Bartle Bogle Hegarty has given fresh impetus to the advertising
industry’s search for high-calibre graduates by trawling prominent
European universities and business schools for the first time.
BBH is hunting for eight to ten graduates, who must be fluent in
English, to start work in London in September 1996. About half of them
will be recruited nationally, while the rest will come from colleges in
France, Sweden, Italy, Spain and Holland.
Usually, BBH only recruits up to three graduates every two years. Its
new programme reflects the fact that accounts requiring multinational
advertising now make up 41 per cent of its client list.
BBH’s pioneering move comes at a time when graduate trainees are being
welcomed back into agencies in greater numbers than at any time since
the beginning of the recession.
Posters are being flyposted in the chosen colleges a month before BBH’s
recruitment team arrives. They feature the transvestite from the Levi’s
commercial, ‘taxi’, with the headline: ‘Either sex may apply.’
Applicants have to write two 100-word pieces on issues faced by the
agency in recent months, such as whether sex should be allowed in
advertising and if international campaigns can ever be truly effective.
Katie Lord, the BBH account director responsible for its roadshow team,
said: ‘We already have about 11 different nationalities working here.
We’ve created a European milk round to find the highest-calibre
students, with a passion for great ads.’
The successful applicants will do stints in all of the agency’s
departments and external placements in other disciplines at affiliated
agencies.
