R/GA has been strengthening its relationships with Berghs School of communications through a new international internship program. As part of this collaboration R/GA will provide internships for selected students who are studying on Berghs Interactive Communications program, and locate them in either one of R/GA’s Stockholm, London or Singapore offices. The program offers students an opportunity to apply their skills on live briefs for some of the world’s most prominent brands, while offering R/GA the chance to work with some of the brightest young talents in the industry.
James Temple, VP executive creative director at R/GA London spoke with Berghs:
Can you tell us a little bit about the background to this cooperation?
We believe there’s great synergy in the approach to creative work at R/GA and Berghs. Both organizations enjoy the collaboration between the creative disciplines and technology, and have a legacy for generating ground breaking digital product that is useful, entertaining and rewarding. With R/GA focused on innovation at the core, and Sweden ranking as one of, if not the top creative community in the world for digital innovation, it seems a logical and natural fit to work side by side.
What does the internship mean practically?
Selected students, who are studying on the Interactive Communication course, will receive placements in London, Stockholm or Singapore. Location will be based on the student’s preference as well as their skills and experience and the requirements of the unique R/GA offices. Approximately eight students will be offered the opportunity.
What is R/GA’s experience of Berghs’ students so far?
To date the London and New York offices have had the most experience with students on placement from Berghs. In all cases we’ve been excited about the level of creativity, maturity and ambition of the students. The guys we’ve worked with in the past seem to be real self-starters – very proactive, entrepreneurial and eager to make impact. We’ve got very specific views on the type of creative talent we hire, and the blend of characteristics we look for is increasingly hard to find, so having ties with the like-minded people at Berghs makes the partnership very attractive. We were very impressed by the crew we met with at the last Career Day in Stockholm.
What can the students expect when entering this Internship Program at R/GA?
They’ll get exposure to the reality of live digital briefs for global mega brands. Involvement in a diversity of work, potentially including: service design, campaigns, retail, mobile, and new emerging platforms. They’ll be surrounded by some of the best and most curious minds out there so will have the chance to observe, learn and directly contribute to live work, being part of a creative team that breaches the traditional model to include Interaction Designers, Technologists, Copywriters, Visual Designers and Strategists.
What is it like working at R/GA?
Inspiring. Stimulating. Challenging. Fun. You’re part of an impressive array of talent doing some pretty extraordinary things. A great example of this is a recent event we held in London called Make Day, where the whole agency was encouraged to innovate and create non-client project related work for two days, in an effort to inspire real innovation. It was a great success and we posted a video of the event on YouTube.
What are your expectations/hopes regarding the internship program?
Simply to inspire and learn from each other and in the process, make some great work.
If the students do a real good job at the R/GA offices, can they expect to be hired?
The door is always wide open for top talents who fit well with our make-up.
