Influx

Influx picked up the story about W&K London hiring non-advertising people for three-month assignments. We thought the idea was interesting, so we decided to go straight the source,
W&K’s head of client services, Sam Brookes.

We asked Sam a few simple questions about the agency’s new project-W&Kside.

1. What was the inspiration for W&Kside?

W+K is a place that is extremely interested in encouraging talent and diversity. We think there are plenty of people with the talent and enthusiasm to make it in advertising that lie outside of the usual accepted channels. And we want to give these people that chance. W+Kside is our way of opening up the advertising industry because we feel that the best agencies aren’t just staffed with people who only know advertising. And deep down we think that these people could teach us a few things too.

2. What do you think you will get out of it?

By choosing a team of four very different and dynamic people, who haven’t been constrained by the traditional advertising conventions we will be able to harness innovative and unexpected thinking and ideas.

3. Who do you think is going to benefit most – the W&Ksiders or W&K?

Both will hopefully benefit massively. We hope W+Ksiders will gain a real life experience in a real life agency . They will learn loads, make great connections, advise and support throughout.

We demonstrate our interest in doings things in a new and unexpected way. We get access to all kinds of interesting talent and hopefully gain new ways of looking at things and some great ideas.

4.Do you think people in the ad business are a little disconnected with the real world?

It’s not disconnected, but sometimes too formulaic and expected. We like to continuously push things and find new ways of doing stuff so we need to have a diverse collection of talent to achieve this.