The Walker Agency and friends at Saatchi

I was lucky enough last Weds (10th Dec) to visit The Walker Agency, an advertising agency in Bournemouth (and the largest in the South of England outside London). One of my best friends is the art director there and I asked if I could pop in for a few hours and see how he works and what the agency is working on at the moment. I'm not sure if I want to go in the direction of Advertising, but it does interest me and I know I would like to be an art director.

It was a fantastic experience. I was able to see the briefs (or lack of) that they were given and also the timescales they have to work to (hours rather than weeks). There are two people in the creative department and they talked me thorough a campaign they are producing for an organic clothes company that want to advertise on the underground in London, on the posters you see on the other side of the track. They talked me through the brief and explained why they had taken a certain approach and what they were trying to say and then asked me for my opinion!

It was a little embarrassing really but I suggested a few things that I felt could be improved and they were appreciative of my input and actually changed part of the advert on my advice :-)

They asked what I was working on for my course and I showed them the brief for the Amnesty International project and they both had some good advice for me and even had a bash themselves at producing some ideas for it.

I also found out that a mutual friends uncle had in fact designer the Amnesty International logo while he was working at Saatchi's!!! So now I'm hoping to get some work experience with him!

It was a really constructive day and I learned a lot even though I was only there for a few hours. They were interested in my ideas for Amnesty and have said I can go back there anytime I want to watch them work, for advice or just to help them on future briefs ;-)

Colgate 24 hour protection

Our second chance to work in work in groups saw us have to create some visual clues for another group for After Eights. In turn another group created some visual clues for us which we concluded was Colgate (actually, not wanting to blow my own trumpet but I guessed it pretty quickly and spent far too long trying to convince the rest of the group).

Once we knew what the product was we had to come up with an advert. I found this much harder than the last piece of group work as we were restricted a little by the brand. We brainstormed some ideas but came up with the usual themes of bright, white, fresh and I personally realised how hard it can be when you have to produce an advert for something that in itself isn't particularly inspiring.

Our first idea was to use the tooth fairy looking for new work as Colgate looked after your teeth so well, but after some advice from Kit we changed our take on it. She explained that the tooth fairy was only really associated with children and therefore the context in this advert wasn't appropriate.

Short on ideas and time, we decided to go for a bouncer offering protection on a 12 hour basis. Its a very simple concept and certainly wouldn't win any awards, but it does get the point across. I was personally not pleased with our effort. I thought the group became fractioned and and one point we had 3 people working in one idea and the rest of us working on another. I enjoy working in groups a lot, its so easy to be able to bounce ideas off others but sometimes its difficult too and today was one of those days!