POSSIBLE Interns Programme
POSSIBLE
Issue 45 | December 2017
Agency
POSSIBLE Cincinnati/Seattle
Creative Team
Cincinnati Creative Executive Creative Director Adam Kahn EVP, Insights & Strategy Brian LeCount Interns Creative David Harris Strategy Nello Pesci, Kara Svenson Marketing Sciences Bridget Barbara Digital Marketing Madison DeJaegher, Jordan Flood
Production Team
Seattle Executive Creative Director Ray Page Managing Director Gareth Jones SVP of Strategy Daniel Carlson Global Marketing Communications Specialist Lauren Bay Interns Design Tiarra La, Leslie Sharp Copywriting Jesse Summers Project Management Adam Gill Marketing Sara Stephens User Experience Jane Yu Content Strategy Blair Paley Marketing Sciences Hernan Ramirez Media Services Caroline Harris Strategy Becca Dunwoody, Devyn Russel
Date
August 2017
Background
Possible is a WPP network of 21 agencies, eight of them in the United States. The agency culture is one in which a local view of the world at large is nurtured.
In the USA, the agency has an Internship Programme, which is not your typical make-the-coffee and do-the-copying gig. The interns are given real work to do.
Whether the interns get to land full-time jobs or they move on to opportunities elsewhere, the programme is intended to help them hone their skills as advertising professionals and refer to the agency with pride.
Idea
IDEA IN CINCINNATI
In the summer of 2017, the Cincinnati interns were tasked with creating a recruitment tool to attract mid-level agency talent to the city. They created a Tinder account to fix people up with the office. Fall in love with Cincinnati. Tested in New York, Chicago and Cleveland, more than 100 people swiped right. They swiped right back on an Assistant Account Executive from Leo Burnett Chicago, Daniel Mashburn. He came to Cincinnati, and loved it.
IDEA IN SEATTLE
The brief was, put Seattle on a first-name basis with the city's homeless people. They created a giant Jenga game. Each block had a question for the players to ask each other as they played the game in the city park. Residents and homeless people were encouraged to play together, when they would exchange names. That was the insight. When you know someone's name, then the barriers of hostility and insecurity come down.
Results
In Seattle, the interns' idea led on to a hackathon. Top creative and tech talent across all the city's agencies were invited to come and help develop ideas to help the homeless. Watch this space.
In Cincinnati, they now have a new website for the specific task of recruiting talent.
Our Thoughts
Yes, the interns did the work but the real heroes here are the senior managers at Possible. What is impressive is the care that has gone into structuring a programme for interns that gets them not just thinking imaginatively but doing.
The Seattle team had to make the Jenga stack. They had to get out and interact with real people when they set up the game in the park. Real people are alarming at the best of times. Then they had to make a film, edit it, share it. And, marvellously, rather than look at what they'd done and leave it at that, they used their learnings to start another project.
In Cincinnati, they persuaded a guy to come to their city (and by the looks of it, they showed him a fabulous time) then make the video and share it.
Those who left the agencies at summer's end each have a case history they can call their own. Those who landed jobs are already living and breathing the agency's culture.
At a time when it's easy for agencies to bemoan the lack of talent in our industry, here's a group actually trying to make advertising seem relevant and worthwhile.