[Emilia Lahki, RMIT Advertising student] Pitch night is the opportunity for advertising students to come and meet industry professionals along with all of their peers, and hopefully make connections that lead to a job or something in the future.
We will be boarding very soon through these front doors. So enjoy the flight.
What we're doing here tonight is we're presenting our best selves in a professional setting, so that's our folio, that's all of the work that we've done over the last three years. That is anything that we feel is a good representation of us professionally, to advertising agencies.
[Daniel Pizzato, Clemenger BBDO] I'm the chair of the Industry Advisory Committee for RMIT’s degree, so I'm very involved with RMIT generally. But I come because we're always looking for talent. The next wave of creativity is critical to us as an agency, so I'm always sniffing around to find anyone who's interesting and feels like they could be a good cultural fit for us.
I think students come in really nervous and I just want them to be at ease and I want them to show their true selves. I want their personality to shine through because we're hiring them as a human as well as a creative. I can look at their book online, what I want to get to know tonight is who they are as a person, what the cut of their jib is like.
[Josie Biggs, RMIT Advertising student] I kind of took the approach of not thinking about it too much. I think the past three years have really prepared me enough. I know how to speak about advertising, I also work part time already in the industry, so I'm hoping to take a more casual approach this evening and use the opportunity not only for them to get to know me, but for me to get to know the agencies. So when the time comes next year, I'll know where I want to work.
[Emilia] People tonight are going for lots of different advertising jobs. That includes account management, which is where you're basically the liaison between the client and creatives, and creative teams, so that is art directors, as well as copywriters.
[Daniel] I want someone who's different. I think creativity is all about bringing a unique perspective. So I want someone who brings something unique to the table, whether it's an interest or a skill or the way that they think. Hopefully students will come ready to show themselves, show what makes them unique and will enjoy it.
[Josie] I leave them all thinking, “I've just spoken for 10 minutes. Like, tone it down. Tone it down.” But the feedback's been really good. I've been able to present my capstone project, which is what I really wanted to focus on tonight. And the responses have been really positive. I've got some feedback on where I could take it. It's really exciting. Like I can actually put it into real practice. It's been really, really beneficial.
[Emilia] What I did learn from it was, I think I probably should have slowed down in the first one. I mean, we've only got 10 minutes, right? So I was so eager to get what I had to say across that I kind of forgot to really ask them about them, their agency, and their work. In retrospect, I should have done that more in the first one, but I picked up on that in the second one.
[Josie] I'm really looking forward to working with an agency that not only does work that I want to work on, but also has a culture that I really enjoy. I feel like that's such a movement at the moment in the ad industry. It's more than the work you're doing, but it's the people you're doing it with.
