Young creatives are doing it for themselves
As the clock hits 7pm I have a dilemma, either try and get through a mountain of emails and paperwork or go to the UNITE ll event and rub shoulders with fellow creative directors and the who’s who of the creative industry.
Unite ll, run by the Young Creative Council (YCC) aims to bring professional and aspiring advertising creatives together in one place. Essentially it’s a portfolio session in a more social environment, a bar.
21 young, aspiring (yet to be employed) recent creative grads had their folios on display awaiting feedback and possible placements. Of those books I looked at most were excellent and each had at least one defining campaign.
What is really impressive about the YCC is that it’s not been organised by any industry body or headhunter (unlike Young Blood, Cream or GRT) but by entrepreneurial young, driven creatives.
They say, “We are a collective who believe ‘People who do, change the world, everyone else is just living here’. I would add, “A group of young creatives who rather than sit on their arse complaining there’s no jobs and the pay’s crap are getting out there and changing the game.” As Henry Ford said, “There are those that follow the rules and those that write them.”
It’s tough, according to the papers, we have the worse unemployment rate among grads ever. I have no accurate figures but 1 job for every 100 creative grad probably is generous at the moment. And many I talk to say placements are very hard to get too.
YCC isn’t just a small group of next generation creatives but our future industry leaders. Luke, one of the organisers I chatted to I could well see heading up a creative agency in 10 years. They seem highly motivated, positive and opportunist.
MEN vs WOMEN
One thing I noticed was the number of girl boy teams. Almost all my best teams over the years have been mixed sex, they seem to balance each other out. There was about 40% female, 60% male there, probably similar to the split of grads, which raises an issue for our industry and one I’ve been going on about for years.
Recently I read that only 15% of ad creative departments are female, that’s 85% male (when I was at Saatchi’s it was less than 15%). Yet the majority of ad spend is targeted at women and even when targeted at men women have a say. So why don’t ad agencies have more women in the creative department? We have a 50:50 hiring policy at Creative Orchestra and boy (or should that be girl) do you see the difference. Women get women, men just get football.
THE FOLIOS
The books had the usual mix of advertising, digital and ambient we so often see but what also impressed me was seeing more entrepreneurial ideas. This generation of creatives are thinking outside the ad space, ideas beyond advertising, even commercial.
One team, Pete & Ollie, had a brilliant collection at the back of their folio, one was a set of stickers to put on all those electrical plugs to let you know what they are connected to. A simple and cheap idea to market that could well fund them through the early years of their career in this industry. Their Polite Society ideas were very clever too.
Charley & James had a very alternative idea to make kids drink-aware, put question about consumption and units into exam papers. Why not? It?s more relevant to life than knowing what Pye is (3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211 70679 by the way). But they also came up with a charming campaign for mild cheese, a series of cuddly monsters to illustrate an idea, ‘Mild cheese, mild nightmares‘. Mums would love it, and given the current trend for ad characters (note Sky’s blue monsters) very finger on the pulse.
Amy & Pieter made a simple observation to solve a simple problem, to get children to eat fruit. Kids love brands, so give fruit proper brands names and market the brand. But the most unusual for a creative team was an economic solution. To get students to save give then a debit card that instead of getting a discount the saving goes into a savings account. Simple.
Adam & Adam’s solution to a familiar Everyman brief, get men to examine their testicles, was to launch a show gel brand that reminds you to examine yourself, especially on ‘Testicle Tuesday’. They also came up with a novel use of the old photo booth for a theme park and a campaign called ‘Be blown away’. Just as your photo is about to be taken you get a sharp blast of air to give you that look you see on big dippers. Sweet.
Rich & Rob looked beyond just words and pictures and created a series of scratch and sniff ads for road safety. To get young drivers to think about safer driving the smells are those of accidents. Gross but a great use of the senses.
Hazel & Adriana use graffiti like stencils of a head that would be applied to walls. The surface of the wall becomes the skin of the face to highlight different skins types for a skin cream.
As young people are rejecting the false, fake models and airbrushed images of the fashion and beauty industry so who better to use as models for Top Shop than real people? Sarah had a very good Facebook idea, tag people who wear Top Shop clothes.
I could go on but these are just a few ideas that I liked of many, many of which I haven’t done justice to, but you get the idea.
OUR FUTURE
I think we as an industry need to support all initiatives like this, especially when you consider YCC is funded mainly by the young creatives themselves. Times are tough, and knowing several of the big groups have ‘no hiring unless essential’ policies if we the creative agencies don’t support and invest in new talent there will be none later.
Check out the YCC site and their mission – http://www.youngcreativecouncil.com/
