Dan Chandler graduated from St. Catharine’s, Cambridge, in 2004. His fellow Creative at Publicis’s Paris office, John Whelan, studied at Teddy Hall, Oxford, leaving in 2005. Now they are taking the advertising world by storm, and enjoying the Paris lifestyle….

When did you decide to get into advertising?

DC: In truth, I decided to get into advertising a couple of days before I got around to sending off my cover letters. Advertising wasn't really a childhood dream, but more of a choice that I made as a result of the dearth of other interesting opportunities that seemed to be out there.

JW: I decided that advertising was something that I wanted to do in my final year at Oxford. At the time however, I wanted to be an account executive. Since then, I’ve switched disciplines to the creative side.

What other options did you consider?

JW: I briefly considered journalism for trendy lifestyle magazines but swiftly disregarded that idea after it became patently obvious that the trajectory was painfully slow and badly paid. Other than that, I didn’t consider many other options and set my heart on breaking into advertising.

DC: To be honest, I didn't really consider many other options either. Unfortunately, I've not always been the most forward-thinking go-getter in the land and I have a tendency to fall into things, rather than ruthlessly pursue them. I was interested in doing a job that involved a bit of writing and some creativity and it struck me that advertising might be able to provide that, along with a half-decent salary.

What made advertising – and Publicis in particular – stand out?

JW: I felt ad agencies offered creative yet serious careers for interesting and extroverted people. While salaries never really compete with those in investment banking and consultancy, the pleasure of working with cool people on exciting projects more than compensates. As to why I ended up at Publicis, that is a bit of a long story that involves a lot of agency-hopping (to be expected).

DC: I actually decided to transfer to Publicis Conseil from a smaller "hot shop", called Marcel, which is also in the Publicis Group. I did this because Orange transferred its business from Marcel to Publicis Conseil and I wanted to carry on working as the English copywriter on Orange International, so I transferred with the account. Working on Orange was an appealing job for me as not only is it a reputed international brand, but it also has the reputation for being creative and innovative.

How much did you know about advertising before you started at Publicis? Had you done an internship or any work experience?

DC: Before I came to Publicis I had a year and half's experience under my belt, so I felt like I knew quite a lot. I had worked on Rolex at JWT Paris for a year and worked on Orange and a few smaller brands for 6 months, so I already had fairly diverse set of experiences to draw upon. But before I got into advertising I knew practically nothing, I didn't have a TV and went out of my way to pay not attention to ads. So I've pretty much learned everything I know on the job and it's actually been a really pleasant experience, as I've become more passionate and interested by it as a subject than I ever really thought that I would.

What about you, John?

JW: I thought that I knew a lot but found out I knew very little! When I started work as a ‘suit’, I discovered how much actually goes on behind the scenes. All of the market research, media planning etc. This came as a bit of a shock, but then again, I probably should have done more research myself. My 2 weeks of work experience at M&C Saatchi certainly didn’t prime me for what was to come. Fortunately Lowe had a 2-month induction programme to ease you into it.

How did you end up in Paris, & what's it like living and working there?

DC: When I was at Uni I had a French girlfriend and pretty feeble grasp of French, so coming to Paris was an attempt to kill two birds with one stone: firstly to learn a bit of French, and secondly to satiate my desire to go to a different country and learn something new.

JW: I ended up in Paris because I quit Lowe London after 3 months. I discovered that I wasn’t suited to the primarily organisational nature of account handling and that deep down, I wanted to be on the creative side, i.e. coming up with the ads themselves. I was also only 20 at the time so I felt like time was on my side. I wanted to see another city and brush up on my languages and Paris was my no.1 choice. So I managed to get an internship at JWT Paris and that started my love-hate affair with city.

To keep it short, Paris is incredible and infuriating in equal measure. On the one hand, you have a very relaxed culture with beautiful food, women, wine…everything in fact. On the other hand, people can be extremely unfriendly, arrogant, obstinate and unhelpful. ‘Non, ce n’est pas possible’ is probably the most popular phrase in the French language. So you basically take the rough with the very smooth. I find the office a good example of this description. Being an Englishman, you get the opportunity to work on some fantastic projects very early. Whether they ever see the light of day or not is a different matter. You will be constantly battling against a certain French negativity.

