Ah, D&AD New Blood season. When Shoreditch fills with bright young things showing off their wares and trying everything and anything to get a job. 

As any creative knows, getting that all-important first foot in the door is bloody difficult. That’s why Jason and Joris, who look after our placement scheme, thought they’d do a talk that shows students that there are other ways to grab the attention of prospective employers. Thus “How to get into a creative department without getting arrested” was born.

It all kicked off with a chat from Iain Tait about advertising’s constant struggle to create the “world’s first”, no matter how ridiculous that world’s first is. He said that instead of looking at the newest tech, we should be looking a little further back at more mainstream tech and using it in smarter ways. 

Which (sort of) neatly segued into Jason and Joris’ talk. They showed smart student projects that had caught their eye, and then talked about other clever ways that people had gotten their portfolios in front of prospective employers. 

Saving the best until last, they finished with urban legends of people going to extreme lengths to land a job. Examples of ‘what not to do’ included everything from dogs testicles being posted to us here at Wieden+Kennedy (that one’s true – please don’t try it), to chickens being let loose in an office with CVs attached to their necks (again, also true) and even a team who had an agency’s logo tattooed on themselves (100% definitely true)*.

* If you’re reading this and thinking “oooh, that was me”, what were you thinking?! 

Such was the excitement that we forgot to take our own photo.

A few weeks ago, our friends from the super local East End Film Festival got in touch to chat about a collaboration to coincide with the festival. We're big fans of the EEFF and their dedication to helping develop new filmmaking talent and give people in our local area access to a rich cultural programme. So naturally, we jumped at the chance. 

We put our thinking caps on and, flicking through the programme, discovered director-in-residence Noaz Desche's 'DEPROGRAMME' series of films about brainwashing and cult behaviour. It seemed like the perfect fit. After all, we in the advertising industry are accused of brainwashing people all the time, so why not use it to help spread the word about a great cultural event?

The result of our collaboration is a window installation in our Hanbury Street window space, where we regularly host self-initiated projects and collaborations with interesting creative people and companies. 

The idea of the window is simple: show people how easy it is to influence their thoughts and how they see the world. Quite literally. Using an optical illusion technique called 'after image,' we found a way to make sure visitors to the window would take an EEFF-themed impression away with them. 

Strong, propaganda-themed visuals on the window grab the attention of passers by and invite them to approach the window. When they put their eyes against the goggles and activate the installation by placing their hands on the sensors, a short abstract film plays. During the video, a bright camera flash magically leaves the EEFF's logo temporarily imprinted on their vision, whenever they close their eyes for a couple of minutes after the film ends. 

It's perfectly safe – trust us, we've tried it many, many times. But we do hope our experiment will make people think twice about how easily they accept the information that is fed to them on a daily basis. And we also think it's pretty cool.

If you're in the area, come and see how weak your mind is.

You can visit the festival until 12th July – more information here: www.eastendfilmfestival.com.

Big thanks to our everyone at East End Film Festival and to our guinea pigs (we mean, the team) here at W+K.