whisked off to a meeting, but we left our book there for them to peruse at leisure.

We do "Grrr" a lot (not sure why!)

Another break in the week on Wednesday saw us having our first proper chance to work on the brief which Paul Burns gave us last week, for which we hurried out our scamp ideas in the car this morning before seeing him again (and yes, we did tell him this!) So 11am today saw us back in good old East Didsbury. Cheery as ever, Paul led us back to the "soft corner" (squidgy couches - we like!) and had a gander at the progress we'd made. To our slight surprise, he really liked a few of our concepts and gave us some guidance on where to take the ideas from here. Again, placement was discussed, and we were over the moon when Paul said he'd like to bring us in some time. Though, as with many agencies at the moment, the present climate is seriously hampering any permanent job prospects. We'll be heading back to see Paul very soon having worked on his advice, and we may well be heading in for a while in November once there's room for us. Watch this space!

Then this afternoon we headed over to Deansgate to visit Stewart Dally, the head of design at BJL. Another great feedback session, laidback as ever and a good laugh (with our smut, it's always sure to be a winner!) and some more great guidance on where to take some of the campaigns in our book, though overall he said it was a very good book with lots of great concepts in there. Again, no room for us at the inn, but he was very keen to speak to Billy Mawhinney about us (unfortunately he was on a shoot today) in order to get us back in to see him and see if he agreed that we were placement-worthy. So we're very excited to be heading back to BJL soon too!

As the week stands, we're currently discussing the best time to begin placement at AND Partners, so it's unlikely to be Monday now. But Phil Howells got back to us today to let us know that he's just waiting for the go ahead from the MD to maybe get us in as soon as Monday - our empty gap may well have been filled, we shall wait and see! And we're just waiting on word from Driven about our book and whether they'd like us to go in to see them in person some time. So it's still all stations go, go, go here!

Hmmpf! Darn this pesky recession making things difficult for agencies and graduates alike! It is a little worrying to think that it could mean a seemingly endless array of placements over the coming months, possibly even years. But it just stokes us up to work even harder, hopefully giving even the most strained of agencies a reason to keep us on permanently in time. For now we're happy to be getting the response we have been, and looking forward to continuing that by whatever means possible.

There may well be more times of economic depression ahead. But this has been a good fortnight for us. And we're going to keep fighting for it until we get it. GRRRRR!!