Getting an internship at an advertising agency is tough. With your fancy portfolio and art director or copywriter buddy, a creative director needs to be disrupted as he would like you to do that for his brands. Sending your portfolio is often not enough as your prospective boss has to look through maybe 10 per day.

As much as me and my art director wanted an internship, we flipped the idea of looking for an internship. We wanted to be wanted. 

We called advertising agencies, pretending to be a potential client and asked the creative director for our names. “I heard Erwin van Dijk is working at your agency, is that correct?” Unfortunately not and there goes to the pitch when we hung up the phone. A few days later, we sent our ‘Top Secret’ file with a briefing from SACCADE, a fictitious organisation for ‘Seriously Awesome Concept, Copy and Art Directing Enthusiasts’. We were criminal creatives who needed to be hired undercover as interns to improve our portfolios and go into court, the judge obviously being our teachers.

 

By playing the devil´s advocate, we managed to disrupt the creative director of Sniper X. The call upfront aroused his interest and left him wondering, followed by a call to action to show his interest. With a little bit of selfspot and sarcasm, our application was received and our creative potential was shown before he would see our portfolio.