A Day In The Life

04/02/2014

I was asked to write about my typical day for the Momentum newsletter. This was the result:

 

7:00

“Wh…wha…?” He stirs from his slumber. His eyes won’t function. His voice doesn’t work. He goes back to sleep.

 

7:30

“Nope.”

 

7.45

“Urgh…” By this time, he knows he really should be getting up if he doesn’t want to miss his tram. He goes back to sleep.

 

8.00

He leaps out of bed. Well, leap might be the wrong word. He rolls out of bed.

 

9.00

He magically manages to be in the office exactly on time. Yep.

 

9.17

After looking at emails and hitting the keyboard a few times, he abandons his laptop for the morning and sits down with his Art Director to work on today’s brief(s). She sketches ideas on her big A3 pad. He writes ideas in his small A5 notebook.

 

10:00

From coming up with retailtainment ideas for Asda to writing a shopper campaign for Nestlé, every day is different. He especially loves the challenge of working for lots of different brands with Asda.

 

10:30

Meetings. Always meetings.

 

11:00

He goes back to the laptop and visits Thesaurus.com – his go-to website. It helps him conceive originative and innovational passages that everyone understands.

 

11:30

He enjoys baking, so has brought a batch of brownies in. Suddenly, he’s very popular.

 

12:00

He catches up with the Senior Copywriter to discuss ideas/copy/football.

 

13:00

When he has time, he heads out into Manchester for food. Or, if it’s a Friday, for drink.

 

14:00

If the brief requires a shopper journey, messaging or rationales, he fires up Word.

 

14:26

People see him staring into space. That’s just how he thinks.

 

15:00

He grabs his Art Director again so they can go through their ideas with the new Creative Director, who is really cool and awesome and nice. (Hi Oli!)

 

16:00

Bea asks him to write a ‘Day in the Life’ section for the newsletter. He wonders how, being a copywriter, he can be really creative when writing it. He chooses third-person, for some reason.

 

16:15

He makes up an entry to fill space.

 

16:16

He fights the ninja dinosaurs til the bitter end, once more saving the Earth from the cold-blooded terror.

 

17:00

He goes to do his timesheets and wonders if he has a job number he could write this against.

 

19:00

He gets home, if he’s lucky.

 

3:00

He gets home, if he’s not.

Pitch Slave

20/09/2012

I’ve just got massively angry. And I don’t do that very often.

 

WCRS, a rather big advertising agency in London with clients such as Sky, BMW and Churchill just tweeted:

 

 

Now, I’m sure they thought this was a nice thing to do. They’d seen pitchslave.com, liked the idea and wanted to send some business his way. But “Like the idea of having a grad work for free?” was completely the wrong thing to say.

 

It’s hard to get into the advertising industry. Lots of very talented people never achieve it because it takes lots of time, effort and, yes, money. The good agencies will pay you at least minimum wage while you’re on placements, but there are many others who only pay expenses or even nothing at all. As the hours are usually long, it’s hard to get another job to actually earn money. Which means a lot of grads have to rely on their parents/partners/friends to help them out, whether that be transport, a place to crash or even food. And don’t get me started on the Job Centre.

 

‘Pitch Slave’ (or Henry Carless to his parents) is completely undermining all those who are trying to get into the industry without the funds to do so. Working for a big advertising agency isn’t like volunteering for a charity, these companies have the money to pay you for the work you do.

 

Graduates should not be seen as free labour.

 
%d bloggers like this: