While Jamie Oliver is sorting out school dinners and ridding the nation of turkey twizzlers, we also went back to school today to offer some career advice…A small group of us participated in a new scheme run by the Barnet Education Business Partnership in conjunction with the IPA.

Alex, Simon, Lisa and Katherine had a nice early start and headed to Hendon School for a series of workshops with GCSE students who are working out what to do with their lives.

After we had our ‘discipline briefing’ (don’t ask) we headed into our first group of the day…To be honest we were a bit worried they would be a tough audience (i.e. Vicky Pollard) but they were engaged and keen to know more about what we do (especially when they saw the test shots of our very own Guy Featherstone doing a Rooney for our St Wayne press ad). We obviously told them ad agencies are the way forward…and it’s more than just qualifications that get you in the door. We then talked about the fact we work in an office with a sound system, a green padded cell and are allowed to wear jeans. They seemed impressed, but slightly more obsessed with wanting to know how much money we all got paid.

So all up, after an pretty exhausting morning, we all went away feeling pretty pleased with ourselves safe in the knowledge we’d inflicted the world of W+K onto some unsuspecting youth of today…

Here are some pictures.

Alex attempts to avoid detention by climbing out of the window…

Katherine and Lisa on their best behaviour…

The AAR recently published their annual new business league tables for the UK. Martin Jones of the AAR commented that an agency should aim to pitch 10 times a year. An article in Campaign this week follows this up with some more numbers: agencies should expect to convert one in four pitches and an average pitch will cost an agency around £50K in out-of-pocket costs. (i.e. external costs, not in-house costs like people’s time).
Given that most pitches these days seem to last four to six months, that would mean that by half the way through the year, an agency should "ideally" be aiming to have four or five live pitches underway simultaneously, have racked up £300K in costs, have expected to win nothing and presumably to have all their staff working nights and weekends in order to make this possible. Ah, the heady thrill of new business!
This all sounds like madness to me. If this is what’s seen to be a good way to run a company, then no wonder this business is screwed. Surely it’s better to pitch less and convert more often?

Or maybe the best thing to do would be just to book a regular table at The Ivy and try not to worry about it.