Monday, March 31, 2008

Six weeks at Lowe

We had a brilliant last Friday at Lowe, cheers fellas. Today we've been reflecting on our six weeks there and here is what we walked away with. A big thanks to everyone at Lowe, Take CARE.
  • Considering how much effort goes into coming up with an idea, we've learnt it takes just as much, if not more, to hang onto it. We've learnt ideas don't take care of themselves and although it would be a lot easier to just let them go, it's just not worth the agony after. Note to self, take care of your work.

  • We were surrounded by truly brilliant creatives and it was really easy to feel intimidated but you just cant afford to let that happen. For one, they'll never know who we are and more importantly, we won't know them. It's important that we make the most of these opportunities and these people. Pick their brains whenever we can, wherever we can. We learned more in five minutes chatting with Lowe's creatives than we did in a whole day spent with a brief behind our desks.

  • Fair enough, getting stuff run was great, but it wasn't brilliant. We crafted work to tick everyones boxes - and forgot about ours. Granted, that got us from A to B, but in the long run it's not something we'll be telling the grand kids about. So now - we'd rather focus on doing great work rather than getting work out.

  • One thing we noticed was, we spent ludicrous amounts of time 'answering' a brief only to have the solutions skimmed over. It was strange, but the ideas that got the attention were the ones, that were a little whack. Lesson, don't stick to the brief, or you might miss out on something.

9 comments:

Rachel said...

Lol even though we havent had one placement yet, thats what everyone that we've seen has said... We've thrown out a whole portfolios worth of work as it 'was good enough to run' And that isnt good enough anymore and its true with the juans of this world it doesnt stand a chance! We saw one person and he didnt talk about our book he just talked and we learnt so much from that!

Heres the thing though... Did you keep to the Lowe law?

Anonymous said...

I agree with pretty much all you've said, but I think you must also look at the purpose of the placement and what you want from it.

Ideally you'd want the placement to lead to full time jobs for you both - so what reasons do you take a placement?

Experience?
Contacts?
Time in an agency?
Work?
Money?

How much do you benefit from being at an agency for six weeks? Surely the aim isn't to jump from one agency to the next, to the next... (on placement)

Really we should probably be taking on placements with the potential of a real job at the end not just cheap labour, albeit at a junior level. I think we're all critical of taking stints at agencies with little purpose other than 'we want to do great work' "impress" etc

Leo's sounds positive for you next week, I think it's something you should really work at and hopefully it'll pay off. Granted I shall be a tad jealous if and when you get jobs, assuming I'm not yet in full time work but good luck to you both.

Anonymous said...

eureka!

thats right chaps, if you want a job at a good agency you will not get hired by cracking those trade ads!
A CD is looking for a team who are as good but hopefully better than the ones he already has. It smacks of desperation when a placement team happily churn out the shit and shows a lack of talent.

Recently a placement team worked on a brief that we also had and they wrote a really safe, client friendly ad (in the hope of getting it made, prolonging their stay and looking like good boys) obviously the client loved it and knocked our route off the table. They got told to leave pretty soon after.

Don't try and shovel the shit, ask to work on the big briefs and pray you are good enough.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you lads have learned something from your placement!

I was one of the many that gave you shit when you were naming your office. Not to shoot you down but because there are lots of young creatives that would give their all to get a six week placement at Lowe, and certainly wouldn't spend their time with thier feet on the desk and being 'cheesy'!

If you're on a placement you have a golden opportunity to knock the socks off your superiors and get hired!!!

Good luck at Leo's.

Jai said...

it was a great experience for us at Lowe. when we are on placement we just want to make sure we're learning, do great work and have loads of fun. we think if we do all three we'll land ourselves a job someday at a place we can't wait to get into every morning. cheers for the comments!

Anonymous said...

Did you learn not to put twatty names for your office there aswell?

natts said...

wow guys! thanks for including me! what nice surprise!

Will said...

You trying to say my briefs weren't original enough, eh? ;)

It was great to have you guys around. Hope you are getting on well at Leos..

Anonymous said...

Your briefs were bang on mate! Hope you're having a good time, we shall catch a drink sometime soon as we're not that far away.