ThinkOTB Agency

In celebration of School of Thought

July 15, 2020

At the beginning of 2020, OTB were proud, along with several other prestigious advertising and marketing agencies in the Leeds area, to get involved with the School of Thought initiative. SoT, in case you didn’t know, takes several young people (final year students, graduates and people at the start of their careers) and each week exposes them to a different agency and discipline of marketing and advertising and then sets them a brief to tackle… they then have three days to find a solution before presenting their thoughts back to the agency who set the brief.

It’s an intensive 12 week programme that demands a lot but also can give a lot back too. Previous participants have landed roles at the likes of Zeal, BJL and Propaganda and of course the winner of the entire 12 weeks gets an all expenses paid trip to the Cannes Lions Festival of Advertising.

School of Thought participants presenting their ideas back to OTB Creative Director, Dave Easton

Sadly, this year, plans for SoT were thrown a curve ball and a large proportion of the weeks had to be held over Zoom, but everyone who took part have found the experience invaluable and the winner is set to be announced at a bar in Leeds in September.

Speaking about OTB’s participation, our Creative Director, Dave Easton commented that:

“We’ve long believed in helping the next generation of advertising and marketing professionals get a foot in the door of this industry. To take part and help an enthusiastic bunch of young people was a real honour and I was especially chuffed to learn that already one of the people who took part has landed a role as a junior copywriter at Propaganda.”

Dave Easton, OTB Creative Director

Already plans are afoot for the next School of Thought to be held in Manchester and the second Leeds based SoT is set for 2021 – and this time hopefully it won’t be interrupted by a global pandemic. And you can bet OTB will be one of the first agencies to sign up to help the next generation of advertising creatives.

To find out more about SoT please visit: https://www.schoolofthought.co.uk/