Opening the agency door: why work experience genuinely matters to us
There’s only so much you can learn about working in marketing from a careers website, a course prospectus or, dare we say it, TikTok. Sometimes you need to actually experience it, for real.
That’s why work experience is something we genuinely care about at Different Narrative. Not as a box-ticking exercise or because we think it looks good on the website, but because giving young people a proper look at agency life can help them work out what they’re interested in, what they’re good at and, just as importantly, what they might not want to do!
And we genuinely get loads out of it too.
No two placements look the same
This year alone, we’ve welcomed several people into Different Narrative for work experience, from school-age students taking their first look at the world of work through to graduates considering their next move.
Some have been with us for a few days, others for longer. Some have been based in the agency throughout and others have worked with us on a hybrid basis.
We deliberately don’t try to make every placement identical. People arrive with different interests, different levels of experience and very different ideas about what a career in marketing might involve.
Our job is to help them explore it.
Everyone starts by spending time with people from across the agency. That means getting an understanding of client services, creative and design, digital, media planning and buying, strategy, research and everything else that goes into taking a brief from an initial conversation to something people actually see, hear or interact with.
They can then spend more time with the areas that spark their interest.
More doing, less watching
We’ve developed our own work experience programme which gives everyone a range of projects and briefs to get stuck into at their own pace.
There are research projects, media planning challenges, copywriting tasks and integrated campaign briefs. They might be asked to think about audiences, recommend media channels, develop campaign ideas, write copy or work out how they would tackle a client challenge.
The point isn’t to produce a ‘right’ answer. It’s to have a go, ask questions, test ideas and start understanding the thinking that sits behind the work.
And because this is a busy real-life agency, there can be some unexpected additions to the timetable too.
Depending on what’s happening while they’re here, our work experience students might sit in on a client meeting, meet one of our media partners, join us on a shoot or get an opportunity to contribute to a live client brief!
Giving young people a clearer view of marketing
Marketing is a huge industry, but from the outside it isn’t always obvious just how many different careers sit within it.
You can be brilliantly creative without being a designer. You can love numbers and data and build a career in media. You can be a great organiser and thrive in client services. You can write, research, strategise, animate, analyse, plan, problem-solve…the list goes on.
We want young people who spend time with us to leave with a spring in their step, knowing a little more about those possibilities.
They don’t need to arrive knowing that they want a career in marketing. In fact, we’d much rather they came with lots of questions.
NE1 CAN – and some seriously good ideas
Our commitment to introducing young people to the industry goes beyond individual placements too.
Every year, we host a session with NE1 Can, Newcastle NE1’s career insight programme, which connects businesses, education and youth providers to give young people real-world career advice, insight and inspiration.
This year’s group was exceptional.
We had some fascinating conversations, plenty of questions and some genuinely brilliant ideas. And that’sone of the things we love most about working with young people: they don’t necessarily approach a brief with the assumptions that come from having worked in the industry for years.
They question things. They see things differently. They suggest things we might not have considered.
The next generation needs a way in
It’s easy for businesses to talk about skills shortages, attracting young talent and developing the next generation.
But young people need opportunities to find out what those careers actually look like in the first place.
For us, opening our doors is one small way we can help.
If someone leaves Different Narrative knowing they want to become a designer, brilliant. If they discover media planning exists and think, that sounds like me, even better. And if they leave deciding agency life isn’t for them? That’s absolutely fine!
If we can help a few talented young people work out where they might fit into it along the way, we'll happily keep our agency door open.
