I know all six of you, my dear cherished readers, are salivating small puddles at the thought of hearing intimate details about the last few months of my life. To that I say: CALM THYSELF. You are being disgusting. No-one likes a drooler. I have plenty of stories to tell and I’ll get to them in due time. First item on the scribbled list I have here in this red notebook is “rant about your time on advertising agency grad scheme.” And so I shall.

The scheme was, in almost all respects, brilliant. Six interns were taken on for six weeks out of 500 applicants (advertising is ferally competitive) in early winter with the understanding that two get a full time gig in January. We basically got to play dress-up as trainee account executives (administrative managers/handlers), helping out on existing accounts. Second to that, we also had to come up with an advertising strategy and campaign for a fake pitch scenario. By ourselves. I’d post the powerpoint deck we came up with (my team lost, but it was still fucking impressive) but I am actually legally prohibited from doing so. Our “fake” pitch will be a real “live” one sometime this year. Essentially, the cheeky buggers want to cover themselves so that if they want to pinch our ideas, they can. They won’t of course, but it demonstrates the level at which we were working. People do all sorts of shameful things to work at that kind of level. Which makes me feel rather guilty.

The Advertising Graduate Scheme Experience

My new home, for seven weeks or so

Thing is, I didn’t like it…

OK fine, that is a lie. The first two weeks I absolutely loved it, the second two weeks I felt like London was testing my limits, and the last two weeks were a hair-pulling teeth-grinding sleep-deprived nightmare. That last fortnight, an average day was getting in around 9am (after negotiating the hell of the District to Piccadilly Line interchange) and getting out anytime between 10pm and 1am. The last Thursday I was there until 2.30 in the morning.

In the interest of fairness, I feel obliged to point out to all wannabe adlanders that the hours are part and parcel of the industry. You either adapt or you don’t. I didn’t, couldn’t even, which is probably why they didn’t hire me. So, aspiring grads: when they say the hours are tough, they really really mean it. ‘Tough’ is not just working ’til 7pm the odd day. Draw your own conclusions. Also, in the interests of more fairness, let me submit to the honourable gentlemen and women of the jury that this was an internship which was by definition “intense.” Hours were longer and more taxing than they would be in the real job. I signed up to that, so can I really complain? Well, I performed a thoroughly scientific experiment known as “stalking.” I spied on the people who’d won full-time jobs last year and clocked their hours. They weren’t quite there until midnight, but 9 or 10pm was not an uncommon traipsing-home time. One of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen in my life was the poor woman sat across from me who face-timed her kids goodnight from the office almost every day. Basically, if I had joined, things would have got marginally less awful. But only marginally.

Big Brother is Watching

War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom, Ignorance is Strength, Stop Whining About Your Internship

There was also a strange atmosphere to the scheme, essentially because it was an Apprentice-style six-week competitive interview. Everything mattered, in the “be careful what you say to who” sense. There was an email chain running round the whole agency where people could send in feedback on the interns, and it seemed very much to be a case of ‘shit floats to the surface.’ Failings tended to brought up point by painstaking point in special meetings and the good stuff glossed over somewhat. I was careful not to seem ungrateful, but I did perhaps air a grumble or two too many about the hours. I was shot down (“it’s the industry,” “you need to want it,” “we all do it,” etc) quite comprehensively.

Some of it was really petty stuff though: I saw an account director flounce out of a research group in a huff over a perceived slight from one of the interns who was distracted handing around coffee and cake. It was childish, but it had a galling undertone, because we knew it would matter. This AD would almost certainly go and feedback to someone important (telling her version of the story to boot) and that would in turn be a black mark against our names somewhere. It got to the point where we stopped voicing any concerns we had. To anyone. We each had mentors who we were ostensibly there for us to bounce problems and concerns off. Nope. Not gonna. Not when anything and everything we say can count against us. No-one wants a reputation for being a whiner, so our outlook became fixed-grin relentless forced optimism. Cultish even. McCultish.

The Cherry on Top

We also got a bollocking. A bollocking to end all bollockings. I’ll spare you the build-up, but in short we interns screwed up. It was the honest kind of mistake that happens when interns are put in overall charge but twenty different people offer their own opinions and suggestions (opinions and suggestions which after things go awry everyone insists had either been explicit orders or advice to be completely ignored), but no leeway was given. Cue one charming gentleman from management coming down on us like a ton of piss-stained graffiti-daubed bricks. I quote: “I’m fucking livid. I’m fucking swearing so you can tell I’m fucking livid. What the fuck were you playing at? Do you have any idea of the fucking opportunity you are wasting here? 500 fucking people applied, and if you don’t want to be here there’s 499 right fucking behind you who fucking do” (it came out ‘faaaack.’ It was London after all). I’m not saying it wasn’t our fault, it very clearly was, it was just that the response was akin to summarily executing a soldier for failing to fold his barrack bedsheet in the approved regulation manner. It was, simply put, disproportionately unprofessional.

CCTV footage from our meeting

Luckily it was a team failure, so we all took it on the chin together, but it was something of an eye-opener. As far as me wanting the job, this was definitely where the rot set in. Now, I understand how the world works (shit travels downhill, management craps on everyone) but there are rules. Having a tantrum and throwing your toys out of the pram in a fit of profanity, to me at least, is not behaviour befitting a manager. I relayed the story to a creative working downstairs over a pint that evening and he was pretty shocked. He said he would have quit on the spot, an idea I half-seriously toyed with (I found out later one of the six was not-so-half-serious at all, and was seconds from actually walking out) but ultimately decided against. It would make not a jot of difference. One of the 499 right fucking behind me would have stepped in. In that Mr. Shouty McSweary was very correct.

Losing Out vs. Dodging a Bullet

Confession: I lost. I am a loser. I didn’t get the job. I myself raise a vigorously sceptical eyebrow when anyone who doesn’t get a job starts proclaiming “oh, but I never wanted it anyway; honest” so I know how it looks. I ask humbly for you to believe me, just this once. The hours were just too much. When the call came to say I hadn’t got in I felt absolutely nothing. Later on I realised I was relieved. If I had been offered it, I’m convinced I probably would have taken it. One does not turn down an opportunity like that, and I would have been turning it down to be unemployed. My family would have had a collective seizure. So I would have accepted, hated it, and probably started looking at open fourth floor windows and feeling an overpowering urge to understand what flying felt like.

The people who won absolutely deserved it. We became quite the little close-knit unit together in our six weeks and I can categorically say that everybody else on the scheme was a) far more competent than I b) far more worthy of winning and c) much better cut out for that kind of life. It was kind of embarrassing how good they were. I also still think advertising is brilliant industry, and I’m even still seriously considering finding a job somewhere within it. 99% of the people I worked with were absolutely amazing: creative, driven, brilliant, successful, helpful. I owe them a lot and feel a little guilty sniping at the whole process so much, but at the end of the day everything I’ve written is what I experienced. There was a culture clash (see! I worked in the theme of the blog!) on a huge scale, between my own attitude and the working culture there. Perhaps if I got to work with them outside of the artificial constraints demarked by what was essentially a six-week job interview I would feel differently. To people wanting to work in advertising I say only this: there are agencies and then there are agencies, choose wisely.

I am fairly sure I (0:38, above) chose poorly…