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What about Italy? Anyone working there?
How’s RGA for a CW?
Anyone from MediaCom on here?
So why do company merges result in mass layoffs?
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Display the work you want to be hired for. People want examples of the thing they're looking for to build confidence in your ability to do it.
Agencies don't care if you show the work you did there as a freelancer. They won't check and they understand you need to show it to be hired again - most agency people have freelanced themselves. Worst case they ask you to take it down and that's it.
Don't let your fear of potentially bothering people a little bit hold you back from making a living.
From what I remember, Highdive started their website by putting up the work the two founders did at DDB. As far as I know DDB didn’t go after them. In fact, HighDive ended up taking some of DDB’s clients like Jeep. And I think HighDive has more people than DDB now, if you don’t include their separate Army agency.
True
Ignore anyone who tells you not to showcase the previous work you did at other agencies.
I see fledgling agencies do this all the time. It’s your work and shows potential clients what you and your new agency team of capable of.
When you work for an agency, you sign away right to share the work you did for them. You can potentially get in trouble. Even putting a brand logo on your website without permission is a no no.
BUT… I’ve never seen that actually be an issue.
Reason being, the turnover at holding company agencies is so high, that no one working there even knows the work you did was even made by them, unless it’s all flagship Lion stuff.
And the Lions winners? Well, they are putting all of their work from every agency they ever worked for in their book.
And the same goes for many of my old bosses, who did exactly the same thing when they started their own agencies.
So yes, no you technically shouldn’t. But many prominent people do anyway.
You can create a personal portfolio that you share upon request where you share you did while working for X agency etc. It would be good to hear from folks on the agency side, but marketing teams on the client side may often showcase the work done for the brand and say done in partnership with or in collaboration with X agency etc. As an agency employee you could say probably you did work while working at X agency. Unless you intent to bypass mentioning your association with such agency, I don’t think there should be an issue.
Chief
👆🏻What Manager 1 said. I did a freelance stint at Highdive in the early days (before the pandemic) before they were well known. In fact, I didn’t know who the fuck they were at the time when they contacted me for freelance help. I had to google them and their site basically had mostly work that Mark Gross had done at DDB.
Years later the same thing with Erich & Kalman. They had a bunch of work Eric had done at BFGraf and GSP and even older stuff along with other work done under the new agency name.
Keep in mind that in these cases, those guys had done some very, very well known work and obviously those famous spots that anyone recognized would be very good for attracting new clients. I’m sure Eric knew that potential clients would see the Skittles stuff and then know that he had been responsible for that and think “oh, the Skittles guy opened his agency! I wanna work with him.”
It’s best to show the work you found, closed, produced as an agency. Otherwise, you’re not truly an agency.