This year I entered the "Saatchi and Saatchi summer internship" for the first time for two reasons.
1. Its saatchi & saatchi!
2. The three rounds of the competition and the content within each interested me.
I was very proud and surprised to make it to round three of the competition as the level of competition was high and the work being produced of a good creative standard.
The use of social media in round one and the differing skills required within each round excited me. To add to the intrigue each rounds instructions was only revealed at the close of the previous round. At the time I Likened the process to an average series of "The Apprentice".
ROUND ONE- TWITTER
Round one consisted of creating a Twitter account and generating as many followers, re-tweets,mentions and as much general buzz as possible.
This task was right up my alley as I have long been a advocate of twitter and am fascinated by social networking in general. I went about creating a twitter page/account that would be something I could enthusiastically tweet about and something that I felt others could relate to as well as participate with. Food is a subject that is close to my heart and I knew it would be a easy subject to get other followers to participate in debate about.
Within one day I had set up the "Talking Snack" page and set about promoting it the best way I knew how. "Talking Snack" would focus on new, existing and more important foodstuffs and would not take itself too seriously (unlike some other food pages). I felt it more of a challenge and almost fairer to set up a new twitter page instead of using my own personal one which had a significant number of existing followers. The title came from a play on the phrase "Talking smack" and the fact that as anyone of my friends or family would tell you, talking enthusiastically about food is something I did to almost to an annoying degree.
The icon or profile picture for the page was equally if not more important than the name and description. Everyone knows a picture can say a thousand words but if that picture is cute, ironic and colourful then half the battle for awareness was already done.
Next was best deciding how to promote the page in order to generate followers within the time-limit, (each round was a couple of weeks). I created what was essentially a feedback loop by making a facebook event page ( which could run for months) with a synopsis and a link to the twitter page. Conversely I had created a link to the facebook page from the twitter one. This created the aforementioned loop and meant that whichever way you approached talking snack you could either join as a follower or read about joining on facebook. The other benefit to heavily promoting it on the world's most visited website is obvious, viral marketing. I'm obsessed with the power and ease of use of viral marketing, the brand encourages the user to pull instead of being pushed too and in my opinion your always more likely to trust the opinion of a friend or at least be encouraged to support a brand if you are introduced to it via a colleague. For example If I had encouraged you to post a link to either the twitter or facebook pages, and ten people on your friend network see it and share it with ten of their friends before you know it, you've got interest coming in from people you have never met and maybe never will. Fortunately this strategy worked and I gained enough support and interest to impress the Saatchi Judges and qualify onto round two.
ROUND 2- MULTIPLE CHOICE
The next rounds format was vastly different in terms of time-scale and scope. It took the form of a (45min?, I cant remember the exact details) multiple choice. The main skill to be tested was one's ability to gather information quickly and efficiently. The answers to the question's were not common knowledge and could only be answered correctly through blind guesswork or more accurately a quick Google search in order to track down the relevant information. A typical question would run something like this..
"What were the total number of Twitter user's in the U.K as of March 2010?"
Exactly the kind of information that could be found out but rarely known. I enjoyed the quiz and even the pressure on me to rapidly gather information.
Like the previous round the only way to find out if you were still in the competition was to check if you were still included in Julia's ( a Saatchi employee ) facebook friend list. A rather brutal and modern way to be dumped out of the competition I'm sure.
ROUND 3- RECREATE YOUR FAVOURITE ADVERT
Round three was were I came unstuck and where I failed to progress as I didn't provide an entry to be judged on this round. The brief was simple enough, "recreate your favourite advert in 90 seconds and also tell us why you liked it". But with mounting university work and through not being able to pick a easy re-creatable advert that I liked enough I decided to leave the competition here. One Stirling entry that I did see however was a nice recreation of the most recent lurpak advert by a female advertising graduate from the USA, nice work whoever you were!.
Looking back maybe I should have made more of an effort to provide and entry but the a sharp deadlines left me with little time to consider what I would even produce let alone how I would go about producing it.
Saatchi run FAQ and advice page for potential applicants. Even I was sucked in and flattered by the responses and advice I got from what I thought was a Saatchi employee. Of course the trick worked and Tong and his fake page gathered followers. Then followed a lot of feedback on the facebook page about having Mr Tong removed from the process. Others admired his cunning and suggested that purely on merit he should be given an interview. I fell somewhere between the two camps and despite a begrudging respect for his methods what he has previously done in his quest for fame leave me with a dislike for him. You can read about some of Ken's exploits here
Regardless, I personally look forward to entering again next year as It was a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable process that called upon a variety of skills and offered a potential a taste of the big time.
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