Here is the full text of the interview:

Breaking into the ad industry? This’ll be handy.

A bead of sweat runs down your hand and drips onto the front page of your portfolio (book), distorting the inked title, as your parched lips sip a post-crit beer.

It’s a hot, muggy, competitive placement season. So if it’s all getting a bit much for you, read this refreshing advice from William Burks Spencer. He’s interviewed over 100 of the world’s top Creative Directors & Creatives – specifically on what they want to see in your book. And now, I’ve interviewed him.

CC: Stuff that isn’t actual advertising. In or out?

WS: I personally like it. Not everyone does.

Ad agencies are doing more and more stuff that isn’t actual advertising so I think it’s becoming more relevant. One way to hedge it (and this is one easy way to customize your book to a CD that I think is appropriate) is to make an advertising portfolio. Then have your other things. Then you can say “by the way, I have some other stuff I do on the side”. If they want to see it they can and if they don’t it won’t hurt you. But make sure that there is an idea in what you’re doing. Or craft. Don’t show pictures of your dog.

For my student book, I just put in a few things after my ad work, but that’s what got me hired on Nike at Wieden & Kennedy in Portland. If you want to see my student book it’s at williamspencer.com/old. Click on “adcenter work” for the student book.

CC: Are tablet and online books the way forward or are forest-killing physical books still in demand?

WS: I personally don’t like when students take out a laptop, put it in front of me and click through work. I think it’s awkward and I want to “drive”. I think paper books are still good, but, of course, if you have video or audio, they can’t handle that. I think iPads can combine the best of both worlds. If you can hand a tablet to a CD and have them easily swipe through your work, that’s a great way to do it.

CC: Copywriting & art direction skills – are they still valued or is it all about the idea?

WS: It depends who you talk to. For me, I absolutely want to see craft skills. I think it’s critical. I was a junior in London after grad school and before I was hired at Wieden & Kennedy in Portland. I went to one of those “dating” nights for copywriters and art directors to meet and team up and I remember hearing people making fun of my book (not knowing that I was standing right there) because it was completely comped up (no scamps or sketches) and I have several long copy campaigns.

I realise that to some people a finished ad says “this is perfect and I’m not changing it”. I know this is a cultural difference between the ad worlds of the UK and US, but I think, for an art director, it’s a good idea to show off your craft skills with comped work. I also think it shows confidence in your ideas. Of course, you need to really believe in those ideas and have put in the work to make the execution further the idea. In short, it needs to be great. And if you meet with someone who pokes holes in your strategy, or copy, or art direction, and you decide they’re right, go change it. Put in the work and comp it up again. That’s more impressive to me than going in with a scamp because you expect to have to change it when someone tells you it’s wrong. But this is just my personal opinion and I know it’s coming from an American school of thought. Most of the London and European CDs in ‘Breaking In’ would beg to differ on this one.

CC: Did the cultural shift of working in a foreign land so early on in your career help you grow creatively?

WS: Yes, but more for the cultural experiences than the time spent working on briefs. I think it’s important to see new things. It’s important to be a keen observer of people. I think travel is one shortcut to noticing more of what’s around you.

As far as working abroad, I would definitely consider it as an option. London is a very competitive place for juniors, you certainly could look at other places to find placements or internships. I heard about a junior team that traveled around the world working at agencies and blogging about it. They made a name for themselves doing it and must have had an amazing adventure too. Work visas can be tricky but, if you can make it work, I would recommend it. Not necessarily because it will make you better at advertising, but because it will broaden your thinking and make you a more interesting person.

One last thing I want to mention. An art director friend who I went to ad school with had a pretty unique book. And this gets into another way to think about your book: have a message. Think of it like a campaign. What is the thing you want to leave in the mind of a CD when they think of you? My friend was an insanely hard-working, detail-oriented art director who would not stop working until it was right. His book was a big roll of paper. You had to put it on the floor and unroll it. It was 6 feet wide once you got it flat. On the paper was one single campaign of three print ads, art directed in 7 or 8 different ways. There was a visual impact of seeing that all at once and some theatre in unrolling it. The whole thing was different and it made a point.

