Fiona Rayner (née Tindall), Head of Experiential & International Operations at Blackjack Promotions, explores the benefits of personalisation in sensory marketing.

A nicely scented business, the ability to touch, feel and try different products, using engaging visuals and the right in-store music are just some of the multi-sensory steps that retail stores are employing to differentiate and enhance the experience over e-commerce.

And a new report* confirms that these measures are working. These steps would, in fact, persuade nine out of 10 shoppers to ditch their devices in favour of visiting high street shops that offer an enjoyable in-store atmosphere.

The study, which quizzed over 10,000 consumers across 10 countries, defines an ‘enjoyable atmosphere’ as one with the right combination of music, visuals and scent – with 78% of shoppers likely to make purchases in this kind of store.

In Travel Retail the sensory approach has always been a big driver in influencing customers, who only have a finite amount of time to make purchases before resuming their journeys.

The report cites the ability to touch, feel and try different products or services as the biggest driver in making consumers more likely to want to buy something while shopping in a store (at 56%).

I’ve always believed in the power of human touch and the benefits of having a brand ambassador to enhance a brand or retail experience. Our challenge now is to try and take this to the next level and to turn these experiences into complete brand stories and to encourage customer loyalty, as well as sales.

This could be through creating a complete themed day around a well-loved character, which tells a story through experiences in passenger lounges and via food and drink retailers.

And while pulling in all five senses – sight, sound, taste, touch and smell – is important, it also helps if consumers feel that the experience is relevant to them.

In the age of AI, algorithms and recommendation engines, digital consumers have become used to more targeted and relevant messages so we need to bring this in store too. Personalisation has become our sixth sense.

More than a third of consumers interviewed for the report (38%) said that feeling like the experience was personalised to them made them more likely to purchase something.

A great example of this currently in Travel Retail comes from Atelier Cologne in Dublin Airport. When a customer purchases a 200ml bottle, they are able to choose a beautifully designed leather pouch for their free travel sized bottle. Brand ambassadors are on hand to create a personalised label for the leather pouch, which could feature a name or a unique message if purchasing for someone else as a gift.

Camus is another great example. It provided Chinese calligraphers at Heathrow around Chinese New Year to create personalised gift tags for customers with every purchase by writing a message or their name in Mandarin. These little touches enhance the shopping experience.

Elsewhere, another interesting finding the report makes is the importance of scent psychology, with one in two consumers reporting that a nicely scented business lifts their mood. I think there’s a lot you can do with scent in Travel Retail to make it a more targeted and personalised experience.

While some retail environments use their own ‘signature scent’ by deploying diffusers in their air conditioning, some of the most innovative retailers are now even looking at using this to promote certain scents, so that when shoppers walk through a store or past a particular display, they experience this overwhelming sense of a new fragrance.

The report also suggests the importance of research and careful application of customer data to make sure the experience is relevant to the target market – especially when you’re looking at the influence of sound on consumers.

Music was cited in the report as the number one factor to improving a shopper’s mood in the store, with 85% of shoppers stating this had a positive impact. But get this wrong and more than half these respondents said they would disengage.

These findings should help all retailers focus on the experiential side of what they’re doing, so that they can create the mooted ‘enjoyable in store atmosphere’ that should see consumers returning to their stores in droves.

The challenge now is to use the data to take the in-store experience to the next level. We need to pull in the best of both worlds, combining the personalisation enjoyed by e-commerce consumers, with the sensory tools that are already starting to lure shoppers back to the high street.

*Mood Media ‘Elevating the Customer Experience: The Impact of Sensory Marketing’

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Too many major brands are coming late to the party and/or delivering paper-thin token gestures in their ‘show’ of support for causes, says Ciara Garratt of global brand experience agency Sense. 

Have you noticed how every brand is trying to prove a point at the moment? How every product you pick up in the supermarket now boldly states its protein content? Or, how the shampoo you bought the other day is suddenly ‘gluten free’?

