My first few months at Marketforce

After finishing runner-up at this year’s AWARD School WA, Brandon Piggott joined the Marketforce creative team. He reflects on what has been an eye-opening first few months in the business.

So, what do these guys do? 

Rightly or wrongly, the past four years of Uni and AWARD School have been packed full of ideas, ideas and more ideas. You can imagine my shock when I learnt that there was so much more to advertising than just ideas. 

Being surrounded by an amazing and collaborative team I quickly got up to speed. In just a few weeks I was recording radio ads, attending shoots and convincing clients to throw their products out the back of a plane. 

I feel extremely privileged to continue learning from Paul Coghlan outside of AWARD School as well as learning from the legend that is Steve Straw. Having both of these guys as my mentors helped me quickly find my feet and pushed me towards bigger and better ideas. As well as learning from Paul and Steve, I’ve been lucky to work alongside Lauren Regolini, who has shown me the ropes and kindly bullied and bossed me into doing better work. 

Marketforce has such a warm and inviting culture, within a matter of days, I was no longer the new guy and was welcomed into the Marketforce family. With our new focus on creating ‘world-class work that drives Western Australia forward’ there is a strong culture of creativity surging through the building, allowing us to attack every brief with the most creative thinking. 

I quickly learnt that the conception of an idea is the easiest step. While a good idea is at the core of all good advertising, it takes so much more than just having a good idea to create a good ad. It takes everyone, across all departments to collaborate and work together. I’ve also learnt the importance of believing in your idea and how infectious passion can be when it comes to selling in an idea. 

I’ve learnt the importance of little chats. I have learnt so much from just having chats with different people across different departments. These little chats can help make your idea even better or unlock an insight that you would have never thought of on your own. 

So, what else have I learnt? 

Well firstly, I’ve learnt that wearing someone else’s glasses and sitting on a leather couch next to a stack of books makes you look a lot smarter than you actually are. I’ve also learnt importance of noise cancelling headphones and a well-packed snack drawer.