William Burks Spencer is author of Breaking In: Over 100 Advertising Insiders Reveal How to Build a Portfolio That Will Get You Hired.

He is also a copywriter with over 12 years of experience in advertising. He has worked at agencies including Wieden+Kennedy Portland, London and Shanghai, Crispin Porter+Bogusky Boulder & Miami, BBDO New York, AMV London, Mother London, BBH New York, JWT New York and London, Leo Burnett Chicago, La Comunidad Miami, Y&R New York, TBWA New York and others on brands such as Nike, Google, Chrysler, Target, Nokia, Starbucks, and Virgin. William has also taught advertising at Miami Ad School in London and Pratt Institute in New York and given talks on advertising at Princeton University, Columbia Business School, and Miami Ad School in Hamburg. He has degrees from Princeton University and VCU Brandcenter.

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Thanks for the interview, Chris. Check out other good stuff at shellsuitzombie.co.uk.

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

MF: I look for intelligence, I think. It’s not so much the packaging, or the choice of media, or necessarily how finished something is, but I look for something that makes me think, “I bet that the person who made that is a smart guy or a smart girl and I just want to learn more about that person.” And I know that’s a bit vague, but I think you have to look at something and go, “Did it take a little bit of wit, or insight, or knowledge of some sort to come up with that solution?” And then I think it’s good. That gets me interested in seeing more.

WS: You said you’re not that concerned about the finish necessarily; do you think sketches can be enough these days, or not?

MF: It’s kind of a sliding scale. I think that I’d be lying if I said that I would prefer something that was unfinished. I think that we all pride ourselves on saying we’re looking for something smart and it doesn’t matter what form it takes. That said, polish can’t hurt. It’s just the old “polishing a turd” cliché that I think is absolutely true—it’s not going to help if the idea’s not there.

But what I wouldn’t suggest is poking at something. I think we do this, whether it’s a student book or an actual commercial you’re working on. It’s like poking at a dead thing on the road: the more you poke at the dead frog, it’s going to start to fall apart. You’ve got that stick and you’re just trying to tweak this, and push that. At best, no one’s going to notice and it won’t really matter. You’re just wasting your time. At worst, you’re actually going to make it worse and it’s going to start to fall apart. So I think that you have to use trusted opinions around you because sometimes you get so close to something that you’re not sure when to say, “Okay, pencils down. This is good enough to communicate the idea–that’s all I need to do.”

Now, there’s lots of different jobs out there. If you’re more design heavy or if you’re hoping to get a studio job [it’s different]. Certainly a lot of art directors would probably have a different answer. They are going to be looking for execution. But as far as I’m concerned, if a sketch can deliver that little flash of genius, or intelligence, then you’re done—time to move to the next thing.

[ … ]

WS: Do you think it’s important to have a long copy campaign in your book?

MF: Actually, I don’t think print is even a factor anymore. Long copy, short copy, or no copy.

WS: Really? So you don’t want to see any print ads at all?

MF: Right. To us, print is a dead medium.

WS: Can you evaluate craft and campaign ideas when they are so intertwined with ideas that are more about how to use technology?

MF: Yeah, I think that’s the challenge. But great ideas done in new media should still be able to demonstrate the same intelligence and ability.

WS: So then is writing important in digital media and do you want to see people demonstrate that in their work?

MF: Yes, exactly. At least for copywriters, there’s no reason why the ability to write can’t come through. Whether it’s literally the copy on a website or their social-media posts or even the way the individual writes about the application or stunt or mobile piece that they’ve chosen to include in their portfolio. Anything you write is an opportunity to demonstrate your writing ability. So it should be used that way.

[ … ]

WS: Do you have any tips for someone who’s trying to get into the business? Either on how to put a book together or how to improve?

MF: I think constant exposure to really good work is absolutely a surefire way of doing it. And I think it’s not just being aware of what’s out there but figuring out little mental exercises for yourself on analyzing why they’re great. So one drill I think is good—it’s actually good for writing in general, and it came to me after doing this as a writer. There is an author that I love, Philip Dick, who is a great short story writer. He’s got a very unique style. So, just as a writing exercise, I tried to start writing Philip Dick short stories. So I’d come up with a concept of the story, the plotline, but then I would try and write it exactly like he would’ve written it. Just to understand how his brain worked. And I think you can do the same thing with ads. I think you can, if you see a spot on television that you love, you can go home and write the script yourself, and look at it and go, “What is it that worked? How did it change from script to execution? What role did the execution play?” But also I think looking at the script is a better way of saying, “What is it about that thing that really struck me?” So it’s not just being exposed to great work and saying, “Yeah I like that” or, “I don’t like that,” but really analyzing it and deconstructing it.

And then, as far as kind of getting a leg up, or making a go of it, I think new technology raises the expectations of juniors these days. As the “media landscape” shifts, the old-timers and the more senior people are going to be looking for people who bring expertise that they don’t have. So being willing—not only being willing, but eager—to take, to tackle the assignments that you know somewhere in the agency people are not capable of doing. There has never been a time like this, I don’t think, for junior folks to be needed for something that they can do, that more senior people just can’t. That is an awesome opportunity. So use it.

Chrysler – “Born of Fire”

Old Spice – “Painted Experience”

Old Spice – “Hungry Like the Wolf”

Nike – “For Warriors”

Levi’s – “O Pioneers”

Levi’s – “America”

P&G – “Kids”

P&G – “Best Job”

Old Spice – “Is It Right For Me?”

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

TM: I always look for two things: Work that makes me uncomfortable and work that falls outside the bounds of what most folks would consider to be advertising. What I tell juniors is that, for the rest of their career, they will have someone telling them why a certain idea is too weird or crazy to show to a client. This is their time to show what they really believe is great. I hired a guy once because he had invented a line of products that were designed to raise money for the democratic party…peanut butter, jelly, stuff like that. I thought it was a genius way to raise money and, at the same time, raise awareness for the cause while people are walking down the aisle at Walmart or Piggly Wiggly. It’s not a crazy or extreme idea, just a really smart way for the party to communicate in a new way with people, and to raise money.

I also consciously look for people who have creative passions outside of advertising: photography or painting or poetry or music or whatever. I think that the more advertising draws from and stays close to the fine arts the better off we will be as an industry.

The third thing I look for these days is an appreciation for the possibilities of technology. I just read that the History Channel is using Foursquare to promote a show about the history of America by enabling little pop-ups that tell you about the history of the location where you are checking in. Genius. Very much advertising, but advertising that is completely contextual and hyper-local. A book with ideas like that in it goes a long way with me.

WS: How important is finish? If ideas are the most important thing, can sketches be enough? Do you look at actual books anymore, or is it all websites?

TM: I’ll look at anything. If the person is applying as a designer or an IA or creative technologist, then some work in that specific area is important. If they are applying as an idea person full stop, then that’s what I look for. Are the ideas good? I don’t care so much whether they are really slickly executed. And really slick execution minus great ideas is even worse.

Having said that, the tools for making stuff have never been more available. I was at a friend’s house the other day—this guy is a well known and very successful commercial director—and he was making a short film in his living room using a digital still camera.

At this guy’s level he could have chosen whatever tool he wanted to make his film, and he chose a tool that is available to pretty much anyone. My advice to students today is: make stuff. Make a lot of stuff. And keep making that stuff better. Your “book”–or your body of work—is never finished. If you’re talented, you should plan on spending the next 20 years making and remaking that body of work. Hopefully for a significant fraction of that time someone will be paying you to do it. But do it because you love it and do it because you’re never satisfied with anything you do.

WS: How important is copy? Do you need to see long-copy ads?