Perhaps awareness of even a simple form of marketing is heightened for us marketers, but in a society where everything is under scrutiny, and where consumerism is at its peak, it feels like brands are more self-aware than ever before.

In 2008, Heineken brought us the ‘Walk-in Fridge’, racking up millions of views on YouTube. The ad highlights the different values of men and women, as stereotyped in society a decade ago, as a couple show their friends around their new home. The woman shows her walk-in wardrobe to her female friends, while the man reveals a walk-in fridge full of beer to his mates. Both result in enthusiastic screams from their same-sex friends. The advert played on traditional stereotypes in a humorous way – presumably to appeal to what it thought was an all-male audience.

As society has changed, brands have had to adapt to a more nuanced view, which we can see in Heineken’s 2017 #OpenYourWorld ad. Heineken brought together people from different cultures, backgrounds and sexual orientations in a ‘social experiment’, exploring the benefits of finding common ground – Heineken beer and reasonable discussion. The message was raw, empathetic and forward-thinking, which, in the current climate of thriving equality and liberalism, was well-received.

Of course, we expect brands to evolve with the times – they need to stay relevant to the changing attitudes of their audience. But the way in which brands manage that change is critical. Heineken achieved a 180-degree pivot; from clumsy sexist stereotypes to jumping on the equality bandwagon – without irritating the public. Because it was a proactive effort, even though the principle isn’t exactly original, it comes across as relevant and authentic. We’re all entitled to change our minds once in a while (even if it takes the best part of a decade).

What’s more concerning is when real world issues are side-lined, only to later be exploited by brands looking for a hot-topic-of-the-moment.

Plastic no longer fantastic

For example, despite scientists sounding the alarm for years over the impact of plastic on the environment, it seems like brands have only recently started to take action, capitalising on the opportunity to be seen in a positive light.

Do they feel a genuine corporate social responsibility or is it just another tactic to make headlines? It’s particularly galling when the brands in question are category leaders – surely major powers on the world stage should be leading from the front, rather than playing cautious catch up, or only acting when they’re caught out?

Greenpeace has made a number of protests shaming Coca-Cola for its contributions to plastic waste, although coverage of this has been all too scarce. However, when Coca-Cola ‘heroically’ announced that it will recall and recycle 100% of its packaging to help clean up our oceans, it made the news. Shouldn’t we really be celebrating Greenpeace, for acting when it mattered, rather than a huge corporation that showed up late to the anti-plastic party?

Where Heineken has made a positive shift and potentially contributed to changing people’s perceptions, other brands have been less proactive and instead demonstrated a lazy approach to jumping on the bandwagon. A prime example of this is when McDonalds turned the trademark ‘M’ upside down to show support for International Women’s Day. They’re hardly a brand who you would expect to be active on such an occasion, but perhaps like Coca-Cola they were only responding to external pressures.

Brands should be careful about how they portray acts of ‘good’ and must try to avoid looking exploitative. Instead, they should be proactive; earning respect by taking action, instead of just nodding in agreement like McDonalds. What Heineken have done is much more believable and empowering – instead of caring about how they look to consumers, they have focussed on getting the consumer to think about the bigger picture themselves, and hopefully make their own contributions to change.

It’s easy to say “better late than never, Coke” or “at least you’re doing something, McDonalds”; but the reality is that if these brand leaders were more proactive in the first place, they wouldn’t need to jump on the brandwagon. They’d be driving it – and making a real difference along the way.

Ciara Garratt is Account Manager at global brand experience agency Sense.

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Barefoot Wine & Bubbly is again running its successful #BareYourSole roadshow campaign across the UK during July. Now in its third year, the activity, which sees a Barefoot van travel the country, encourages people to be proud to be different and to revel in their uniqueness.

Research by the award-winning wine brand has revealed that 84% of Brits believe that being comfortable with who you are and being accepted for your true-self ultimately makes you happier.

