The brief was challenging, and initially I found it really hard to come up with an original idea. An example was given by Saatchi, of maybe getting a choir to sing on skype for the interview; sounds pretty fun but it conditioned me to think about performances and I guessed everyone else would probably think that way as well. After a few hours chatting to my housemates about it, one of them said it would be cool to do it from outside the office which made me think, it would be even cooler to do it from inside the office or even from the same room.
So that very quickly became the plan- to walk in on my own skype interview.
Last Friday I managed to get in contact with Massimo Fiori at Saatchi and ask him if he'd be able to help me get into the office and into my interview. Luckily, he was happy to oblige me, so at 7 on Wed morning (having not been able to sleep at all on Tues night) I was on the bus on the way up to 80 Charlotte Street. I arrived there at about 12.30 for my 1pm interview and was met by Massimo who gave me the password for the wireless and a seat in reception. At about five-to-one 'THE CALL' came through (not quite as 24 as I've just made it sound though. Jack Bower can handle his nerves, whereas I was a proper mess).
My memory of that next ten minutes isn't fantastic but I answered the skype call and said something like 'Hi Saatchi, your brief was to bring my CV to life, and there has only been one way I could think of doing that, so if you'll bear with me one minute...'. Then I hung up on skype and walked into the room they were in. 'I could only really bring it to life by coming up here in person'.
It seemed to go down quite well, and everyone was really nice. Although I walked into the room expecting to see 3 or 4 people, and I think there were actually about 7.
I'd prepared about 50 A4 bits of paper with little phrases, pictures and stickmen that I held up as I did my presentation; sort of Bob Dylan style but much cruder. I did my presentation and then it went straight into questions, which were a mix of things about the industry eg. 'where do you see advertising being in ten years time?' and personal stuff like 'what makes you angry'. This only lasted a couple of minutes and I think I had a fair go at answering them.
That was pretty much it really. Like I said, they were all so nice and it really cemented for me that this is what I want to do, and the sort of people I want to work with.
When I got home I had a tweet from one of the guys who had been in the room, Nick Gold. It only said 'well done' but that was cool and topped off the whole day for me. Also, I got a phone call from Julia yesterday and found out I've made it to the final stage, so I'm going back to Charlotte Street on Friday for the morning. That's about it really. Was such a awesome experience, albeit a bit nerve-racking. So glad I took the risk.
I really enjoyed getting to meet them all though, and it definitely paid off- I'm thought to the final 25 and have to go back next Friday morning.
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