Spent the last 24 hours in lovely Northampton helping out on IPA Stage 2 training course: Campaign Planning. This was chaired jointly by Daniele Fiandaca of Profero…

and Steve Parker of Media Vest. Ian Armstrong of Honda UK…

…and I (Neil of W+K) joined to judge presentations from six teams of keen youngsters in the culmination of a week of workshops, presentations, sleeplessness and alcohol abuse.

The teams had been given a Honda brief to work on and each had a slot to pitch their campaign to us. Fascinating to be on the receiving end of pitches for a change, particularly Honda pitches.

It was kind of a cross between secondary school and The Apprentice. I was only there for the closing stages so I missed all the behind the scenes build-up: tears, tantrums, egos and agony, no doubt. It all climaxed with a sort of end of term disco at which much accumulated tension was released on the dancefloor. Even after the disco had packed up and the bar had shut, some of the delegates were still lobbying the judges on behalf of their team’s pitch.

It was interesting to see the little quirks and fumbles: the team member who called a colleague by the wrong name, the presenter who was excessively self-congratulatory about his own team’s creative work, the delegate whose presentation style was so overpowering as to overwhelm the rest of his team, the person who corrected the client mid-sentence. Having done all of these things in pitches myself, it was a relief to see I’m not the only one.

I have to say, the standard of many of the presentations was significantly slicker than the original W+K pitch for Honda.

Here are the winning team accepting their amazing prizes. They were: Reiko Bridge of Leo Burnett; Jamal Cassim, RKCR/Y&R; Corina Cuddihy, BBH; James Myers, DDB; Fiona Stirling Newhaven Communications; Kamil Yadallee, Mediaedge: cia and Anna Koklanakis, Lowe. Well done, team!