Visitors to the Barefoot van will not only get the chance to try a range of the brand’s wines, but will also be invited to ‘bare their sole’ by proudly declaring their unusual hobbies, habits or passions on a Barefoot sticker – and the more unusual, the better!

The #BareYourSole tour will visit a range of locations between 4 and 29 July, including Liverpool, Leamington Spa, Manchester, London, Oxford, Brighton, Coventry, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham and Birmingham.

The activity was created by global brand experience agency Sense, which is again running the campaign. Ciara Garratt, Account Manager at Sense, says: “Launched in 2016, Bare Your Sole champion’s Barefoot’s core values of diversity and inclusivity by encouraging people to share their hidden passions and celebrate each other’s quirks. Barefoot want to remove any pretentiousness surrounding wine and make it more fun and less serious. The concept has worked so well that we’re proud to be rolling it out for a third year in succession celebrating the fact that people feel happier when they are comfortable in their own skin and free to express themselves.”

Sense is an award-winning marketing agency that specialises in helping brands do exciting things in the real world, to create authentic communications across the marketing spectrum. It manages campaigns from strategy to evaluation.

Barefoot Wine & Bubbly started up in California in the 1960s. Its founders believed that wine should be more fun and less serious; and created a wine that could be enjoyed by everyone from first-time wine drinkers to hard-core aficionados. Barefoot Wine is the most awarded and #1 wine brand in the US and was introduced to the UK in 2009. Staying true to its grassroots beginnings, Barefoot Wine & Bubbly gives back to local non-profit groups through charitable wine donations. In addition to several years of cleaning British beaches with Surfers Against Sewage, Barefoot Wine & Bubbly has also supported the LGBT community for over 25 years.

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Zipcar, the UK’s largest car club, is running a summer roadshow featuring the Zipcar Flex Challenge, offering consumers the chance to win free driving credit for a year from the car sharing brand.

The activation kicked off last week and will visit a range of events, shopping centres and train stations within the Zipcar Flex boroughs of Westminster, Hackney, Islington, Lewisham, Lambeth and Wandsworth. There will be 24 days of experiential activity between now and September.

Created by global brand experience agency Sense, the campaign will use the Zipcar Flex Challenge game to introduce consumers to Zipcar Flex and drive acquisitions to the service. Zipcar Flex was launched in July 2017 and is a one-way drive and drop service, which gives Londoners greater flexibility to get more out of their city and travel around London how they want to. Londoners within designated Zipzones can pick up and drop off cars wherever is convenient, using an app to identify available vehicles.

Zipcar members can choose between two options via the same Zipcar app: Zipcar Flex or the original Roundtrip service, which operates from dedicated on-street Car Club Only bays all across the city and which involves Londoners picking up and dropping off a Zipcar in the same location.

Garry Thornton, Senior Marketing Manager at Zipcar, says: “Experiential provides the perfect vehicle to spread the word about our new Zipcar Flex car service as it allows us to engage with Londoners directly in the numerous Zipcar boroughs.”

Jess McGillivray, Account Director at Sense, adds: “Our striking branded stand and team of Zipcar Flex brand ambassadors will be touring the Zipcar boroughs over the summer, inviting consumers to sign up to Zipcar Flex for the chance to win driving credit, whilst also showing them just how easy it is to get wheels when you want them.”

Zipcar is the world’s leading car-sharing network, operating in urban areas and university campuses in over 500 cities and towns across Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Zipcar offers the most comprehensive, most convenient and most flexible car-sharing options available. It is a subsidiary of Avis Budget Group, Inc, a leading global provider of vehicle rental services.

With locations in London and New York, Sense is a multi-award winning brand experience agency working for clients including The Economist, Coca-Cola, Activision, Mars, Canon, Molson Coors, and Mattel. It won the IPM Awards 2017 Grand Prix for its #H2O activation, part of its ‘Discomfort Future’ campaign on behalf of The Economist.