Can you give us examples of projects you have worked on? What kind of work do you do on a day-to-day?

DC: The biggest international projects that I've worked on are probably the Orange travel campaign that I did last year, which are basically Orange copy based ads that can be seen in an airport near you and the Rugby World Cup campaign we did for Orange last year, which I did the copywriting for and conception for…

JW: One project that I have seen through from start to finish was the international campaign for Capgemini, the chief competitor of IBM and Accenture. As a creative, or to be more precise a copywriter, I had to write all of the ‘copy’ on this campaign. This includes bold headlines, fine print and also the tagline that sums up the new positioning of the brand. At the time, the Rugby World Cup was on in Paris and Capgemini were one of the key sponsors. This meant that I got to do a rugby themed campaign that decorated Waterloo International during the competition.

On a day-to-day basis, I work closely with my ‘creative partner’ Dan and together, we come up with the ideas that you eventually (hopefully) see on TV or on billboards etc. We receive a brief from the client detailing what is required in terms of format and content and then we do our best to make both as exciting and interesting as possible. We discuss at great length what we think we should do, often referring to youtube and other pop-cultural treasure troves for inspiration. We then write film scripts and snappy headlines for prints that are duly knocked up by our Art Director, Nicolas. Once we have the semblance of a campaign, we pass our work up to our superiors who present/massacre it and wait for the ‘feedback’. This usually means a whole host of changes and compromises that we have deal with in order to satisfy the desires of the client. The re-work, the re-re-work is what we do most.

DC: it's hard-work and persistence that counts…

What skills do you think are valued in advertising, and what skills are you developing in your job?

DC: I would say that flexibility is one of the key skills that you need to have in advertising. No two projects are ever the same and so you need to be adaptable to make the transition from one project from the next as quickly as possible. The people that I have met in advertising that have struck me as being genuinely brilliant are the people that can arrive on a new project, understand the problem almost instantly and get straight to the heart of the matter. Advertising is an industry is full of hot air, but it's the people who can find simple, insightful solutions that always rise to the top.

JW: I am finding that originality is not so much down to raw talent or genius but thoroughness and attention to detail. As such, I am constantly keeping my eyes peeled for interesting things that could crop up as inspiration. I guess this would be called ‘lateral thinking’, but I am usually averse to such terminologies.

What advice would you give to students & graduates who are considering advertising as a career?

DC: Advertising is one of the most over-subscribed jobs for new graduates, so if you really want to do it, you have to find ways of distinguishing yourself from all the other applicants an agency will consider. For me, while it wasn't particularly intentional, coming to another country inadvertently did that for me, but there are loads of other ways you could do it differently. Ad agencies are obsessed with being "quirky" and "different", so proving to them that you are the exciting off-the-wall talent that they are looking for is often most of the battle. I sometimes get the impression that having been to Oxbridge can be a hinderance to this as they expect you to be a tweed wearing, pipe smoking Tory boy, so sometimes you have to work even harder to break this kind of reverse snobbishness. I think it's safe to say that it could pretty much anything that proves you think differently from the norm. If it's the production side of advertising that interests you because you like film, then prove it by making a short film or getting some experience in film, or if your want to be a copywriter, then some experience in journalism could help you stand out from the crowd.

JW: If they want to be a creative, I would tell them to soak up as much culture as humanly possible as this will be their reservoir from which they draw inspiration. Then, they should start writing fake ads to get the hang of what works and what doesn’t.
If they want to be an account executive, they should read campaign magazine avidly and carpet-bomb agency graduate recruitment schemes. Intelligent comments on the industry and a winning smile will go far in interview.

Lastly, any tips for students & graduates who are considering working abroad?

DC: If you are looking to go abroad and then find a job when you get there, it might be obvious, but I think the best thing you can do is work out who would need your services and why. Being a native English speaker is a huge advantage these days as all international business is done in English, so it's a good place to start. Being an Oxbridge graduate abroad puts you in a pretty unique position, but then to take advantage of that you have to sit down and work out who that uniqueness will appeal to most…

JW: Play up your Britishness! They love it.