TM: If I’m hiring someone to be a writer then, yes, copy is important. The idea swirling around lately that words are dead is, I think, pretty silly. What do you spend most of your time on the Internet doing? Reading. Texts, emails, blogs, whatever. I predict that that behavior will continue, so the ability to string together a coherent argument using words will get you a very long way.

I think of good copy as salesmanship in text. The questions I ask myself are: Can this person put together a persuasive argument to get me to lay down money on this product? Do they make me want it? Do I get to the end feeling entertained? Informed? Wanting more? Those are the hallmarks of great copywriting. Still relevant and valid today, I believe.

Bing – “Fast Forward”

Smirnoff – “Green Tea Party”

Sega – “Beta 7” Case Study

Swedish Fish – “Cat Sandwich”

Swedish Fish – “Survivor”

Swedish Fish – “Boy Burger”

Sharp – “More to See”

Brand Jordan – “Storytime”

ESPN – “Shelfball”

ESPN – “Expansion Team”

ESPN – “Old Timers Day”

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

GG: The first thing I look for is campaign ideas. It’s like the first filter. Not just a lot of one-shot-y things, or guerrilla tactics, or this and that. Just a bigger idea. And then I look for people who don’t think the way I think. I like to look at an ad and not really be able to figure out how the person came up with it. I mean, a lot of times, you still see the same crap…like you see a lot of toothpaste ads with a lot of white people because it makes things really white. I love seeing ads that I like but not understanding what wavelength that person is on. So, odd thinking, 
I guess.

WS: How did you get into the industry initially?

GG: I was a stock broker when I graduated from college. I wrote for a comedy review at Notre Dame. I went to the University of Notre Dame and I loved doing that. So I kind of had a sit-down with myself and I wanted to wake up each morning and want to do what my job was. And I thought back to what my favorite thing to do was and it was writing for that review. So I screwed around with pilots and all that kind of stuff, and it didn’t go anywhere and somebody said, “You should try advertising.”

So I took a class in LA, some night class with some guy who used to work at Chiat, and I put a horrible portfolio together. It was horrible, and I showed it to everybody in Los Angeles where I was living and couldn’t get a job. And then one guy liked one ad out of the twelve that I had and he pushed me a little and then he had a friend in New York who was hiring at Saatchi and they hired me. And I’ve told the story before, but I found my first book when I was moving a couple of years ago, and it’s just dreadful, but that’s why I don’t…I never look for a perfect book because they rarely come by. You just try to see something, some kind of talent in there.

WS: Do you have any tips for someone who’s just starting out on how to put together a book or how to improve?

GG: How to put together a book? Well, nowadays, you need a website. That’s the easiest way to get somebody to look at your work. That’s not the best way. To present your work, it would be great to sit down with the creative director and have the actual ads and be there to talk through everything. But I think the big thing about getting a job isn’t how your book looks, or how you put together the book, or do you have a website or a disk, or whatever. The hard thing is getting somebody to look at it. I mean look around us—see this? All of this stuff, except for my kids’ pictures, are people’s books–people’s lives, right?

My advice is to keep calling, and calling, and calling, and calling, and don’t ever worry if you’re bothering somebody because I have a guy who works for me now, who hounded me once a week for about a year and a half. And he kept working on his book, and working on his book, and working on his book, and then I hired him. So, I would say, put something together to show your ideas, but be relentless when it comes to getting your work in front of somebody because that’s the biggest thing—is to get somebody to stop and look at your work. And if it’s really good, if there’s a couple of things in there, then I’d take the book off the ground and I bring it over to my creative manager and I say, “Call this person in.” So it’s a bitch. It sucks. It’s really hard.