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Generation Z accepts ads, but will ignore the ones that don’t deliver tangible value, says Vaughan Edmonds at global brand experience agency Sense.

It’s 10 April 2018, and a nervous Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, stands before the US Congress. It’s the turn of 84-year-old US senator and Republican high-tech task force chair Orrin Hatch to ask the questions.

Facebook is at the centre of a scandal after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a British data firm hired by President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, improperly gathered detailed data on 87 million users using the platform. Zuckerberg has just told Congress that he always intends to offer a free version of Facebook to users.

“Well if so,” Hatch replies, “how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

Zuckerberg blinks and pauses for a moment.

“Senator, we run ads.”

The exchange, along with others involving various elderly Senators, has become symbolic of the technological knowledge gap that exists in Western society. A video titled “Mark Zuckerberg explains the internet to old people” went viral in the days following Zuckerberg’s visit to Congress as members of the Millennial and Gen Z demographics revelled in the ignorance of their elders.

The attitudes of Gen Z towards technology and advertising are particularly fascinating. Also known as the iGen, Gen Z is the generation born from the late 1990s onwards which has never known a world without the internet.

Its oldest members have just turned 21 and have grown up alongside dominant tech companies like Facebook. They are used to a world where platforms are cheaper than ever before. Their favourite brands – Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat – offer their services for free. Where we used to buy a single CD for £9.99, they can now listen to any song ever recorded for nothing on Spotify. Only Netflix draws the line, offering an array of TV and film for as little as £7.49 a month.

For the free services, Gen Z knows the price it has to pay: ads. Just as Mark Zuckerberg said.

What gets really interesting is the attitude of Gen Z towards advertising in general, with 61% agreeing that posters and billboards help them become aware of new products and services¹. Gen Z is also 37% more likely to notice adverts on public transport² and 15% more likely to stop and interact at a promotional stand or event³. It seems as if the recent wave of cynicism towards brands has not been driven by the young, but by the generations that preceded them.

What does this mean for brands? Only time will tell. It remains to be seen whether this more accepting attitude to advertising is driven by youth or by a genuinely different outlook. However, it appears highly likely that Gen Z will take two traits from its youth into adulthood which could be highly significant for brands:

Shortening Attention Spans

According to most research, the attention span of Gen Z is lower than any other generation in history. In our digital age this makes perfect sense. There is so much vying for our attention and, in terms of things to occupy us, we are spoilt for choice. For brands, this has important implications. Firstly, to attract Gen Z, your marketing has to be interesting. Better still, if you really want to get this generation’s attention, your marketing should be useful. Gen Z is bombarded by hundreds of promotional messages every day. If a brand can offer something that is genuinely valuable it is far more likely to give you a precious piece of its attention.

Increased Levels of Activism

Gen Z is serious. Its members are driven to succeed, being 71% more likely to be willing to sacrifice free time to get ahead in their future careers⁴. They are also serious about social change with 76% of them happy to volunteer their time for good causes⁵. Gen Z members are activists. They strive to improve their own lives and the lives of people around them.

The last few years has seen the rise of purpose as a marketing tool, the mechanic brands use to demonstrate that they also care about improving people’s lives. Given the attitudes of Gen Z, it seems it is here to stay. To succeed with brand purpose, and to win the hearts of Millennials and Gen Z alike, the key is action. Brands must not just talk about their purpose, they must demonstrate their purpose through action in the real world. If they can make their purpose tangible, they will be able to win the hearts of Gen Z.

The world has changed a great deal in the lifetime of 84-year-old Senator Orrin Hatch. When Mark Zuckerberg was born, Hatch was in his early 50s and by the time Facebook had its millionth user he was 70. However, for the members of Gen Z, the world has been slightly more stable. They are digital natives, born and raised in the age of the internet. They are used to brands keeping their favourite digital past times free at the cost of adverts. Gen Z is quick thinking and serious. It has a different outlook to those who came before them and as its members mature into adulthood, brands will have a fantastic opportunity to become meaningful parts of their lives.

