As part of OMD Academy, 38 of our graduates have been working very hard towards completing the Knowledge Express programme.
19 hours of lectures, 76 cross departmental placements and eight media owner days all culminated in an exam at the end of 2015. Then came the big one – Grad Pitch Week. Here’s what the winning team had to say about their experience.
The purpose of the Knowledge Express was to guide us with a quick (express) and thorough understanding (knowledge) of the inner workings of OMD UK through a series of lectures and immersive days spent out of the office with OMD UK’s creative teams and media partners.
This was then tested though a traditional exam, and culminated in Pitch Week. We were given a live brief, split into groups and set the task of coming up with a media strategy to present within a week. The theory underpinning the week was that there should be enough expertise between seven of us to cobble together a half decent idea. We were told that the closer we followed Flow (the agency’s ten-stage planning process), the better we’d do. Our gazes fixed on the circled ‘celebrate’ instruction at the end of the process, so we put our heads – and a wasteful number of post-it notes – together, and began work.
Having discussed the week with previous Knowledge Express alumni our journey seems to have been shared across the agency. We struggled with the distinction between insights and facts, discovered how difficult making a “good deck” really is, and stayed late enough to see the windows of the meeting rooms in Minerva House become an aquarium for stressed grads gorging on takeaway food. Yet, eventually, and in large part due to the helpful guidance of our mentors, we were able to pin together something that, in the words of a team mate, ‘shouldn’t look too bad’.
On Friday last week we presented to an esteemed OMD UK panel, including our very own CEO, as well as trying to impress one of our senior clients. It was one hell of a challenging week, but it was all worth it when we came away with the trophy!
Alastair, Katie, Lina, Luke, Maryam, Phillip and Thomas