Nextel – “Dance Party”

Ragu – “Long Day of Childhood” Campaign

Kayak – “The Power of your Mind”

Kayak – “Five-Man Search”

FedEx – “Desert Island”

FedEx – “Chinese Office”

Crest – “You Can Say Anything with a Smile”

Skittles – “Beard”

Skittles – “Leak”

Sprint/Nextel – “Locker Room”

E*Trade – “Monkey”

E*Trade – “Money Out the Wazoo”

Kayak – “Crooner”

FedEx – “Robocat”

Starburst – “Ernie”

Starburst – “Friends”

Starburst – “Fiesta”

Skittles – “Sitting on a Rainbow”

WS: What do you look for in a student book? And what impresses you?

KS: What impresses me? Clarity of thought. Freshness of thinking, too. And sometimes those two can fight each other. Just getting it. Stopping power. What’s happening now is there’s a lot of the “Crispin-ization” [Crispin Porter + Bogusky] of books as everyone goes 360, forgetting that what you need is an idea first of all that then spreads out. Not, “I’ve got all these bases covered.” So I personally like to see a strong idea that’s got some sort of legs, or can resonate. This is something that Crispin actually does, but students misinterpret and just scattergun weak ideas across different media.

I’ve got three rules that I like to apply when I’m looking at print ads, or any ads. And that’s, one, does it stop me? Two, is it original? Because you don’t want to be advertising someone else’s product. And three, does it make me buy into the product? Now by that, I don’t mean, you’re not going to rush out and go and grab it off the shelves, like they did in the sixties. We were still getting out of the war and were just not used to having stuff. But you’re creating this relationship with the products. So if your ad makes people reconsider–it’s like, “I wouldn’t mind hanging out with that product.” And when you need a product of that type, that one will be on your list. That’s enough. That’s what I want them to do. So that’s my three rules.

Other student-book things: don’t create pollution. A lot of people want to do things like, “Oh, I’m going to do something in a lavatory. Or I’m going to do something just outside your front door.” Unless it’s really engaging, unless I really am interested in it and it enriches my life in some way, I’m going to be five times to twenty times more angry at you for encroaching on another piece of my life with a piece of bullshit fucking advertising. Make it something that enriches my life, not fucks it up a bit more.

Other things for students: be prepared to listen. A lot of students come and say, “Well, someone else liked this.” I said, “Well, why didn’t they give you a fucking job, then? They’re being nice to you.” It’s way easier to go to a student and say, “Oh yeah, that’s a really nice book. Yeah, keep trying. See ya!” And then not take your calls anymore. It’s a lot harder to be a bastard and sort of say, “Okay, this is going to be confrontational. It’s going to hurt. And it’s going to hurt me saying it.” Because you do get tensed up. But you say, “This sucks, because…” But you’ve got to say the “because.” And, “This is how you can fix it. And this is good because…” But you’ve got to be ready to hear someone say, “I don’t like this.” And then do something about it. Even if it took you months to put together. Put another one together. It’s slower to think, “My book is perfect.” I’ve seen guys do this—quite good guys—say, “My book is perfect,” and wait for someone to say, “Your book is perfect.” Rather than change the whole fucking book. Because…changing the whole book might take two months. Waiting for someone to say it’s perfect might take four years. And it wouldn’t be a very good person that says it was perfect.

]]> https://breakinginbook.com/kash-sree-work/ Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:00:29 +0000 http://breakinginbook.com/?p=1042 Continue reading →]]> Kash Sree is Executive Creative Director of SR33 in New York.

Nike – “Move”

Nike – “Tag”

Nike – “Shaderunning”

Nike – Tiger Woods – “Hackey Sack”

Lego – “Click”

Nintendo – “School’s Out”

Vaseline – “Sea of Skin”

Nike – “Footwork”

Nike – “Elephant”

De Beers – “Roses”

Mr Pizza – Conspiracy Case Study

]]> https://breakinginbook.com/jason-bagley/ Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:00:52 +0000 http://breakinginbook.com/?p=1039 Continue reading →]]> Check out Jason Bagley’s work in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

JB: I would say I want to be surprised and delighted. I don’t know if I should use the word “delighted.” Maybe just surprised. It’s a surprisingly rare quality in a portfolio.

