This week was very much about giving Sadie and me experience in the conceptual part of advertising. Working with the creatives to come up with the ideas which will then be sent upstairs to be designed.
This, at first was very hard to get my head around. The fact that you don't do everything. In essence, you come up with a precious idea... and send it off into someone else's hands. I can't make out whether I like that way of working or not... it sure seems easier, and the creatives that I have talked to have a lot of input into how the finished product looks, which set my mind at ease somewhat. I don't like the idea of completely losing touch with an idea once you have fine-tuned it.
Anyway, this week was very much...
Give us brief.
Idea generation.
Review with Richard about what to filter out.
Refining idea.
Meeting with Richard and Remco about final idea.
Mock it up.
The last brief we were assigned added a new level. Pitch with account director (nerve-wracking but instructive).
This was a brief for Heide Park - the Alton Towers of Germany.
They have recently introduced a new ride. The 'Krake'... essentially dropping people into the mouth of the Kraken.
This is the TV advert DLKW Lowe created for the ride.
Our job, essentially, was to work with the 'mouth' and the phrase "fear the mouth" and come up with ways of advertising it.
This was both the brief that we struggled to come up with original ideas to come up with... and the one where they were most impressed with our results.
Some ideas :
Mouth around tunnel entrance
Mouth at bottom of escalator
Mouth on bottom of coffee cups
Mouth on doors of lift
Mouth on toilet seat
Mouth on opening of bin
Mouth on door of vending machine
and many more...
The ones they liked the most were the lift, the coffee cups, the toilet seats and the escalator.
It was at this review that they decided to make us pitch to the account director... to see what she thought of our ideas.
It went brilliantly, she seemed to love our idea and said (much to our amazement) that they are going to use a few of our ideas, that's right, in the real world. Next week they are talking to the people at the park about making our idea a reality)
Richard even rung me on my way home to check out how the review went. Apologising that he hadn't seen us before we went in but that he "wasn't worried in any way because you have some brilliant stuff there".
This phone call was when I realised they actually really cared about how our progression was going... he didn't have to call and check if two silly interns had gone alright in their pitch... but there he was, genuinely caring how it all went and reassuring us that we were doing a great job. Great enough for the next day to introduce us to a creative director the next day about our 'Krake' ideas... who re-affirmed that next week they were going to show the park our ideas, and that even if we had gone by the time they got results, they were going to keep us completely up to date with how it was all going.
It is very interesting to see how the different people in the office function with each other. What the group dynamics are. Who can go over who and such. There are creatives all over the place, answering to both creative directors and account directors. I definitely started to get confused about who was who. The amount of people who have helped us, and given us the time of day to explain how things run is amazing. We could not ask for anything more.
Even our desks were strategically placed next to two young creatives. A small team who met in a pub. Amy came out of university and a post grad of advertising, and Sam learnt advertising at Watford (a college which comes up a lot when talking about advertising). They have been incredibly helpful during our time this week. Answering so many questions about starting off in the business. How to meet a partner and their roles in the partnership... they showed us their portfolio and told us what is expected of them. It is so interesting to see how they work day in day out.
The Heide Park brief.
Pictures of our idea generation and our final pitch to Zoe to be taken off Sadie's blog.
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