Confessions of an Ad Agency Dropout
Part 3: Nepo, Baby
Or: How to Nearly Blow an Ad Agency Internship in 3 Easy Steps
What is the next logical step after an often confusing, sometimes frustrating eight-month stint in advertising school? An internship in a real, live ad agency. In fact, I couldn’t officially graduate the Advertising Copywriting program at Humber College without securing an internship. What constituted an “ad agency” turned out to be loosely defined for some students, and I can’t even remember if you had to successfully complete your term as an intern (ie. without getting fired) to graduate. You just had to get your foot in the door.
The mystery of how to get into an ad agency is what sent me down the path of attending Humber in the first place. But as our final semester neared its end, I felt nearly as lost as when I applied the year before. There were clear steps to take: create a portfolio of spec ads, send them to creative directors at Toronto agencies, go to portfolio night events to show your work and get feedback from working copywriters, and cross your fingers that you were one of the Humber program coordinator’s “superstars” that would benefit from her secretly sending your portfolio to better agencies. I wasn’t sure any of those ways would work for me, but I was lucky enough to find another one: nepotism.
By April of 2010, my portfolio of spec work was done. So along with all my classmates, we went about showing our “books” (industry slang for portfolios) to anyone willing to quickly flip through them. Going to the aforementioned portfolio night events to share my spec work with people already working in the industry made me feel like a cog in Humber’s internship machine. The industry folks were lured by free food and drink, while us students were moved quickly along a grid of tables for 10 minute speed reviews. It was easy to feel like a faceless student unless you had a few good pieces in your book that would give the reviewer a moment of pause. And if they felt your portfolio was good enough for them to give you their business card (2010 and all), you felt like you’d won the lottery.
I thought my portfolio was decent-ish (maybe even good), but I knew it wasn’t nearly at the level as some others in my class. My dream of working at the (then freshly opened) Rethink Toronto office felt far out of reach, as did securing a place at other highly regarded agencies like John St., Taxi, or BBDO. Looking through my student portfolio now, I think my self-assessment was mostly right. There are some decent headlines, some seeds of ideas, and some truly embarrassing stuff. Before I explain how I got an internship, it’s only fair that I share some of that student work:
As you can see, I was into experiential ideas and placements. I formatted the rest of my ads as if they’d be print, which is again reflective of the lack of digital thinking encouraged by the Humber program at the time. As for that JVC ad… the less said about it, the better.
With the end date of our copywriting program nearing and a number of classmates already landing internships, I was starting to feel anxious that I wouldn’t have something lined up for after my last class. My portfolio had gotten me into a few smaller “group” interviews where went into an agency and showed our work, but nothing 1-on-1. I started to feel like the openings at other agencies were getting filled by my classmates and I wasn’t sure where I might be able to end up. I’m explaining all this in order to convey just how badly I almost screwed up my shot at internship (not to mention my future career) based on what happened next.
This is where the nepotism comes in. As luck would have it, a very good friend of my father owned (and still owns) a successful chain of restaurants around Toronto and he had recently hired an agency named Grip Limited to redo the chain’s website. Readers are now likely more than familiar with Grip, as it left behind a great legacy of creative work and leaders in both Canadian and international advertising (myself excluded). But back then with my limited knowledge of the advertising landscape, Grip seemed almost as mysterious as the industry itself. They were privately owned, they promoted the fact that they were staffed primarily with senior level staff, and they hadn’t been raved about to my class by the program coordinator at Humber—this unfortunately turned out to be another sign of how out of touch that person was. But Grip had a cool website so I had already emailed them my portfolio with no response. Luckily, my Dad’s friend offered to follow up on that email.
(If you’ve found your way here by Googling how to get an internship in advertising, it’s easy! All it takes is having a family friend be a client of an ad agency, and have that client ask the president of the agency for a favour. Simple! Oh, also, it helps to be born into an upper middle class upbringing that will lead to even having an opportunity like that in the first place.)
After a note from my Dad’s friend to the president of Grip, I was connected with one of the founding partners/creative directors for an interview. I was terrified. Not only would this be my first proper interview for a “real” office job, it was with a creative director at an almost-too-cool-seeming agency that I knew very little about. I gave myself a crash course in the history of Grip (ie. reading every page of their website and seeking out their work in past ad awards shows) in the days leading up to my interview. Then I put on my only pair of dress pants, a newly purchased H&M dress shirt, and a skinny tie, and grabbed my portfolio to take my shot at getting an internship.
One of the things Grip was known for was the design of its office, so walking past the big orange slide to reception only made me feel more intimidated—not to mention seeing the space buzzing with 20- and 30-somethings all impossibly cooler than me (because they already worked at an ad agency). I don’t remember a lot about the interview itself, mainly because 1) it was 14 years ago and 2) there was an impromptu all staff meeting half-way through. The creative director invited me to step out into the atrium with him and watch as a senior level employee announced they were leaving the agency. Looking down at the Grip staff filling the atrium gave me a sense I didn’t belong there, probably because I lacked a lot of self-confidence back then and because I felt I was only in the office thanks to a family connection.
As for the important parts of the interview, I remember getting positive-ish feedback on some of my work and questions about other pieces (the JVC ads). The CD (I’m moving to common industry short-hand for creative director now) also mentioned something to the effect of “we don’t really hire juniors” which was likely a way to set reasonable expectations even if I did get the internship—or it was simply a preview of the mind games to come once I actually worked for this person. Before I left, a senior art director also looked over my portfolio and seemed to… not hate it? (This was a preview not of this person’s demeanour, but rather of how the entire ad industry is conditioned to under-react to the quality of all advertising, especially good advertising. But I’ll get to that in a later entry.)
