Sam Cable: Hamburg school diary #9

Sam Cable is a copywriting student at Miami Ad School Sydney, currently studying in Hamburg before graduating in December.

The first flakes of snow have fallen on the city of Hamburg. They nip my cheeks as I am cycling home at night. December has come around faster and colder than I planned.

Over the last two weeks, our class has had the opportunity to pitch ideas to German creative agencies. With graduation in just over 7 days, it was valuable to get the feedback for our concepts.

The first presentation was with Timm Weber, executive creative director at Publicis Pixelpark. Timm was one of the masterminds behind the St. Pauli Peeback, and well known for sourcing and introducing hydrophobic coating into the advertising industry. Timm helped us craft ideas and implement an integrated campaign for the beloved two-minute noodle brand, Maggi. The class was set up as a pitch simulation and we received critical feedback to help us move forward. Our second mentor was partner and executive creative director of Jung von Matt, Götz Ulmer. Götz provided a Vodafone brief at the start of the quarter, and helped us work towards producing two television scripts. Vodafone Germany is a longstanding client of Jung von Matt, and it was exciting to help work on the brand.

One of my biggest takeaways from the two classes was for creating engaging presentations. Timm recommended making a simple action at the start of the pitch to change the environment – such as turning off/on the lights or opening/closing the windows. Götz recommended making big storyboards to accompany television scripts. He discussed the importance of giving the audience enough just enough to let their imagination run with the story.

This week I also attended a presentation about multiplatform storytelling led by Oliver Dietrich. Oliver is the director of concept and creative at the Seven One Ad Factory. For an aspiring copywriter, it was fascinating to absorb some of his thoughts for maintaining consistent transmedia messaging. Oliver finished on the statement, “Keep it real. Keep it authentic. Make honest storytelling, and it will go far”.

Present for as long,

As you can be compelling.

What is your value?

For more haikus, follow me @TheSamCable

Samantha Cable, Copywriter.

Sydney, Miami Ad School.