Breaking In

Toygar Bazarkaya is Executive Creative Director at BBDO, New York.

Smart

Wrigley’s – “Police Officer”

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If you missed it, check out some great work from Ben Walker and Matt Gooden.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

BW: I definitely look for something that’s different. That’s the first thing. It’s amazing how much is very much the same. And what impresses me most is a wide range. Like someone who shows that they’ve got a real voracious appetite for everything to do with communication. Not just banging out a few ads, I think.

MG: Yeah, the thing I look for is a big idea that can travel across everything. And maybe…a bit of insight and understanding of what a brand is or could be. We do these brand books here. I usually end up taking them through those and trying to make them understand and delve into a brand and understand it. Before you start doing communication.

BW: Tone of voice is definitely something I look for. That they’ve got a good grasp of tone of voice so that they can apply that to different brands. That’s quite rare, actually. But most of all I look for someone who’s just a bit enthusiastic and comes in and is listening. Half of the time I prefer seeing books that aren’t very good, but the people are taking it all in and come back a month later with new stuff. I like people who smile and are enthusiastic.

[ … ]

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Ben Walker & Matt Gooden are Executive Creative Directors at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, London.

Honda – “Cog”

Honda – “Everyday”

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In case you missed it, check out some great work from Mark Schruntek.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

MS: I think it’s always going to come down to good ideas. And the biggest challenge is to differentiate a good idea from a great one. Sometimes it’s the smallest details that somebody actually took the time to figure out to get to the best way to really communicate something. A great idea has to have everything: a good strategy and a great execution that really nails it. So you have to have it all.

WS: What do you think about finish? Can sketches be enough?

MS: If you’re an art director, it’s probably wise to finish things. There are a lot of mediocre books out there, and if you have great ideas, those will shine, and people will notice them, but if you can show your craft, you’re going to be much more valuable.

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Mark Schruntek is a freelance Art Director/Creative Director in New York.

Nick@Nite – “Cosby”

MLB on FOX Sports – “Locker Room”

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If you missed it, check out some great work from Craig Allen.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

CA: It sounds generic, but I just look for good ads. I’ve heard about people getting hired for all kinds of odd reasons like writing a word on a rock, or baking cookies with notes on them, but all I look for is ads. I think it’s good to add a little personality to a book for sure, but if the book relies on a gimmick, that’s probably not a good sign.

WS: How important is finish? If ideas are the most important thing, can sketches be enough? Do you look at physical books anymore, or is it all websites?

CA: Before I understood advertising I didn’t understand advertising. Two summers before I graduated, I took my book and went to California. My book was 100 percent hand drawn with colored pencil. I was told, “If the idea is great it doesn’t matter.” The recruiters I met with looked at me with an expression that was equal parts confused and embarrassed. They thought it was cute and didn’t take me seriously. I’m not saying I had great ads at the time by any means, in fact I think I was far from it, but I doubt it would have mattered. The sad fact is that you have to have good ideas and present them in a somewhat polished manner so people will take them seriously. I think you can have some ideas in sketch form, but you should also be able to show you know how to use a computer in some capacity.

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Craig Allen is an Art Director at Wieden+Kennedy Portland.

Old Spice

I can’t resist including this one from the Old Spice Response campaign because he’s responding to me on twitter.

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In case you missed it, check out some great work from Greg Bell.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

GB: Here’s the truth: the vast majority of student books suck, so students are already going in with a strike against them. Usually, you’re opening it thinking, “Oh God, here we go—a bunch of stuff that will almost certainly be hard to understand, almost there, and rough around the edges.” So usually, your expectations are pretty low. You just see so many books as a creative director. It’s mind-numbing, really. I’m looking for something that wakes me up. Something surprising. Something that screams at me to pay attention. Even just one ad.

WS: Are there any traps that you feel a lot of students fall into? Or what would you not look for in a student book?

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Greg Bell was formerly Co-founder and Creative Director at Venables Bell & Partners and is now a commercial director signed with Epoch Films. Here is some of his recent directing work.

Google “El Vendór” Part 1

The entire “El Vendór” series can be viewed at trappeddave.com.

Old Navy

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If you missed it, check out some great work from Nicolas Roope.

WS: So what impresses you in a student portfolio website? What do you look for?

NR: Originality and raw ideas, and some ability to form them into something usable. Communication is really a mix of all kinds of things. It is a mix of some kind of idea or concept and then that is channeled in a way to deliver a message or persuade somebody to do something. So really the evidence of both those things is important, i.e., the ability to have ideas that feel fresh and interesting, and appropriate, relevant, and resonant. And then the ability to use those ideas as a kind of vehicle to deliver a message. It’s very, very simple.

A fluency with digital is also very important. Thinking digitally requires system thinking, which is never really there with traditional ad creatives. We don’t just put pictures and copy lines together, we’re designing complex applications to bring our ideas to life. If a creative can’t think that way then it’s a big limit on the scope of their thinking.

WS: Do you have writers and art directors or designers? What are the different creative roles you have here?

NR: We don’t have creative teams as such, we have a number of floating creatives who plug into different people for different types of briefs, a kind of “hot teaming”—like “hot desking.” It works like this because both problems and the solutions we have at our disposal are so broad that a single team would never be able to cover the necessary ground to think through every instance. One day they might sit with a strategist, the next a coder, the next an art director.

Poke does have art directors but not in the ad team sense. They’re attached to the design department, although, as I said, they get put into the conceptual, creative work too when it’s appropriate. We have a writing team too that works both on concept development and on the delivery side of things, so again, quite a different setup. 

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