Source: ^1,2,3,4,5 YouGov (29^th April 2018)

Vaughan Edmonds is Planner at global brand experience agency Sense. Sense is a brand experience agency specialising in real world thinking and ideas. Sense manages experiential marketing campaigns from strategy to evaluation for clients including The Economist, Coca-Cola, Activision, Mars, Canon, Molson Coors, and Mattel.

Image credit: Elijah O’Donnell, Unsplash

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Drinks brand innocent is using experiential marketing to show consumers how to live on the bright side, by bringing the brand’s latest Super Smoothie ad to life in London and Manchester with a live dance performance.

A new interruptive activation in London’s Kings Cross and Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens will feature dancers recreating the brand’s most recent Above-The-Line campaign, including a TV ad which shows a woman dancing her way through a fountain. The activity is being backed with sampling.

The activation and the sampling campaign have been created by experiential marketing agency Sense.

“We want to show people the boost of energy our Super Smoothies give you,” says innocent Super Smoothie Brand Manager Heidi McDonald; “but it was important to us to do that with something tangible that lives in the real world, and not just a TV ad.”

Commenting on the activation, Joanna Wharton, Senior Account Manager at Sense, adds: “By hosting something so playful and colourful in two beautiful locations, and handing out free super smoothies while we’re there, we hope to bring a bit of upbeat innocent charm to thousands of people.”

The activity will be live at intervals throughout the day today (Thursday 26th April) and tomorrow (Friday 27th April) in Granary Square, Kings Cross, London and Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester.

innocent is a regular user of experiential marketing – in February 2018, it ran a sampling campaign to support the launch of its Super Juice ‘nutritionally dense’ product across London, while in September 2017, an experiential roadshow and sampling campaign, again in London, backed its innocent Bubbles range, with a branded vehicle, the innocent Bubbles Canteen, touring the capital for 18 days.

The innocent brand is owned by Coca-Cola.

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The sooner the industry addresses its current gender salary imbalance, the more young talent it will attract, says Taffy Msipa of experiential marketing agency Sense.

As someone just entering the marketing industry, it’s clear to me that a lot of the recent heated debate over the continuing (and very significant) gender pay gap has missed a valuable point: not paying men and women performing the same roles the same amount is not just unfair, it’s bad for business.

The fact that the issue exists in the 21st century is rightly attracting lots of publicity and causing plenty of outrage, because it’s explicitly unjust – why should you get more money just for being a bloke? It simply doesn’t reflect the real world. Women are taking on the same responsibilities as men so should be on the same salaries. However, outside of the ethical arguments, if the inequality persists it will hurt marketing.

In our sector, like many others, the short-term cost of closing the gender pay gap as quickly as possible actually makes good commercial sense because it will pay dividends going forward. Whether you’re an agency or business, you want to attract the best possible marketing talent. Before you can nurture and develop talent, first you have to attract the raw material.

You need to convince graduates that marketing is a great industry to work in, where employees are rewarded based on performance, regardless of their gender. And this issue doesn’t only concern women; an increasing number of men would feel more comfortable working in an environment where both genders are treated equally in terms of pay and rewards.

Since 1997, the Office of National Statistics has been measuring the differences between salaries of men and women across a wide variety of sectors, broken down into quite specific roles. Young people considering their career options can visit the ONS website and download the latest gender pay gap statistics and use them to help decide which sector to work in. It makes sense that the current focus on equal pay will encourage more people who are about to take their first step on the career ladder to do this basic research.

Someone checking the latest figures would see that the current pay gap for ‘marketing associate professionals’, the more junior roles, is 17.1%. This means that men in the same job are paid on average 17.1% more than women.

By then looking at ‘marketing and sales directors’, they could get an idea of whether the pay gap widens with seniority. Does the difference increase the harder you work and the higher you climb in the industry, something many might view as pretty demotivating? The ONS statistics reveal a figure of 12.5% for more senior roles, so male and female salaries actually converge as you progress through the profession.

