A good friend of mine recently gave a speech to an ad school here in town. He was asked to speak about what the newest, coolest ad campaigns are these days. Instead, he chose to speak about something much more useful (in my humble opinion) for the kids in that class.

His main point – Stop filling your portfolio with ads. Sure, if you’ve got a killer integrated campaign that breaks new ground and revolutionizes the way we live our lives or interact with each other, it’s probably worth including. But in general, if you’re looking to get a job in a creative field, you need to be creative in your output.

If you’re straight out of school, all the campaigns you have in your book usually come in threes, because someone somewhere said that’s the right way to do it; that it shows that you can think in campaigns and that your ideas are big enough to “have legs.” Although that’s true, a sure sign of a student book is having 5-7 campaigns, all with 3 executions. (Usually it’s 3-4 print campaigns, 1-2 digital and/or integrated campaigns, and maybe some ambient piece.) This may be fine or “the norm,” but remember that creative directors have seen millions of clever headlines and cool type treatments and they’ve all been done by someone who’s further along and way more experienced than you.

Make something more than an ad, especially for your portfolio, which you use to show your ability to creatively master the art of persuasion and compelling thought. Make a video game, film a mime getting mugged, hand-stitch some finger puppets, learn how to beatbox, or any number of things that set you apart and show that you can think in a different way. If you do this, you’ll not only show that you can answer the questions and problems of the client, but that you can think beyond them too and uncover answers to questions they didn’t realize they had. Your student portfolio is filled with spec work, so take that opportunity of having few client and budget restrictions and make something awesome.

- Lee Kimball