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Spike Spondike is a livewire American creative full of ideas but a bit unsure of how to go about getting a job in the creative industry in London.

She came to Idea Shop with a lot of ideas and even more charisma and asked us to go through her CV and portfolio to give her the best possible chance of getting a job.

We were really impressed with the actual work but gave her a few pointers on her CV to make it more applicable to the British market as well as giving her a few contacts and recruitment companies who may be able to point her in the right direction.

Her CV and portfolio were presented in a rather kooky, creative way. We advised Spike to save the quirkiness for elsewhere and let the work speak for itself. She had a portfolio of two halves, half amazing conceptual creative work, half other stuff. After chatting to her for a while it became clear that the conceptual work was what excited her – happily that was also where she really shone. (She really is very talented). We suggested focusing her efforts on that work, rather than selling herself short on something she didn’t really want to do.

We also suggested she use a site like www.carbonmade.com for her online portfolio. This would allow her to focus on the work and not worry about doing, (or being judged on), web design/development.

And then for the quirkiness. We felt that in additional to a more traditional CV and portfolio, she could use her considerable creative talents to create a buzz around her work.  We talked about various ideas for a blog to celebrate her love of creative generalism and design diversity. We talked about the lovely lovely example of Make Something Cool Everyday by Brook Davies

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Make-Something-Cool-Every-Day-2009/171640

We looked into ideas for a sticker campaign leading people to Spike’s blog or portfolio. We also discussed various guerilla stunts. But I can’t share any of these with you because it would ruin the surprise.

We wish this unique creative talent all the best in her search for work. Check out her blog here http://www.spikethedesigner.blogspot.com/

Posted by Jason Scott

We had an intense ideas session with “Steve and Steve” from the Merton and Lambeth Citizen Advice Bureau.
This Local Citizen Advice service provides free, independent and impartial and confidential advice to everyone within their community.

Currently they face a few challenges in a time of recession, namely the recruitment and engagement of more volunteers, giving an even better quality of service to Clients seeking advise on rights and responsibilities and the general awareness of what their services are all about.

Being a stand alone advice centre can be challenging with limited funds, so we suggested cost effective ways to get their messages out.

Once we started to focus on 3 key marketing channels namely PR, partnerships and social media networking, the ideas started to flow…
In order to reach a high number of people in the community CAB can partner up with local newspapers and address some key social issues in the form of a column. This will generate mass awareness and position them as a body that gives advice that makes a difference. Blogging is a very powerful medium where the community can engage and discuss on certains forums and CAB can facilitate these blogs on their own website. Another way to get mass exposure is to tap into events in the community and act as a partner or sponsorship. We explored multiple ways to maximize the web as a tool to engage with both Clients and volunteers. Lastly we thought about using more video content to expose CAB in a positive and real way to the community, as this will help inform the public about the projects handled and what kind of services CAB offer.

Ideashop will follow up with a few local contacts established over the 3 day session in Brixton and recommend CAB to partner with them and make sure that there will be some element of networking taking place to leverage one another’s profiles. Using partner companies will be key to CAB’s future success. www.mertoncab.org.uk: