You might think Stan bangs on an awful lot about folios. Take it from us, he knows a thing or two. And after sifting through the work of some of the industry’s best thinkers all weekend, we think he’s got enough reason to tell us what’s what when it comes to that pretty little book that might just get you a job.

Last weekend I judged the Direct Marketing section for the MADC Awards. I have judged direct work a couple of times before, but this time was very different.

Sure there were the usual selection of clever mail packs and three-dimensional pieces, but what was noticeably different was the sheer breadth of work entered into the category. Much of it already awarded at Cannes earlier in the year.
It’s as if direct has become the new place to be for creativity. Well this year anyway!
Yet hardly any of the kids who come to show me their folio have direct ideas in them. Mind you, they don’t have many digital ideas either.

What I can’t work out is why.

Opportunities for a job, internship, new love or random cool thing are around all the time. But, as Stan sees in you all, would you know what to do if you saw one?

Last Wednesday I joined a selection of Melbourne Creative Directors for Portfolio Night. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s like a cross between speed dating and showing your folio.

Without wanting to overstate it, the night is pretty much a chance in a lifetime for aspiring creatives, as it allows juniors to hawk their wares to around a dozen CDs over the course of a single night.

Notice how I said hawk their wares, not show their folio? Well sadly many of the kids that I saw came simply to show their folio.

I’d say I saw around a dozen kids on the night. And all of them had at least one interesting piece in their folios.

But very few of them came prepared to make the most of the opportunity.

I asked every person I saw if they had a business card. Two people gave me a card and one gave me a cd of their folio. But the others didn’t have anything for me to put on my pinboard or keep in my drawer.

Which is an opportunity missed.

It’s very rare to see a junior creative folio where every idea is brilliant. More often than not, there are generally one or two ideas in a folio that really aren’t folio worthy.

Thing is, many of these ideas could easily have become folio worthy if the person who created them had spent just a little more time on them.

And when I say a little more time, I don’t mean polishing them up on a Mac. I mean thinking a little harder.

You see it is very easy to stop work and pat yourself on the back when you have an idea.

Don’t.

Once you have an idea, keep going. The more work you put into an idea the better it will get.

Unless it’s not that good an idea.

In which case you should still keep going, only rather than working on your idea you should be working on another idea.

When was the last meeting you organised with someone in your industry? Did you go ahead with it or chicken out? You’d be surprised how often the latter happens to Stan…

When you make an appointment with someone to show them your work be sure to ask them for a number to contact them just in case something comes up.

The day before your appointment, I’d recommend you give the person a call to confirm your appointment.

After you have done both of the above, my advice is to actually turn up for the appointment. Yes, turn up.

I know it sounds like an obvious thing to say, but in the last month I’ve had a couple of people make appointments to show me their folio and fail to turn up.

Suffice to say if they ring me again I will not be making time in my seriously busy schedule for them.

I’m not telling you how to suck eggs kids, but you need to realise looking at junior folios is pretty low on the priority list for most senior people. So if they offer to make room in their schedule for you, don’t waste the opportunity.

A lot can happen in an instant. You could change someone’s mind, or make them happy, or impressed, charm their pants off, make them smile, or just feel good. But don’t confuse them, because Stan knows what he’s on about, and that won’t get you a job now will it?

For this week’s Whip I must tip my hat to Simon Veksner of BBH in London, whose headline I stole and whose wisdom inspired this piece.

When you sit down in front of someone to show them your folio you are at the mercy of their finger.

Believe it or not, a finger can flick through folio pages faster than the brain can think.

So you need to ensure your ideas are so simple and so clearly laid out that the person looking at them gets them before their finger goes to turn the page.

If your folio is messy. If your layouts are cluttered. If your headlines are not legible. Then your work is not instantly gettable.

And unless your work can be gotten in an instant, you will never beat the finger.

When you don’t know any better, it’s easy to think your folio should look and feel a certain way. But, as Stan will have you know, conventional wisdom is hardly ever that interesting.

Accepted wisdom is that an advertising folio should consist of loosely drawn black and white concepts. A design folio however is generally finished to quite a high standard.

What the design and advertising folio have in common is that they are generally paper based.

What I want to know is why?

Two young guys who worked for me in London back in 2000 showed me their folio on a laptop. That was ten years ago!

Now I’m not for one minute suggesting you go and scan all your scribbles and put them on a computer. But I am asking you to question the way you are putting together and presenting your ideas.

Those two guys from ten years ago are no longer working together, but they have both gone on to become creative directors. Not because they put their folio on a laptop, but because they dared to be different.

This week I had someone show me a selection of their work on an iPhone. Yes an iPhone! Obviously not the best medium for print and posters, but terrific for TV and video work.

And as you can imagine it took me completely by surprise when the guy whipped his phone out of his pocket!

So how about this month, rather than focussing on making your folio better, you focus on the folio itself. Who knows what you might come up with.

So you’ve started adding digital work to your folio, but dammit, there’s only so many iPhone apps and ‘find the product’ maze games you can come up with. Don’t worry, we’re all still figuring out this thing too. Stan suggests you start thinking about the possibilities beyond the obvious.

Got any digital work in your folio? Of course you do, it’s 2010. But before you take a moment to pat yourself on the back for having a banner or two in your book, consider this:

Digital work dates fast. Really fast. So make sure you keep up to speed with the possibilities.

Think video not animation. Think engagement not clicks. Think sharing not watching.

Anything is possible with digital. And if it isn’t it soon will be.

You also need to think digital not computer. Because before we know it almost everyone with be using mobile internet.

To get a glimpse of what I’m talking about take a look at this video and then put aside some time to think about the possibilities it offers you as a creative.

If you wanna be a success in this game, sometimes you need to do things you might not want to. But, as Stan will tell you, it’ll make you better than anyone else hawking their folio about. And it’ll be impossible not to get a job.

Ever shown your folio to someone and they’ve made comment about having seen one of your ideas before?

No? Lucky you!

For most of us though (including me) having an idea that has been done before is an occupational hazard.

So if someone tells you they’ve seen one of your ideas before, ditch it.

Yes ditch it.

Don’t sit there fretting about how long it took you or the fact that it’s one of your favourite pieces of work.

Just ditch it.

And as you crumple it up and toss it into the bin take a moment to sit back and smile.

Why?

Because you’ve come up with an idea that was considered good enough to run. Possibly even good enough to have won an award.

The only problem being that somebody else had the idea before you.

Now all you need to do is sit down with your pad and pen and come up with a new idea that’s just as good, that nobody has seen before.

Seriously. Stan couldn’t make it much simpler than this.

When you see an ad on the television does it have subtitles running across the bottom of the screen explaining what the brief for the ad was?

No, of course not.

Ever seen a poster on the highway with a copy of the brief attached to it?

No, didn’t think so.

So why oh why do so many juniors have creative briefs in their folios?

If your ad needs a copy of the brief alongside it in order to help someone understand it, then the ad is a failure.

In the real world ads have to do all the talking.

So please apply some rigour to your folio and ditch any briefs, labels explaining the ideas, and all those sticky notes with the proposition scribbled them. And do it now!

Alright, alright. We know what you’re thinking, “Another ad-guy? When you kids gonna get over this ad-schmer-tising thing, huh?” Well you’re right. Evan Fry is an ad-guy. But he ain’t just any ad-guy–he’s a true-blue award-winning ex-Creative Director of Crispin Porter & Bogusky style ad-guy, and he has some good shit to say, so chill out, bro. That sort of heritage makes him better than most ad-guys, who on the whole are a dime-a-dozen, and definitely don’t look this good with a head wrapped in ostrich feathers. He just left CP+B to start up the world’s first ad agency utilising the power of crowd-sourcing, named Victors & Spoils. That’s pretty cool-magool if you ask us. You know what else makes Evan cooler than most? He’s an old-school copywriter. Which tends to be rare these days. So if you’re one of the few who want to take up the lost art of copywriting, listen to what Evan has to say. You can actually use his advice–which is darn considerate of him, seeing as most of these so-called ‘ad-guys’ have a lot to say about nothing. In summation: Evan Fry ain’t just your average ad-guy, he’s a super-talented old-school copywriting mega-machine, and wants you to Be Fucking Awesome.

Junior: We heard somewhere that you’ve got a crazy story about getting a job at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Apparently it’s a ‘doozy’. May as well tell us the whole thing!

Evan Fry: Sure. But it’s a long one. It basically began with me having been fired from the job I had and sending my book to Crispin. At that point, this was the spring of 2002, I had been a writer/ACD for 8 years already, and I wanted to work for CP+B more than anywhere else–so I sent my book. About a month after I sent it in they returned it to me with a form letter, “signed” by Alex Bogusky himself. It was encouraging, but standard. Very professional of them to be that on top of their shit, I thought. And then I forgot about it. About two months later, after becoming a bit bored of not getting much play from the shops I truly wanted to work for, I had an idea: what if I acted as though that letter really was a sincere letter from Alex to me, and started sending him weird notes from the stance of ‘jilted-lover-gone-psycho-at-not-getting-any-more-letters-from-Alex’?

So I got some really precious stationery like a grandma might use, a super nice calligraphy pen, and went to it. My thought was keep them short, keep them anonymous, and keep them weird. And not think for a minute that Alex himself would ever even get them. I think the first one said, in really weird cursive, “It’s been two months since you last wrote me, Alex. Don’t you love me anymore, Alex?” Nothing else. A few days later I sent another one. And then another, after a few more days. For the fourth one, I reduced a photocopy of the original form letter he’d sent me, but used black permanent marker and inked out my name on it. I accompanied it with a psycho note on the psycho stationery that this time said, “Perhaps by now, Alex, you’re wondering who the hell I am? Well maybe I’m a lot like you, Alex.”

Four days later as I was thinking about how to take it up a notch, I got a FedEx delivery. It was from Miami. When I opened it, it was clear something was weird. There was another envelope inside. And then inside that envelope was a Ziploc bag. It had the vibe of an evidence bag like in lawyer movies. I opened the Ziploc and there was a Photostat-camera blowup of the part of the form letter I’d sent where I’d inked out my name. But by blowing it up 10 times, its size had revealed the name under the ink. ‘Evan’, just huge. Stapled to it was a copy of my letter, and in red ink someone had circled “… who the hell I am.” And that was it. It was all just one big fucking “touché, motherfucker. We got you.”

I was psyched beyond belief. Because all of a sudden I had concrete proof that not only had my letters been getting to him, but they’d been actually getting to him, you know? And he took some time and effort to play the game. So I immediately loved Alex. And the day after I got the envelope, Veronica Padilla, his assistant at the time, called for my book again. I thought I had a job in the bag, or at least a flight out. But it didn’t work like that. I didn’t hear anything for weeks.

By then I’d started a whole other self promotion idea where I was mailing a weekly photo of myself to the top 30 or 40 creative directors around the world who I wanted to work with. Each one was literally just a 4×6 photo – showing how much time I had on my hands. Like, in one I was having a tea party with stuffed animals. In another I was drinking tallboys with bums on the street. On the back of each, every week, I wrote in pen something that went with it, like, “God I need some work,” and I’d include my phone number.

So I had these going on, and was also sending them to Alex. But I still didn’t hear from him. However the photos were working, and I was getting a lot of great freelance so I didn’t care as much, although CP+B was still where I really wanted to be.

About six weeks later Alex himself finally called and said, “I’ve been meaning to call you, why don’t you fly out.” I did, and had a great interview. Thought I had it in the bag for sure, and… didn’t. He didn’t have a slot for me. So I kept the weekly photos going, kept freelancing, and then four months later I was freelancing at Mad Dogs & Englishmen in San Francisco and got a message on my answering machine. “Hey Evan, it’s Alex, call Veronica back and tell her the code word is pineapple.” I called her back and she said Alex wanted to offer me a job. It was literally one of the best days of my life. P-e-r-s-e-v-e-r-a-n-c-e.

Jr: Wow. Ok. That definitely is a doozy. It’s nice to see someone with experience and good work struggle like the best of us. In fact, your website mentions that at twenty-six you “weren’t exactly setting the advertising world on fire”. How did you push through that? Did you ever want to give it up and go mountain biking for good?

E: Oh man, you got that right. Actually, a few times. I got out of school from the University of Oregon and unlike my partner in school, Glenn Cole, I didn’t take a good job out of school. My book was shit and I spent a year working on it but the only job I could land was at the ‘third biggest place in Portland’ – which basically means nowhere you’ve ever heard of. And even though I only stayed there a year, it seemed my destiny was sort of set. I couldn’t get play in the Weidens or the Goodbys of the day, so I was just floating around at the mediocre places, like 95% of us.

I moved to San Francisco in 1996 and experienced more of the same. But I moved to be in a bigger market with more chances. I kept at it, kept trying, and just didn’t give up. I guess that’s why I ended that last question by saying perseverance. That’s really the only answer when you feel like you’ve got what it takes, when you know that in your heart. If you know you’re good and you know you’re smart but can’t seem to get a break, you’ve got to prove how smart you are and make your own break. I’m 100% convinced of that.

Jr: You’ve written your entire career. But a lot of young people aren’t taught hardcore writing anymore. From our experience, advertising education tends to be more ideas-focused. What advice would you give to young writers?

E: I think this is true. I went to a School of Journalism program, and was lucky enough to be a decent writer just inherently, I dare say. And then in school at University of Oregon, I was also lucky to have two great ad professors who were classically trained. So the mix was pure writing and grammar, mixed with classic concepting classes, and barebones, fucking copywriting courses. It didn’t hurt to have Dan Weiden himself teaching a couple of intensive seminars. But today, you’re right–ad programs stress concepts first, at best. Copywriters today, I swear to God, most of them shouldn’t call themselves “writers” at all. But it’s not really the game now, nor is it anyone’s fault really.

The advice I would give is to read a lot. And to pick up the book Grammar for Journalists and study it like there’s going to be a quiz on it every day. I’d also say to use self-discipline. And read The Book of Gossage. Teach yourself. If you’re a copywriter who can actually write, you’re set for life. Love the headline, love long copy, do it all the time, get better at it, write hundreds of options for each headline idea. Treat it like a craft. That’s what it is. I still love to write ads.

Jr: Do you get the urge/time to do any writing or other creative stuff outside of advertising?

E: Nope. I really don’t, not writing. I get the urge to do other things besides advertising though. And I do those things. It’s why I started sharklove.com and also befuckingawesome.com. Be Fucking Awesome, especially, is just a labour of love. I kept having this idea where I would write a book that would be a sort of “guide for living.” I had this idea for a title and it was “How to Be Fucking Awesome.” This was while I was really cranking at CP+B, on the road producing all the time. So I didn’t really have the energy to do it, but I bought the URL befuckingawesome.com and felt good enough about doing that. Then I just sat on it for a couple years.

Finally I had John Parker, my partner at the time and now a CD at W+K New York, do up a branding identity for BFA. He rocked it. And it sat there again. Then I had the idea to tweak it into a social network of sorts where you could post your Fucking Awesome deeds, let the world vote on each one, and those votes would contribute to your Awesome Quotient. So then I fucking had to do it. And that’s what I did. I found another amazing designer to help with the design, a fantastically talented developer, and sunk a lot of my own money into paying him to develop it. It’s been live now since the end of September. It isn’t really taking off the way I’d hoped, but I am learning a whole lot from it and know what to try to make it take off more. It’s really satisfying, in some ways. But mostly, it’s just a massive learning experience.

Jr: So, now that you’ve left CP+B to start your own agency, what can the world expect from Victors and Spoils?

E: Good question. I think the world can expect to see a viable new way of coming up with ideas for the advertising industry. A way where the clients feel like they get the service and attention that traditional agencies give, but ideas and work that is devised from a much broader base of amateurs and/or the users of their products and services–then directed and shaped to be on brand and on brief. So it’ll feel like an ad agency to the client, but engage the world to help solve their business problems. What we’re trying to do is show that there is a new way of doing things. A way that works and can let more people into the process. We’re all savvy critics of ads and marketing communications nowadays – because we’re exposed to it from birth. There are a lot of people out there who could be really good at it, and we want to give them a way of working on things just like those of us who went to school to become experts. There’s a shitload more to it than that, obviously. But the world can expect some really interesting briefs to work on for some really interesting clients. At least.

Jr: The business model you guys described on launch, was anything but ‘more of the same’, but there’s going to be the inevitable detraction from folks not into the whole model. Are crowd-sourcing naysayers the new ‘30-seconds-of-TV-is-the-only-media-we-need’ dinosaurs?

E: I don’t know; that’s a good question. There are naysayers out there. Basically what the internet gives people is a voice, and they love to use it to say how dumb everything is that isn’t their own idea. I learned pretty fast after we launched that I just had to turn it off, it was exhausting trying to answer or consider everyone’s points. Which we still care a lot about, but so many people were just being so aggressively mean and negative, so full of hate, that we realized very fast that no answer would satisfy the vocal minority. It’s one of the most loaded issues out there right now and because we consciously launched with as much hoopla as we could create, we became the brightest bull’s-eye. It’s cool though; we intend to just continue doing our thing and trying to get some good clients and craft briefs that let people play with brands if they want to. If they don’t want to, that’s cool too.

Jr: How does a junior (or anyone for that matter) get a shot at working for a hot shop like CP+B or Victors & Spoils? Can you give us five awesome tips?

E: What if I give you one tip and explain the shit out of it?

Jr: Evan, you do what you feel…

E: Good.

1. Get really good at the craft of being a creative.

- Write down everything. Take notes as you learn. Take notes as you concept.

- Doodle as you think. Keep the pen moving.

- Do lots of options for everything. Only through looking at it can you know if something is better or worse than what you already have. Look at it.

- Take it seriously; don’t expect it to come easy. Focus on the brief. Do “concepting intervals” where you focus and write every idea down. Then have a break. Then get back to it.

- Sketch everything. Go analog. Don’t fucking concept on your fucking laptop. Pad of paper. Pen or pencil. You alone, or you and your partner. Find somewhere to get in sync and focus and riff. When writing headlines, that’s when I think writing on your computer is good. But try using all caps, or two spaces between each headline. Treat it like art, and have some pride for how the words look. Do a bunch. Edit them a little. Do a bunch more. Edit a little. Repeat. If you’re building your book, keep the presentation simple. But don’t ignore the presentation.

Jr: Is there life after advertising? Should advertising be a means to an end?

E: For me, I think there has to be. For anyone, for sure there can be. Depends on how much a boner it gives you, I guess.

Interview by: Pete Majarich