Recently, someone who’d just graduated from art school was showing me their portfolio.
It was good.
But nowadays most portfolios are pretty good.
It wasn’t anything special.
It wasn’t different.
And, given there aren’t enough jobs for the number of people applying, this is a problem.
For every ten good portfolios, there is maybe one job.
Now I had heard that this particular person was very creative.
But there wasn’t any special evidence of that in his portfolio.
Just half a dozen good campaigns, TV, print, ambient, like most other portfolios.
I asked him why this was.
He said that he had been going around to agencies getting advice and then doing what they told him.
The people who would mainly see him were juniors, who’d recently been hired.
They all told him roughly the same thing.
Which was how to make his book look more like their book.
How many campaigns he’d need, how may press ads, how many TV, how many digital.
Which ideas they liked.
Which ideas were old fashioned.
So every graduate is going to see the people who’ve also graduated recently.
And then changing his book to look more like everyone else’s.
I asked him if he thought his book fully displayed his creativity.
He said it didn’t, but that was what he’d been told he needed.
He’d much rather do something, more creative.
I asked him where it said, in the advertising rule book, that you could only have one portfolio.
He asked me what I meant.
I said I know you have to have a conventional advertising portfolio, but who says that’s ALL you can have?
How bad would it be to say to a creative director, “I’ve got two portfolios, one that’s conventional advertising, and one that’s full of unconventional creativity. Which would you like to see?”
Doesn’t that make you different to everyone else straight away?
Sure, junior teams want to look at books full of advertising.
But junior teams can’t give you jobs.
Just crits.
ECDs can give you jobs, and they clearly don’t want to see just another book full of ads.
They want to see something different.
Something creative.
It was like a light going on in his head.
It had never occurred to him that you didn’t have to follow the rules.
That you could do something different.
This creative person had been led to believe that the rules for an advertising portfolio were as inflexible as the civil service.
Absolutely everybody had to do it absolutely the same way.
Then I asked him what his favourite agency was.
He said Droga 5.
So the next question obviously is, do you think they are doing everything absolutely the same way as everyone else?
Or do you think they’re doing something different?
Isn’t it strange that everyone admires Droga 5 for breaking the rules?
And everyone carries on obeying the rules themselves?
Maybe they’ll stop obeying the rules when someone gives them permission.
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I guess when you come out of university youre sort of brainwashed already, actually i remember even our university professors told us what to put in our portfolios before we went out into the big wide world.
My first letter to advertising agencies was all written with a stick on a beach in north Devon, I climbed up the cliff to take a picture of the whole letter from top.
It took me the whole day to do that.
The shit people do to get a job,eh?
Yet another good point, well made Mr T.
Paul Grubb also gave me a great piece of advice concerning my book.
He suggested that you only include work in your portfolio that YOU really like. Then, if you’re going to be hired, you’ll be hired for ‘all the right reasons’.
You’ll be hired for the kind of work that YOU like and YOU liked doing and that, ultimately, will make for a better job.
The guy’s book was only O.K. What if it had been excellent, full of the best ads you had seen all year? Would that have got him hired?
I think it would have. We are, after all, in the business of creating adverts. You might well suck at everything else, you might well have very few other creative interests, but if you create better ads than anyone else what does it matter if you go home and slob out in front of the telly rather than attend an alternative dance workshop, blog or write some poetry? Maybe you spend all your creativity on adverts.
CD’s, ECD’s, they talk the talk about wanting to see something different all the time, so how come so few agencies ever actually do anything different? I’ve seen a million (or so) good non-traditional ideas never come to anything. So my point is, why would you want to see if someone is capable of doing something that the job doesn’t entail? I think it’s another example of us confusing ourselves and what we do with art and artists.
Zhat last sentence hit harder than a truck mowing you over at 100mph. Try to tell that to all these snoozers and stylists. The first thing they do when a new brief is in is to go to corbis or getty and look for pretty pictures. That’s your wicked adworld right there.
Paul.
Of course that’s true. If the book is full of amazing ads that’s all you need.
But what about the people who haven’t got that? They need to find another, possibly unfair, way to compete.
All I’m doing is suggesting a way to get on the ECD’s radar by being different.
You’ll always be beaten by a better book, but you don’t need to be beaten by a book that’s a good as yours.
Advertising is about beating the competition.
I’m suggesting, if they can’t beat them the conventional way, find an alternative.
I’m not suggesting everyone rushes out and does ads about icelandic clog dancing.
