Tuesday, August 28, 2007

UNIVERSITY GRADUATES ENTICED TO THE JWT WOMB


JWT Australia is running a graduate competition called The Womb. Open to anyone in their final year of tertiary study, there will be two winners - one in Sydney, one in Melbourne – and the prize is a nine month long paid position at JWT.
The initiative is designed to seek out and cultivate creative-minded students. The website, www.jwtwomb.com, is now live and students can register and find out more information about the process.
The JWT Womb is the brainchild of Amy Smith, CEO of JWT Australia and New Zealand, and is part of her drive to turn the agency once considered the ‘university of advertising’ into the University of Magic and Logic. Amy has long been an advocate for nurturing new talent in the industry and is championing the JWT Womb as a way of unearthing more of that talent.
The process will involve a live brief given by one of the agency's biggest clients, Ford Australia.
“We want to see how the candidates are able to deal with some of the same challenges we face,” Smith said.
“That’s why we’re asking them to work on a live brief. The results will be judged internally and then the finalists will have to present to a board of judges which will include senior JWT and Ford staff.”
Applicants will be asked to produce a creative communications campaign, based on a robust strategic platform. They will also be invited to attend workshops where they will be advised on what the judges will be looking for when assessing the work.
“It doesn’t matter where you think your talents lie - be they creative or strategic, account service or production – the Womb will let you showcase your strengths and expose you to all aspects of the way an agency works,” Smith said.
The project has the support of universities around Australia and places for the information seminars are filling quickly.
The website features one of the designers of the program, Paul Johnston. He is curled up in the foetal position, working on his laptop. When you launch the site, you can hear the voice of his ‘Mother’ talking. The two interact, with the ‘baby’ kicking Mother at one stage and Mother directing him to do things. In -utero, our ‘baby’ talks on the phone, bats away an alarm clock and drinks a cup of coffee.
The JWT Womb also has a presence on Facebook, with a link from the Womb website. Here people can view behind the scenes footage from the making of the website and the poster shoots (volunteers, Paul Johnston and Alice Mason were covered in the thickener used for Four’n’Twenty meat pies to recreate that in-utero ‘goo’ look), meet other applicants, get the latest updates on the program from the JWT team and perhaps even garner some inside information…
Says Smith: "A huge bunch of people worked tirelessly, both in and out of office hours, to make this project happen. They were: Holly Matchett, Graham Alvarez, Susan Hinton, Paul Johnston, David Hakkennes, Leo Ibrahim, Nick Weller, Phil van Bruchem, Michael Ball, Alice Mason and Justine Kubale."
The poster has gone up around university campuses.

14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I didn't get the fetal position thing until I read the PR blurb. Maybe that's just me but it just looks like someone in a bit of seated position who's wet. They need to curl him up a bit more on the ground to make it work I think. Aside from that, the actual idea of having a paid internship is great, even if the creative isn't... nice to see the kids getting a leg up. Love the Cornflakes ad where the sets change too. That's a ripper.

1:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can't crack FORD hey?

3:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree.
The womb ad could have totally been a kick-arse visual if he was curled around more with face in screen and covered in more shit.
You nearly did something rocking there.

3:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Womb is a good idea,but sorry 1.10,the Cornflake ad isn't. It's a tired old music video idea that has been done to death.

4:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This has just got to be one of the best graduate competitions and should get amazing entries. I just hope that the finalists are properly ‘nurtured’. By that I mean that they are allowed to really think about how the content is used. Because if JWT and Ford go into it with the mindset that a much faster online and mobile transition of robust strategy is now possible, they might end up with one of the world’s most original integrated campaigns.

8:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

4.43. You're right, the womb idea is totally fresh. And really lateral too. Like "we've got this name 'the womb' and we're going to have a guy in foetal position on a laptop. It's like... he's in a womb! High fuck'n five dude. Let's go to lunch"
Thsi seemed to be more of a story suited to adnews. Sorry. Every ad agency in town should be doing this. But they should be taking on Award school students that pay $1500.00!!!
When is this industry going to fucking learn! Are we supposed to applaud you JWT??? Get behind the industry please. 90% of all the exceptionally talented creatives that have gone on to do amazing things have done AWARD SCHOOL. What are we doing??? It's a slap in the face to the kids and it's a slap in the face to all the tutors that gave up their time to teach.
Lynchy could you please head up this debate?

10:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I never went to AWARD school, and neither did my art director. we did teach it though in our second year in the business, and we're now both working overseas as seniors, in our 4th year in the business. I say take the best talent JWT - who cares if they were lucky enough to study or not. Sometimes raw talent can be over-taught in places like AWARD.

6:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wrong 10:03. You might think Award School grads should go straight to the front of the queue, but there are many people in the business who think Award School turns out more prententious wannabes than its worth. JWT is 'getting behind the industry'- their way. They should be congratulated. Lets hope their program breaks the cycle of the Award cookie-cutter clones. God knows we did it!

8:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

AWARD Students deserve nothing.

If you can't crack a job after the course the problem is yours.

The real issue with AWARDSchool is that it graduates too many students for too few jobs. Oh, and the fact that 95% of the graduates are crap.

Cheerio.

5:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually-I didn’t want to get caught in this blogosphere again, because I know from bitter experience, you all get quite bitchy and scathing at times!….But just picking up on the points about AWARD! I think ‘we all respect’ the “A-Guys”, but has Award included all the developments of Social Networking and Blogging over its course? I only ask because I’m sure you’re familiar with the dramatic growth of sites like Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Facebook, Tagged, You Tube, WotNext and about a few hundred others I have not mentioned! At their core is the obvious similarity of profile or peer-2-peer communication, but it’s their ease of use to the user that gives them individuality or originality, and all the titles I’ve just mentioned are now Social Network Brands and their brand heritage is their user or user generated content. There are massive and well researched figures of growth across all the titles I’ve already mentioned and I don’t think it’s all for the same reasons. There are different cultures at play-with heavy crossover or duplication. The culture of IM, mobile and blogging-for a kick off. Let’s start with blogging. Just one incredibly accurate stateside figure today calculated there were over 175,000 new blogs every day, which is 95.8 million! Bloggers update regularly to the tune of 18 updates a second or over 1.6 million posts per day! You have to understand about how the entries are written chronologically and how commentary is provided, such as local news, politics or any subject (or advertising) category. So it occurred to me that the age socio that JWT have gone for makes an abundance of sense…..Because a lot of these graduates are custodians of these brands! And another big thing happening is social education-essay and story writing across huge subjects, (like Global Warming for one)…At one prestigious UK Boarding School with about 2,000 potential future Creative Director’s (that I do a lot of work with) they live and breath and “grow up” on this culture…Some of their peers are their families-brothers-sisters-some graduates-some now working! But I’m not sure 14-18 year olds or guys and girls just about to start University would be allowed into AWARD yet….But please correct me constructively if I’m wrong…Because just like ‘the grads’-I’m still learning? C.Simon-Gladly not working in Syd @ 4am, in these demanding global times, but good morning Sydney soon-anyway!!!!)

4:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The University of Magic and Logic.

That's just gay.

Not 'accidentally brush your hand across some guy's cock in a nightclub' gay, but 'hobbling into st vinnies emergency ward with a coke bottle and two dead gerbils stuck up your arse' gay.

12:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I disagree with the negative comments on this visual. I think it's been beautifully done. I think the visual is the idea. So well done to whoever did it. I don't agree about having more shit on him either - would be gilding the lily (albeit with shit).

(Usual disclaimer about not having anything to do with the agency.)

1:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The things you mention are cool because they aren't an advertising medium-yet. Communicating is an advertising euphemism for annoying the shit out of people with mind numbing nonsense that extols the far from compelling virtues of many products.

5:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll #$%@ing scream if I see one more useless Award student. If you want to be Droga or join the Glues - call them and leave me alone.

5:20 PM  

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