This is clearly a good thing in terms of attracting people into marketing. However, the fact remains that both junior and senior figures are significantly higher than the overall cross sector UK gender pay gap of 9.1%, meaning that there are plenty of other industries with better salary equality than ours.

So it’s quite simple. Taking action together as an industry to reduce marketing’s gender pay gap now will prevent the talented marketers of the future from choosing another career where men and women are treated more fairly. It will also help to stop those currently working in the sector jumping ship. Finally, it will curb the demotivational and destabilising effects of half the workforce knowing they are being underpaid – and therefore undervalued – compared to their male colleagues.

Of course, most sectors are facing this issue, but those that address it first will steal a march over the others in terms of drawing young talent. By acting now as an industry, we can show we’re forward-looking and promoting a fairer society. Plus, it would be a great way of marketing the industry to graduates like me and growing our talent pool for the future.

Taffy Msipa is a Graduate Account Executive at London and New York based experiential marketing agency Sense.

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A new campaign to support the launch of Super Juice, innocent’s most ‘nutritionally dense’ juice, is giving Londoners the chance to try the three recipes (Apple, Pear and Cucumber, Raspberry and Cherry, and Orange and Blood Orange) while out and about in the UK capital.

The juices also contain ‘super suggestions’ attached to each drink to brighten people’s day.

The ‘Make Today Super’ campaign will visit Boxpark in Shoreditch, Wimbledon Plaza, Paddington Central and Angel among other busy London locations throughout February.

The sampling campaign was created for innocent by experiential agency Sense London.

Barbora Hrdlickova, Senior Brand Manager at innocent, said: “We’ll be helping Londoners shake off the winter gloom by showcasing the boosting effects of our vitamin-packed Super Juice drinks, encouraging a bottle-half-full approach to the day ahead.”

Anne Ellefsen, Senior Account Manager at Sense London, adds: “Our teams of brand ambassadors will be running activations across the capital from 8^th to 25^th February showing Londoners just how ‘super’ a truly healthy drink can taste.”

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Award-winning experiential marketing agency Sense has appointed Dan Parkinson as Planning Director to oversee the work and development of its growing London-based Planning Team.

Parkinson’s career in marketing spans 12 years, with the past eight spent focusing on brands and design. He joined Sense from Coley Porter Bell, where he worked across a number of national and international brands.

Heading up Sense’s planning team, Parkinson will work directly with client brands to gain a deep understanding of the challenges they face with the aim of formulating inspiring strategies that will deliver effective, engaging and exciting work.

Nick Adams, Founder and Managing Director of Sense, says: “We’re always looking to grow our skills base in both UK and US with the best possible talent and Dan will be a valuable addition. Planning is a cornerstone to our proposition and plays some part in every campaign we create. Dan will play a key role in developing our planning team and leading creative strategy. Experiential is growing in stature as a marketing discipline and attracting increasing investment and we’re delighted to have Dan on board to help us deliver more outstanding award-winning campaigns.”

Dan Parkinson comments: “So far in my career, I’ve enjoyed the privilege of working on the definition and expression of some of the world’s iconic brands. I’m now really looking forward to contributing to how those brands behave in the real world, which is what drew me to Sense. This a fantastic opportunity to shape strategy and develop the planning team at an independent agency that already has a great client base and an exciting portfolio of award-winning work. Ultimately, the more strategic we are as an agency, the stronger the partnership that we can build with our clients, and the better the campaigns. Getting to do work that starts real conversations with real people was the hook for me.”

With locations in London and New York, Sense is a brand experience agency specialising in real world thinking and ideas. Sense manages experiential marketing campaigns from strategy to evaluation for clients including The Economist, Coca-Cola, Activision, Mars, Canon, Molson Coors, and Mattel. It won the IPM Awards 2017 Grand Prix for its #H2O activation, part of its ‘Discomfort Future’ campaign on behalf of The Economist. This saw potential subscribers offered free coffee apparently made from recycled water from a portable toilet, to highlight the issue of water scarcity around the world. It won two Golds and was selected by the IPM awards judges as the best of the best.