WS: Surprise is surprisingly rare.

JB: Yes, surprise is surprisingly rare.

WS: Is it just breaking out of formulas?

JB: I think it takes a while to break out of formulas, and I understand…when I was first starting out in advertising, I was guilty of the same thing. But what I don’t want to see is a bunch of clever or effective solutions—communication solutions to a client’s problems.

WS: You don’t want to see that?

JB: I don’t want to see just that. And that’s what you see a lot of. It’s like, “Yeah that’s a good concept and they effectively communicated the point of what the client would have wanted.” But it’s cold and sterile and boring and unsurprising. And I think you’ve got to…for me, I want to see something where there’s personality and more of a human voice coming through so it doesn’t just feel like a corporation is communicating with me. It feels more like an actual personality is coming through. I also try to ask myself, “Is something good for an ad? Or it is just good?” Like, “Is it just great regardless of what it is? Is it just great entertainment and something that gets you excited or surprises you or just blows your mind?”

A brief is like a math problem, and the challenge is that when we come up with a solution, there’s an excitement because we have technically “solved” it. But that excitement can cloud our objectivity. Simply coming up with an answer isn’t enough—we have to come up with a beautiful, or inspiring, or funny solution that gets people to look at the problem in a new way.

I like to ask myself, “If it wasn’t mine, and I saw it in a magazine, or on TV, or online, would it inspire me, or make me laugh? Is it something I would see on TV and laugh out loud or talk to my friends about? Or is it just an ad, and do I only like it because it’s mine?” I think the vast majority of the time, it’s just an ad, and we only like things because we came up with them. So, in the very rare times I see a book that really stands out, you can tell the creator of that book has a strong voice, and they’ve broken out of that mold, of the standard, responsible, workman-like ad structure.

[ … ]

In terms of putting together a book, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do in advertising and the type of work I wanted to do and what my voice was. And I think it’s essential to figure that out because you see so many books—and I think most people’s first books suffer from this—but you see so many books that could have been done by anyone. There’s really nothing particularly unique about them. It can be a very good, a very solid book but there’s no personality coming through in it and there’s no voice. It’s just a standard, solid, smart portfolio.

So I think it’s helpful if someone can really kind of zero in on the type of work that they love, that they want to do. And once they know that, then hold their own work to that standard and try to put together a portfolio that represents the type of work that they are really proud of and would want to do in their career. And that can be a lot of work, but I think if you can do that, you’re more likely to be hired to do that type of work.

If your book has a clear voice and point of view to it, then there’s a greater chance you’re going to be hired to use that point of view and that voice, as opposed to just be an all-purpose creative, who can do every style of advertising, but none of it is very interesting. Many people told me when I was first in the business that the creative should be invisible in the work, but I just disagree with that—it makes for mechanical, sterile work. That doesn’t mean that you can only do comedy, or you can only do serious, epic work, but whatever you do should have a strong voice and point of view.

[ … ]

When I was trying to get into a good agency, I had a very solid portfolio that I would send around. And I was getting reasonably good responses from it. It was a very tight, solid book. But then I finally sent it to Tim Hanrahan who was working at Wieden+Kennedy at that time and he was the one who really encouraged me. He was the one who told me, “Yeah, this is a very solid book, but it’s kind of like every other book I see. I’d like to see something that represents you more.” And at that point, I stopped…I had been making a book that I thought would get me hired at an ad agency instead of making a book that I was in love with. And at that point, I threw out almost everything in my book and started over. And I stopped thinking about what any creative director, or any ad agency would think–my only criteria was: “Does this honestly represent something that I personally love and think is hilarious?” And if I couldn’t answer yes to that question, it didn’t go in. And so, with that standard in mind, I worked for I think about a year, and when I finished that, I sent it to Wieden+Kennedy, and I got a call from them within 24 hours. So I’m a big believer in figuring out what you love and trying to hold your book to that standard.

[ … ]

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