Graduate people
In their own words, some WPP Fellows who have completed the Program:
Laura, second year WPP Fellow
I still can't believe that aren't more graduate opportunities akin to the WPP Fellowship since I think it is the perfect - but sadly all too rare - combination of a job that is both creative and intellectually stimulating. Other benefits, such as the opportunity to spend a year abroad and exposure to the top brains in the industry through a great mentoring system, aren't exactly a turn-off either.
Through allowing you a taster of three different communications companies over three years, the Fellowship is the ideal experience for people who are interested in communications but aren't sure exactly what area they want to specialise in. This is a pretty understandable dilemna given the seemingly endless number of options available these days, ranging from the traditional big advertising agencies to the proliferation of smaller new firms specialising in communication technologies that secretly no one over the age of 15 years old quite understands. However, if, like me, you're fascinated by people and what makes them tick, inspired by great brands and frustrated by dull ones (insurance booklets as bed time reading anyone?), then looking into the Fellowship as a career is probably a good place to start.
I've spent my first year of the Fellowship at Henley Centre HeadlightVision, a trends and futures consultancy in London. I've had a great year, working on a range of clients from well-known global brands to smaller niche companies and also some public sector departments. Every day is varied - from taking part in a brainstorm about... (insert random but interesting theme of your choice), facilitating workshops looking into the future of... (again, insert any number of fascinating issues including climate change, the rise of ethical consumption, beauty products, weird new food), writing trends thought pieces, and sampling chocolate (I promise it counts as work if it's "innovation stimulus"). Plus I get to work with people who love to think and share their ideas.
The plan for next year is to move to the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather (again in London) to work as an account planner. And for year three? I'll be going abroad for sure but who knows where!
Nazia, third year WPP Fellow
Never having lived anywhere very permanently, I guess the first appeal of the Fellowship for me was the fact that I would be allowed my happily rootless existence for a bit longer. The second was a very real problem of not knowing what to actually do with myself after a couple of fscinating but unusable degrees. The Fellowship offered a neat solution - explore a bit of everything, see how they feel, and then decide. Hurrah, I thought.
Currently wrapping up my second placement in Shanghai, I can honestly say I never thought working life could be this much fun. I've always known China is my passion, and what's been great about the scheme is that I've been able to work here in so many different capacities in two years - through Added Value as a qualitative researcher across cities I'd never been to; through JWT, as a strategic planner, and later as a business planner for Chese companies on ground-level executional problems. Through it all I've found an incredible flexibility and willingness on the part of WPP to help me carve a path for myself that I've been comfortable with.
I guess that's what I'm most grateful for - having this wide open space to grow and even occasionally falter in, whilst always having a the support scheme behind me. It really has been a learning experience, not only professionally but also personally. I've learnt how to manage things and also how to ask for help. I've learnt how to deal with not being right. And I've learnt how to listen better - finding the most valuable lessons coming from the most unlikely places.
It was easy when I began, to think that these three years would shape my career. With every passing day however I realize how this is still the beginning and I am only just starting to understand how I might be able to use my skills in ways that would make me happy. By the end of the third year, even if I am no closer to knowing what to do with my entire life, I will have learnt a whole lot more than I could have imagined possible in the first three years of my professional life.
Micha, second year WPP Fellow
'Let's get this straight,' my friends asked, eyebrows raised. 'This company hires you for three years, right out of uni, lets you sample three different jobs among the best companies in the business, anywhere in the world… and you get PAID for it?' It did sound too good to be true, and two years on I still have to keep pinching myself.
Straight out of university I had no concrete vision of the future, but I knew I wanted to start exploring one direction – the world of communications. I was fascinated by the ways that consumers, businesses and governments speak to each other and portray themselves. The Fellowship offered the perfect chance to discover, to plunge head-first into three different environments, an invaluable first step in working out where to go next. And it has certainly provided some food for thought.
Year One was at Henley Centre HeadlightVision, a trends consultancy in London, where I was involved in macro-level thinking, using broader economic, social and technological shifts, alongside some really inspiring minds. Then I spent my second year as a planner at Ogilvy, Beijing, where I had the chance to delve into that vast and rapidly-evolving culture, at a time when all eyes are on China. And my final placement was advertising again, this time at JWT Sao Paulo, working on global team for a major beauty brand and investigating luxury in developing markets.
After the Fellowship, I am now all set to start in a new role as the strategy planner for Digit, a thriving digital agency back in London. Hopefully, I can draw on the experiences from these last few years to start contributing to this booming sector. A step in a totally different direction for me, but fingers crossed, an exciting one.
Venetia, WPP Fellow 2000-2003
If you're not keen to specialise immediately in a single communications discipline, the Fellowship might tempt you. It appealed to me because I want to learn how the marketing mix helps grow businesses; not uniquely Advertising or CRM or PR, the combination. I'm interested in people more than in number crunching: what attracts us to certain brands? How do we understand and affect this connection? It'd take a lifetime to know, but three years working for three different companies, who approach these problems in different ways, for famous brands, is a dream start.
Maybe the best bit is the collaboration between different agencies and disciplines that's facilitated by the people you get to know as you move around the WPP network. This Fellowship isn't an impossibly Tolkienesque fraternal ideal; your Fellow peers, guru Mentor, brilliant colleagues at JWT or OgilvyOne or wherever you work really will be a constant source of ideas, answers, challenges and the odd martini.
Now my business card says “Account Director, Integration” which means a dream job I wouldn't be qualified for without the Fellowship. I work with 22 WPP agencies in 27 countries, helping to develop the core brand idea for HSBC and make it resonate across every point of contact with the customer, from advertising to branches to airports.
Collectively, our job is to make all those contacts so involving, so intriguing and entertaining, that people will choose to interact with HSBC. A tall order, and an indecently wonderful way to spend my time. A colleague at JWT calls the Fellowship WPP's “Golden Ticket.” I feel lucky to have won it.
Jeremy, WPP Fellow 2003-2006
“It seems the world is divided into good and bad people. The good ones sleep better... while the bad ones seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.”
Woody Allen
Does the Fellowship make you evil? Will small children point and cry as you mutate into a vapid adman? Will you have to sell your soul to WPP?
Here's the reality; WPP know you'll produce better work when you are happy. And it's fairly likely that the more options you are given, the more likely you'll be to work out what it is that makes you happy. In essence, the Fellowship gives you three years to make some important choices. So, rather than squeezing into a little corporate box and compromising all the things that make you unique, its a chance to stay oddly-shaped and work out where you truly fit.
Personally, that has meant finding a way to match my interests (creative, ethical, cultural), with a career path. I've spent my time in small creative agencies, learning about advertising, branding and design: United London, Enterprise IG, and Berlin Cameron United in New York. Nominally, I've ended up as a copywriter – writing ads for brands such as NYC Parks, Heineken, Hennessy, The Glenlivet, Nestea, Silk Soymilk. But in truth, I look for ways to make these brands behave in strange and unorthodox ways – making books, video installations and cartoons. I think people pay more attention to the strange and unfamiliar. And that's exactly what the Fellowship will give you; unconventional training that breeds unconventional thinking.
And you will sleep just fine at night.