by Herman Manson (@marklives) Ogilvy last year trialled a programme to get graduates in the fields of marketing and design interested in advertising and the agency. It met with considerable success, landed Ogilvy with four new staffers, upskilled a bunch of students and helped steer many more into a career in advertising.
The Ogilvy Graduate Programme (OGP) already targets students in ad schools and has a good intern programme in place, according to Lauren Woolf, Marketing Director at Ogilvy and Mather South Africa, but the agency also wanted to look beyond those already set on a career in advertising. Last year it teamed up with several tertiary institutions in the Western Cape and Gauteng and encouraged varsity students to enter the Graduate programme. They would not be competing for an internship but for a salaried, permanent position at the agency (after an initial six-month training programme).
Students were invited to conceptualise and publish a blog, which Woolf says already gave the agency insight into potential candidates a CV would not have (think topic selection, persistence, creativity etc.). They also received two challenges they had to complete, and members of the faculties where they studied helped with the final judging process, adding another layer of insight for the agency.