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It’s tough being an intern, but they’ll be running the show one day. So, what’s life like for those on the doorstep of the industry, and how can experiential marketing agencies help them reach their full potential? Sense’s Jack McSwiney reveals all…

Grad life is hard, but I’ve always been told the hardest things yield the greatest rewards, and that’s especially true in this case, because the reward is your first job in the marketing industry. Not just an internship or a placement, a fully-fledged, all the bells and whistles, proper job. As a recently graduated advertising creative, born and raised in the North and now trying to make it in ‘The Big Smoke’, here’s my thoughts on (gr)ad life, some of the quirks that come with it and what I hope for in the future for those of us freshly released into the industry.

Right now, I’m coming to the end of my fourth week at Sense London. It’s taught me so many things I didn’t know and cemented so many others I’d only heard through word of mouth. The learning curve straight out of university is steep, but the view back down to where you came from has a tendency to evoke a hint of victory. You really have no idea how little you know until you walk through the doors of an agency for your first day. To be fair, I still know nothing, in fact I’m bloody clueless – but significantly less so than a month ago.

By diving head first into the world of experiential marketing, I’ve been exploring an area of our industry that I always knew existed but one I had never really looked at within university, which is surreal considering it’s the fastest growing sector within the industry. It seems more and more agencies are jumping on board with experiential, but that doesn’t surprise me because even in my short time here, what I’ve found is that it yields ridiculous potential.

However, I’ve also found that not everyone can do it. Experiential requires a particular way of thinking to be able to really get the most out of it, and when you do it can be hugely impactful. Anything from a simple sampling stand to an annual event that draws thousands of spectators; it has the means and opportunity to create something real and tangible that has an actual impact on people’s day; as a recent grad, the potential is intoxicating.

I’ve learnt a lot about the industry, but also about a new city; being a grad in London isn’t too dissimilar to moving around a Monopoly board: you’re constantly stopping and hoping no one charges you rent.

Hostel hopping isn’t all bad though, once you learn how to sleep through the thunderous snoring of the guy in the bunk above you, get over the lack of privacy and deal with the inability to control room temperature. However, the people you meet are full of stories from all over the world, and at the end of the day, it’s not permanent.

Luckily, I’m far from alone though, because I’ve chosen an industry that’s full of people more than willing to help you in any way they can, whether it be with a brief, with a contact, or with a desperately needed beer on a Friday lunchtime after you’ve had a long week. People who understand; have been there, done that and lost a few t-shirts.

Even luckier for me, a few of these people are currently striving for a change within the industry that benefits grads like me – the Placement Poverty Pledge (PPP): an initiative championed by the Young Creative Council where agencies promise to pay their interns the current living wage.

This means that grads like me can afford to travel to wherever it is we want to work, and give it our all to make the best work we can. It’s thanks to the PPP and Sense’s commitment to it that I’m able to be here writing this, discovering experiential and loving every minute of it. It doesn’t just allow me to work down here though; it allows me to actually live too. To be able to go for that beer with an old friend, to visit a museum on the weekend, and maybe even see a film without having to skip popcorn. At the end of the day, all that helps us become better creatives, and that’s the whole point – to become the best creatives we can.

Who knows what I’ll go on to create, I certainly don’t, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? But surely the talent of the future is worth investing in, and in my opinion, it’s those like Sense that have already signed up to do so that are leading the way.

If your agency isn’t yet signed up to the Placement Poverty Pledge, do it here: http://youngcreativecouncil.com/placement-poverty-pledge/

Jack McSwiney is Trainee Art Director at real world marketing agency Sense. Follow him at @UndeepThought on Twitter

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