Hopefully, you can understand why I exited the interview not feeling super confident about landing an internship at Grip. The agency seemed to be staffed by mid and senior level staff, all of whom had already put in a lot of years in the industry. Even with the CD’s mostly positive review of my portfolio, internships didn’t really seem like something they did. Simply having the interview felt like a win to me, and like the agency had fulfilled the favour asked by their client/my Dad’s friend. Looking back on this experience now, all the signs pointed to me being given a trial as an intern. But there was a lot I didn’t know then, and I thought I had to immediately get back to mass-emailing CDs at every Toronto agency. As luck would have it, I left the Grip office only to see an email on my Blackberry (again, it was 2010) from a senior copywriter at Taxi 2 asking for me to come in for an interview. This is where things get complicated—meaning where I nearly blew it.
I went home with vivid visions of being an intern at Taxi 2, an agency I felt I knew a lot more about and seemed to be a place where I would fit in better (based on absolutely nothing other than my own imagination). But later that night, I got an email from the CD at Grip offering me an internship starting right after I finished up at Humber. I should have been ecstatic, and I was… but I was also a little confused. There was a large part of me that felt the internship was just a way of appeasing a client and not because my portfolio showed genuine promise (again, I lacked self-confidence). At the same time, Taxi 2 wanted to interview me the following Monday based on my portfolio. I wasn’t sure what to do.
WE INTERRUPT THIS NEWSLETTER FOR AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO ALL ADVERTISING STUDENTS
If you are ever offered an internship—especially if it is your only offer, and especially if it is at a well-established, well-respected agency—TAKE IT.
On top of my uncertainty of interviewing at Grip, I naively thought Taxi 2’s interest gave me something resembling “leverage.” In retrospect, I have no idea what I thought I brought to the table beyond a medium-good book that many other people in my class also had. Really I think I just felt more confident that Taxi 2 would be a better fit because I knew more about it, and I had no clue how to handle the situation. Unsurprisingly, job/internship negotiations wasn’t a subject covered at Humber. (Probably because, as I mentioned above, you almost certainly shouldn’t negotiate an internship offer.) So I asked one of my instructors what to do, and now I know that his advice was better suited to a seasoned creative director fielding multiple job offers. Essentially, he told me to tell the CD at Grip I wanted to take the meeting at Taxi 2 before deciding. This wasn’t great advice for someone hoping to get their first job in an industry that’s notoriously hard to break into. And what’s even worse is that I listened to the advice.
Deep down I knew that I should be grateful to have been offered an internship at Grip and should immediately accept. I knew I was extremely lucky to be in such a “predicament.” But I couldn’t shake the feeling I should still meet with Taxi 2 before saying yes. I know what you’re thinking: take the internship at Grip and still go meet people at the other agency and make connections that could help out in the future. That’s what I should have done. Instead, I responded to the CD at Grip saying (but really more like asking if it was okay) that I wanted to go to the meeting at Taxi 2 before confirming if I would accept.
What followed was a terse email exchange with the CD that was essentially a reminder to me of how I came to have the opportunity to be an intern at Grip. This back-and-forth unfolded agonizingly over the course of a weekend and gave me an incredible amount of what I now know is anxiety. At the time, I thought it was the guilt of knowing I had screwed up and deeply offended the CD. And now it seemed like he was withdrawing the offer, but his language was a little vague. So once again I felt like I was down to one shot at an agency internship, only now it was at Taxi 2.
To be honest, I’ve hesitated in finishing the newsletter about this part of my advertising career because I was worried it would read like I’m just writing out a stream of consciousness therapy session. And maybe it does, because I had and still have a lot of conflicted feelings about what happened, what it says about me, and how I could have handled it differently. I’m pretty sure the emails about my internship are still in my Gmail inbox, but I think re-reading them would give me an anxiety spike I’m not eager to relive. So I’m going to give a quick recap of my interview at Taxi 2: they liked my portfolio but when I mentioned how I had been offered an internship at Grip, the ECD (Executive Creative Director) replied, “Grip is a great shop. You should take that.” The problem of course was I wasn’t sure if I still could.
I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I immediately sent another apologetic email to the CD at Grip begging to still be considered for an internship. He didn’t reply directly, but soon after I received an email from the senior art director I had met during my interview—they still wanted me to come be an intern. Against all odds (mostly odds I stacked against myself), I finally had an internship at an ad agency.
It wasn’t how I thought it would happen, nowhere close to how I wanted it to happen, and probably among the most stressful ways to start a career. To this day, I don’t know if I got the internship because of nepotism, or because my portfolio was good enough, or because I was sincere in my apologies for how I handled the whole situation, or some weird mixture of all of the above. As I will write about, I think this uncertainty coloured how I perceived my experience at Grip and even at agencies I worked for later on. All of that is to say, I don’t have specific advice on how to get an internship in advertising—other than to not handle an opportunity the way I did.
In the end, my perspective about the vibe of working at Grip was way off. Over the course of nearly four years working there, I would come to feel I did belong there—on some days, at least. Given how long it has taken me to exorcise my memories of simply landing my internship, I’ll save writing about the experience and how I got hired for Part 4.