a meeting with a creative producer!

I ended up staying in London for longer than I planned, so I thought I should meet up with my family friend who works in advertising. Gillian works in the accounting section of J Walter Thompson, so she told me a little a bit about what they do there. They have worked for loads of well known companies like HSBC, Ribena, Philadelphia, Nestle, First Direct etc. and made lots of prints based, web based, TV ads and social media stuff - lots which I have seen around which is pretty cool! 
Outline of the meeting:

• She got one of the creative producers - Simon - to meet with me which was helpful. He had a look at my website and said I had a very distinct style which works well. He got me to talk through my work and really liked my CoP project about Russia - he said a good move would be too keep making work with a purpose which I can talk through well, something which has context
• I met a few people and they all said they have kept postcards on their desk from mailers which they like - and they do actually refer back to them when thinking about jobs. So I will definitely go through with my mailers - and make sure I do it frequently. 
• Illustration fits into their company lots - they usually remember illustrators they like keep them on file until the right job comes along
• While I was talking to Simon, an agent for Bernstein & Andriulli came in, an agency for photographers, stylists, illustrators, make-up artists, CGI etc. The guy - Sam - brought in loads of A3 flip books to sell some of the creatives he represents to the advertising agency. He knew loads about each of the people and was really selling them; he would suggest things like 'this illustrators work would work well for something like Specsavers' and had obviously picked out bits of their work he felt would fit with this company. It was interesting to watch. He was saying that he sometimes asks potential illustrators to show him their sketchbooks as well as finished work in case there is something they missed that they should be pushing. 
• They also kept mentioning the 'share-ability' of practitioners work, like how much publicity work can get. There was one artist represented - 'Insa' who had developed this app which makes his murals animate when you look at them through the app: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/augmented-reality-gif-iti-app-brings-insas-moving-murals-to-your-smartphone That was really cool, and they were mainly talking about how much attention you could get for that - on the instagram page, time lapses of painting the mural, tv ads etc. They made clear how important social media is with creative industries - especially instagram as it is so easy and shows a more process based side to a practice. They said  should definitely include a link to my instagram when sending emails. 
• Simon was kind enough to introduce me to the agent, saying I had some interesting work! So the agent gave me his email for me to send him some of my stuff which is very exciting!
• Everyone there was really nice, and have said they would be happy to have me intern there for a couple of weeks in the summer which is great, I don't necessarily want to work in advertising and it wouldn't be as an illustrator but it would be good and useful to see how it all works! They kept saying how important networking is so this is a good chance to make some contacts! It is a bit of a relief to have some sort of plan for leaving uni!