Alex Moore – 6th May 2011

 

Earlier today I wrote a blog post. A terrible blog post. I knew it wasn’t very good as I was writing it but carried on writing it anyway. It was frivolous and irrelevant.

I had no idea what I wanted to write about, and so I wrote about nothing.

Then, this afternoon we had all met for a WIP (work in progress), both intakes together on the same brief for the first time. I’m sure that as we collected together our scamps and dragged the wheely office chairs towards the front of the studio, non of us had an incline as to what was going to happen for next 2 hours.

 

We had with us a guest, mentor Dan Evans from Gyro. He’d come to visit us in the first term, when he was working for the Viral Factory. For a large part of that visit he sat on our sofa with two mentors from Weber Shandwick, discussing the merits and evils, similarities and differences between advertising and PR, and the digital crossover. Today he came back with a different mission than his initial call of curiosity.

We learned that Gyro had heard of the school, its learning model and its ambitions to shake up adworld and were curious. So this time round Dan was here to scout out some teams for a potential placement.

The WIP wasn’t the best advert for us, the students. The ideas that my partner and I presented (and I use the word ‘presented’ loosely) were very, very, below par. Three or four top line ideas, that were neither researched nor developed. We hadn’t rewritten the brief, as is customary at SCA. We hadn’t written any personas, as is customary at SCA, with no insights, and no strategy. Just hair-brained student ideas. We don’t want to act like students, but this week we have. I don’t want to speak for anyone else at the school, but I think I just have. Today, we were not out-of-work creatives.

What Dan did today was issue us several breaths of sobering, fresh air. A timely reality-check.

We sat and listened, sinking into our seats as Dan explained to us the differences between the work he sees every day from creatives looking for jobs, and the work we presented this afternoon. The differences between our work, and work from communication students from Sunderland and Birmingham, amongst others. The level dedication required just to get a foot through the door, let alone hold down a job.

Our wake up call has come just in time I’d say. We are just 3 months away from our last week in the studio with Marc et al. The new grads from the country’s design and advertising schools will have had 2 months already to ferry themselves about London’s agencies and will be on placements by then. Which means we have 12 weeks to get out there and really show our faces. 12 weeks to put our work where our mouths are. 12 weeks to prove to those following us that we are different, are better and will surprise and impress adland.

It was suggested that the outside opinion of SCA is polarised, split down the middle. Some think we’re hugely exciting and promising, others that we’re a flash in the pan. Blind let by the blind I believe it was put. I can understand why these sentiments exist. After all, this is a rookie operation. Again, I don’t want to speak for the others at SCA 2.0, but I think I do when I say that we are all of the former opinion, very strongly of the former opinion.

It can be hard to tell sometimes, difficult to gage how we’re doing, and it is very possible that we’ve cocooned ourselves a little in our church hall in Vauxhall. Work is seen by different mentors each day, to different reactions. Some like this, others prefer that. But when you know it, you know it.

While none of us would feel that this has been a walk in the park, it is clear that, especially after the Super-Royal-Three-Day-Week-Twice-In-A-Row-Sunfest we enjoyed, we have been coasting over the last few weeks. Because there is a point at which advertising can no longer be judged as subjective or objective. We must always ask, does it do the job?

We know what it is we have to do to get back on top of things. Process. Research. Structured thinking. Checking. Doing it again. It’s not rocket science, just hard work.

So many thanks to Dan, for this timely wake up call.

I am determined to raise my game. Raise my game, and then raise my game again, because if there’s anything that explains our blip in form, it is that in all this sunshine we forgot that we were at war. I cannot speak for everyone at SCA, but I suspect, yet again, that I do.

You can read my original post here, but there really isn’t much point.