Advertis-spring: My first weeks as an intern

With springtime right around the corner, things are starting to get that end of the year smell to them. The mugs drying in the sink are being rinsed of their mildew, the cigarette butts on the balcony are tossed aside to make room for new ones, and it is time for me to reflect on my first three weeks as an intern at Arthur.

               

University did not adequately prepare me for working in the ‘real world’. The pensioner’s bed times I seem to have assigned myself are testament to the fact that my student life is well and truly behind me. Yet it is far more rewarding to go to bed at 9.30pm with the knowledge that I achieved something during the day and not wasted it watching hours of day-time TV and boredom-trips to the shops. And although my internship at the Beirut office of Leo Burnett before joining Arthur was a very different experience (my poor/non-existent grasp of Arabic being less of a problem here in London), I feel like I have learnt an invaluable lesson about advertising: if it’s done right then it doesn’t matter about class, creed or colour because a good ad can transcend any language barrier.

One of the main philosophies at Arthur is to find the ‘unavoidable truth’ with regards to clients – essentially discovering things beyond the brand’s surface. For example, if you are on 7.27am train from Surbiton to London Waterloo, you’ll encounter the unavoidable truth that you will not find a seat, and you will be spending the majority of your journey in a businessman’s armpit. But this is one of the things that I love about the agency; it is not all cut and dry. It’s about creating campaigns that are made to last because they address issues that other agencies try to ignore because they appear unflattering to a brand or product.

I am usually involved with the social media side of things, which not only comes with the bonus of getting to do some Facebook stalking on the sly (and no, I can’t believe what’s-her-face from school is having a baby, either!), but also gaining an insight in to what people are actually talking about, and understanding what our clients can do to build a better relationship with customers and fans. I also have to do a lot of research to find content for our Twitter and Facebook, which I absolutely love. Hours spent trawling the internet for news and gossip? Perfect. Unfortunately, as a result, I have become the opinionated know-it-all who thinks she’s an advertising guru after less than a month’s work experience, constantly reeling off opinions at the drop of a hat about how so-and-so’s campaign was average to poor because of this and that, but then bla-bla’s idea of doing this was a stroke of genius considering that thing that happened.

Generally it’s been a grand first few weeks, I’ve learnt an extraordinary amount – not least managing to wrap my head around using Windows 7 – and have probably refreshed Mashable more times a day than I had hot meals last year (which isn’t actually saying much as I was a student with a broken microwave). More importantly it has strengthened my interest in advertising. Now I just have to decide which branch of advertising will be lucky enough to receive me as a professional until retirement. No pressure, then. 

Dinner in the digital age. How the tables have turned.

Ah, the family dinner table. We’re all familiar with it: Dad is relaxing after a long day in the office, listening to the youngest, Tommy, excitedly explaining exactly how much better he is than James at football. Meanwhile, Katie is helping mum set the table, asking for help to decide what she should wear to college tomorrow. But wait… Something isn’t right. Dad has yet again taken his work home with emails pinging-in every 3 minutes. Tommy is enthralled by the high score he’s aiming for in Doodle Jump. Mum is wiping the floor with Debbie from next door in a round of Words with Friends. And Katie is in fact live-tweeting how her meal is going, just to make sure the whole world is aware that she had carrots and peas with her chicken (“and it actually tasted better than expected – Go Mum!”). The picture of the contemporary family at dinner is somewhat over-crowded; everywhere you go you bring your plus one: your smartphone. But is it actually such an unusual sight? Or is the idyllic family dinner-table-scene just a reliable fantasy we pretend we could fulfil, if we weren’t so busy and important.

It feels like meal times have been overrun by instagrammed pictures of soup, updated diet logs, and letting your friends know that, unfortunately, you have once again succumbed to an avocado and prawn salad. Nowadays, we literally have the world at our fingertips, able to instantly find out krazygurl23 from Idunno, Nebraska thought that Jennifer Lawrence’s tumble made for a “#greatOscarsmoment”, or that workoutguy247 feels like he’s over done it this time, “#tired #gym”. Smartphones have become the friends we never knew we needed, but somehow always wanted. Siri doesn’t give you directions with your wife’s quiet smugness; your Samsung Galaxy doesn’t mind if this time you just Google it; and your HTC will never chip in with their opinion on your Facebook status, agreeing that you probably shouldn’t have had that extra slice of cheesecake, “#yolo”.

But before smartphones it was TV-dinners on our laps, and before that, newspapers and ‘novels’. As a child in restaurants I used to love colouring in the pictures that would appear in front of me before the meal was served. Didn’t we all? Fine, Homo Sapiens might be ‘social creatures,’ but sometimes other people are really boring. Maybe we do actually need mental stimulation from elsewhere. We all like to pretend that we’d be great at conversation if we could be bothered, but we can’t, so we won’t try. But is that really the case? Are we as interesting as we think we are? Smartphones aren’t necessarily our foe; they’re just another colouring-in book to distract us from the monotony of everyday life.

We might think it’s rude and antisocial to use our phones at the dinner table, but this dream world we've concocted of the perfect family sitting around, laughing and enjoying themselves is just that, a dream world. If anything, the smartphones may have made us more sociable. We might not be talking to the person next to us, but we are talking, and it’s to the entire world. In the past, mum and Debbie from next door probably just swapped a cursory “hello” over the fence, now they’re battling minds in word games, so although nowadays complaints ring up that we don’t chat around the dinner table anymore, I’ve got to ask the question, did we ever?

Is this the photo of the modern family? (N.B. This has not been instagrammed for your viewing pleasure)