Category: ihaveanidea

Boutiques vs Behemoths

Jim Lansbury, a CD at RP3 Agency has some advice for portfolio grads on ihaveanidea.org. Big agency vs small shop was something I debated when I left school. There are pros and cons to both. Here’s one of Lansbury’s pros…

“Why think small? For starters, you’ll build your book a lot faster. Small agencies don’t have the luxury of putting multiple teams on every project. They don’t mine their juniors for ideas that don’t go anywhere, or worse yet, for ideas that someone else ends up taking credit for. They expect everyone to produce. And everyone does.  In a small shop, there are no bad groups or tough accounts to get stuck on. Everyone works on everything. (At least that’s how we do it here.)”


I’ve worked and had success at both big and small agencies. Which would you rather work at as a first job?
Advertisement

Portfolio Night 7

ihaveanidea.org is hosting Portfolio Night 7.

June 11, 2009.

I can’t stress enough how important it is that portfolio school students attend this.

Why?

  1. You get a huge amount of feedback in a small amount of time.
  2. The feedback you receive is from some of the top talent in the industry, no matter the city you’re participating in.
  3. It’s face time with the people you want to work for. 
  4. It’s an opportunity to make an impression. Mike Shine was the very first person to review my student book at PN’s predecessor the One Club Student Exhibition. Six years later, when I interviewed with him, I still had one student campaign in my book. He said, “Oh, yeah! I remember these!” (Probably helped that I sent a thank you card with the campaign in them.)
  5. It’s a really fun night. I can’t speak for the other cities, but last year DDB Chicago had hors d’oeuvres and Guitar Hero while you were waiting for a review. So much better than sitting on your couch watching Friends reruns.

Go online. Book your tickets now.