What’s the price of realising potential?

marketing graduate trainee

Grad life is hard, but I’ve always been told the hardest things yield the greatest rewards, and that’s especially true in this case, because the reward is your first job in the marketing industry. Not just an graduate trainee internship or a placement, a fully-fledged, all the bells and whistles, proper job. As a recently graduated advertising creative, born and raised in the North now trying to make it in ‘The Big Smoke’, here’s my thoughts on (gr)ad life, some of the quirks that come with it and what I hope for in the future for those of us freshly released into the industry.

Right now, I’m coming to the end of my fourth week at Sense London. It’s taught me so many things I didn’t know and cemented so many others I’d only heard through word of mouth. The learning curve straight out of university is steep, but the view back down to where you came from has a tendency to evoke a hint of victory. You really have no idea how little you know until you walk through the doors of an agency for your first day. To be fair, I still know nothing, in fact I’m bloody clueless – but significantly less so than a month ago.

By diving head first into the world of experiential marketing, I’ve been exploring an area of our industry that I always knew existed but one I had never really looked at within university, which is surreal considering it’s the fastest growing sector within the industry. It seems more and more agencies are jumping on board with experiential, but that doesn’t surprise me because even in my short time here, what I’ve found is that it yields ridiculous potential.

However, I’ve also found that not everyone can do it. Experiential requires a particular way of thinking to be able to really get the most out of it, and when you do it can be hugely impactful. Anything from a simple sampling stand to an annual event that draws thousands of spectators; it has the means and opportunity to create something real and tangible that has an actual impact on people’s day; as a recent grad, the potential is intoxicating.

I’ve learnt a lot about the industry, but also a new city; being a grad in London isn’t too dissimilar to moving around a monopoly board: you’re constantly stopping and hoping no one charges you rent. Hostel hopping isn’t all bad though, once you learn how to sleep through the thunderous snoring of the guy in the bunk above you, get over the lack of privacy and deal with the inability to control room temperature. However, the people you meet are full of stories from all over the world, and at the end of the day, it’s not permanent.

Luckily, I’m far from alone though, because I’ve chosen an industry that’s full of people more than willing to help you in any way they can, whether it be with a brief, with a contact, or with a desperately needed beer on a Friday lunchtime after you’ve had a long week. People who understand; have been there, done that and lost a few t-shirts.

Even luckier for me, a few of these people are currently striving for a change within the industry that benefits grads like me – the Placement Poverty Pledge (PPP): an initiative championed by the Young Creative Council where agencies promise to pay their interns the current living wage.

This means that grads like me can afford to travel to wherever it is we want to work, and give it our all to make the best work we can. It’s thanks to the PPP and Sense’s commitment to it that I’m able to be here writing this, discovering experiential and loving every minute of it. It doesn’t just allow me to work down here though; it allows me to actually live too. To be able to go for that beer with an old friend, to visit a museum on the weekend, and maybe even see a film without having to skip popcorn. At the end of the day, all that helps us become better creatives, and that’s the whole point – to become the best creatives we can.

Who knows what I’ll go on to create, I certainly don’t, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? But surely the talent of the future is worth investing in, and in my opinion, it’s those like Sense that have already signed up to do so that are leading the way.

Jack McSwiney is Trainee Art Director at real world marketing agency Sense

Sign up here for the placement poverty pledge.

This article appeared in Promotional Marketing.

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy or amplify your retail marketing moves. Get them here at The Futures Lab.

London

5th Floor Century House
100 Oxford Street
London
W1D 1LN

New York

243 E 14th
#2 C/O SQ
New York
NY 10003

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy here at The Future Lab

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Experiential

Whether it be Festivals, Trade Shows, PR Stunts, Installations or Pop Ups to name a few, we believe brand experiences are one of the most powerful forms of marketing to impact consumer perception and attitude towards a brand. They can create real behaviour change when born out of a deep consumer insight allied to a compelling idea. And it’s these fundamentals we look to get right whatever the live, virtual or hybrid task in hand.

Sampling.

Sampling is all too often perceived as an unsophisticated, somewhat ‘blunt’ marketing tool. Over the last 16 years Sense has pioneered a set of strategic principles which underpin our unique approach to sampling and which are highly measurable from both an ROI and consumer behaviour change perspective. We will happily guide brands through the myriad of sampling channels and products available so whether it’s mass face to face sampling, in offices, digitally, at home or just a strategic framework that you are after, we can provide a blend of tactics to fulfil both brand and sales objectives.

Retail.

With many clients now focused on activating in channels more closely associated with a sale, our heavyweight retail experience closes the loop on a typical shopper journey by encompassing the moment of truth in store. Be it prize promotions, shopper toolkits, key visual creation, path-to-purchase communications, category strategy, B2B campaigns or Amazon optimisation, our goal is to create forward-thinking retail experiences that deliver demonstrable brand value. We aim to make ‘retail fail’ a thing of the past for ambitious brands looking to thrive is an ever-competitive landscape and believe our streamlined team is perfectly placed to do this.

Foresight.

Knowing what will keep a brand bright, exciting, and vital means we need to keep one step ahead of the curve. Our thought leadership hub, The Futures Lab, helps us to understand the marketing trends of tomorrow. It’s also the origin of strategies and methodologies which have created over 65 award-winning campaigns. 

Rigour.

Creativity is nothing without results. And we know that commissioning bold concepts, capable of changing minds, requires reassurance that it’s the right thing to do. 

Data, insights, and research precedes every campaign we do, and our proprietary measurement tool, EMR, gives us a decade of campaign performance metrics. Which is why we’re proud to have been recognised as industry-leading by brands like The Economist, Coca-Cola, and Molson Coors. 

Trust.

We believe brand experience is inherently more varied than other forms of marketing. No formula, no template, no cookie-cutter approach – and often no precedent. 

That’s why, Sense places trust at the heart of its business – grounded in teamwork between our people and yours. Our processes are efficient, our senior team stay involved and our partnership mentality had helped us sustain powerful client relationships, some lasting over 10 years.