That’s fair enough, Dave, but it’s a route fraught with danger, if they don’t like your ‘different’ stuff (say bad photography, maybe) you could blow it.
Here’s a different way to be different: focus on what pays the ECD’s bills, ads. Put 1 or 2 belting radio ads in your book (you should record them). Film and edit your own ad and put it on disc or youtube (get a million hits and you’re in), or you could even put your boring old storyboards together as an animatic with a nice soundtrack on there. Put some original product placement ideas in or some cool as fuck sponsorship ideas, try and get one of the Agencies brands on the TV and show them the tape…….anything you can think of.
All of the above and the hundred more ideas i’m too busy to think of would demonstrate how serious and focussed you were on working in THIS industry rather than just any old creative industry.
My creed is ‘If you like what you see, just buy it and stop fannying around with what might be around the corner.’ As a generalisation, it’s a bit like the difference between men and women when it comes to shopping. When men see what they want, they buy it. Women see it, then go to other shops to the point where they can’t make up their bleedin’ minds what it is that they want anymore. Enough already!
Campaign’s Private View has proven again and again that what reviewers hate the most often goes on to win an award somewhere.
John Silver once told me very passionately why he thought the campaign I was most proud of was absolute rubbish. And then gave me a gig.
But you’re right about juniors. One was very concerned that my portfolio case wasn’t black.
Hello Dave. Your right, trying to start in advertising today is a bit like saying you want to be a pop-star, well that’s how my parents see it. In short it feels like you’ve got no chance.
Would it be cheeky to ask for your email address so can tell me what’s wrong with my portfolio?
you idiot, get the agency fax number off the web site, fax your work marked for the attention of Dave Trott. Add a note saying you’ll call him tomorrow to see what he thinks. Now he’s got your work and your phone number and he knows you’re going to be ringing him everyday until he takes your call.
If he likes your work he’ll call you, if he doesn’t like it at least he’ll know your name and be expecting your call. At the very least he’ll leave a message for when you call. Either way you’ll know what he thinks the very next day, you’ll have an idea of what you need to do next. Pull your finger out and you’ll get a job in six weeks instead of six months.
Not a very “creative” approach but it’s so bleeding obvious you’d be surprised how many “creatives” decide not to do it.
This is more about showing books than being a student.
Is it ust me or are some younger CDs afraid of commenting on work?
It’s like, “what if I say this sucks but it has won an obscure D&AD - such as photography or typography?” (That’s quite possible now that The Annual is no longer openly sold.)
So, from my experience, some CDs reserve judgement on work.
They ho and hum.
Then you tell them it got an award and suddenly, it’s praises all round.
David Abbott once told me something which I still believe in:
“Not all good ads win awards.
Not all award-winning ads are good.”
Sadly, these days, some people don’t even know who David is.
In India, i used to get hired by showing all my rejected work.
Then after i join the new agency i’d continue accumulating more rejected work. then on to the next agency with the help of more rejected work.
some time later, i realised the irony - i was getting hired and paid for doing rejected work
so, while i agree with you that the portfolio should be unconventional, may be we should get our clients to also see the portfolios, so they can approve the type of people / ideas they want on their advertising.
Graduate 89797987.
You should be able to work out my email address.
plus the email address of every other creative director in London.
Andrew Sexton - Fax your work through? Comms has come on a bit since. Sending a url link or pdf’s would be better, me thinks.
Dave
Ever thought of compiling your blog into a book? Kind of like Ask Jeremy.
The other day, I was talking to someone about something you said in a previous post. And of course the net was down.
Perhaps you could sell it as an ebook?
And if you don’t need the money (as I suspect) maybe donate proceeds to NABS?
Thanks.
To all students and placements,
Please read Paul and Andrew Sexton’s comments above.
What you feel coming off both of them is energy and passion.
Whether we agree with each other or not doesn’t matter.
What will get you a job ultimately is energy and passion.
That’s what’s missing from most students and most portflios.
thanks for the reply
i remember adhering to the stupid but then sacrosanct beginners rule of 5 campaigns, 3 executions apiece.
and when ed mccabe finally brought me in for an interview for my first job, he asked me why. ( he only liked two things in my book). and i told him “coz everyone else does it”. and he said, “why would you do that? only show the great stuff”". my next book had nine pieces in it. and if you didn’t like them, you were just plain wrong. they were nine big ideas. and he finally hired me.
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