No Saatchi

Someone once said ‘You can’t treat every situation like life or death, cause you’ll die a lot of times’.

That’s some advice I should heed. I tell everyone who emails us asking about getting into advertising that rejection is part and parcel of the process and you should never ever take it personally, because they don’t know you when they reject you.

When I sent my application of for Saatchis summer school I was pretty optimistic, as usual. I felt I had a strong idea and Anton, Jack Bauer (from the BR forums) and Will had all shared their wisdom with me, and I had taken on board what I thought was important. When I got a mention in that week’s Campaign, and various blogs, I was pretty much sure that I had got a place. But there was a twist in the tale and I got the standard rejection letter from Saatchis in the post.

I was a little (or maybe more) disappointed and decided to give them a call to see if I could get any feedback. Reception put me through to HR where I was told there was a huge number of applications this year (like most years I guess) and some weren’t good enough. But I wasn’t able to get any Sam-specific feedback. It seemed as if I was being fobbed off with the ‘too many people applied’ excuse. So I wrote an impassioned email to a few people in HR and explained that in my very junior opinion, the number of applicants shouldn’t stop each one being considered, and again asked for feedback as to how I could have made my application better. Again I got a reply, telling me that there were a large number of applications and that some didn’t quite make the cut, but again no feedback about mine.

I think I’m over the downer of not getting in, and to be honest, things have moved on a little, I got my first mention in Campaign (first of many I hope) and the blog seems to be taking off in terms of readership (so thank you guys a ton).

At this point, I feel like I won’t be getting any feedback about how to make my idea any better, so I will open the floor up to you, our knowledgeable readers. My application is in the ‘Downloads’ sidebar on the right (I’ve put it all in a zip file), or click here to download and have a read. Rather than include screenshots of the blogs that featured the auction, I’ve put the links in a text file to save you guys download times.

All comments welcome.

And because I’m emo (apparently, I don’t buy it) I’ll leave y’all with this:

You are not your job/and you are not the clothes you wear/You are the words, that leave your mouth/So speak up, speak up loud..

Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly – Call Me Ishmael