Pablo urges industry to hire the unsuccessful applicants of its placement scheme 'Pablo Next'

Pablo planners Emma Stafford, Chris Turner, Eliza Millett and Lisa Stoney, created an entirely new placement programme, Pablo Next, designed to give young talent entry-level access into the world of Strategy. Today, Pablo is calling upon Agency peers to help give some of the unsuccessful applicants a foot in the door. 

What is the Pablo Next scheme? 

The placement lasts 3-6 months, with the intent being that individuals would be equipped for a junior planner role anywhere. The rich and broad experience offers: - Shadowing different planners across a broad range of clients 

- Training modules, such as brief writing, humour as a strategic device, use of AI in the workflow, government strategy and working with planning tools, inc. YouGov, social listening 

- Monthly projects across live clients, as well as individual proactive briefs - Plus a wide variety of day-to-day tasks 

The programme is designed to ensure they learn as many skills as possible to thrive in planning in today’s context.

Why Pablo set this up? 

While there's so much amazing work done by the APG and IPA, planning is still a notoriously difficult path to get into. Many people don’t know about it, and even if you do, it's hard to get your first break. 

Pablo set out to change this, making planning more visible and accessible by creating opportunities through a paid internship program, for top fledgling talent. 

With a strong commitment to improving Access, Pablo launched the Pablo Living Wage in December 2023, followed by Pablo Next — a new internship initiative focused on opening up access to our industry and creating more tangible opportunities for individuals who might not otherwise have been considering strategy or aware of careers in this field. 

The fully paid internship offers an annualised salary of £26K inline with the Real Living Wage - exceeding the market average of £24K and significantly above the typical £21K for entry-level positions in the industry (which is woeful)*. If made permanent this role would convert to £30K, aligning with the Pablo Living Wage for all full-time and permanent Pablos, ensuring that we are eradicating any barriers to entry into strategy. 

*Source: Talent.com: https://uk.talent.com/salary?job=marketing+internship 

How Pablo went about the recruitment? 

The application was seeded out to various locations including Creative Mentor Network, ERic app, Creative Lives in Progress, the Marketing Academy, and Steven Lacey at Outsider Insight and also saw Pablo mobilising its people and their networks. We wanted to make the process fun AND get an insight into their creative and strategic nous, without needing to know anything about strategy - all in pursuit of evening the playing field. The application was in two parts: 

Part One: Answer 

• How would you encourage parents to teach their kids about money? • How would you encourage Gen Z to start eating spam? 

• How would you encourage men to go for a prostate check? 

• How would you encourage the UK to wash their clothes less often? 

Part Two: Answer 

• Which famous person would you be reincarnated as and why? 

• What would your one-person show be called and why? 

• Make an image that represents you on MidJourney and explain your reasoning?

What we discovered along the way: 

Pablo were absolutely blown away by the response. A trickle of respondents became a flood and we ended up with over 120 applications. Many of the applicants expressed how happy they were to receive the opportunity for a role like this, given there is very little out there in this space. There is a clear demand here that isn’t being serviced by our industry. 

Having interviewed the candidates, Chris Turner, Planning Director, said “Beyond the volume of the applicants, the quality was superb. I think back to how green I was when I first started and these candidates just blew my socks off. We had people creating their own videos and websites, we saw brilliantly clear and surprising presentations, and we even had someone tell their story by sending in a pizza. We need more of this talent in our industry.” 

Emma Stafford, Strategy Director, said “Planning is both notoriously difficult to get into and a job many don’t know exists. The success of our discipline relies on fresh thinking, which has to come from a diverse range of people. So we created a programme in Pablo Next that would reach more people; offer them real experience and build the planning community by extension.” 

Ellise Gordon was chosen, who’s video application initially grabbed Pablo’s attention with its slick presentation, thoughtful response and pure effort that went into the research and execution of her ideas. 

Ellise Gordon said “I’m thrilled to be working as a planning intern at Pablo. With a research-focused background, I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and previously worked in the world of user research in media distribution and financial services, but I decided to make an exciting leap into marketing and advertising to follow my passions and unleash my creativity.

Starting my career journey in advertising at Pablo has been an incredible opportunity! I've been diving into competitor research and collaborating with amazing clients like DFS, Deliveroo, The Royal Mint, and more. The experience so far has been fantastic, and I can't wait to see what the rest of my placement has in store!” 

However, it was a shame that only one person could secure the placement out of all of these talented individuals. 

So with that in mind, Pablo are sharing standout candidates so our industry can also benefit. "We’d love to call upon our peers in the industry to help give some of these brilliant individuals an opportunity to take their first step into the wonderful career path that is planning." If the spirit of Pablo Next was to open up access to not only our industry but also to the elusive planning discipline we hope that by sharing these names we collectively can move the dial on this more than Pablo can alone. 

Those that didn’t quite make the cut but stood out are below - 

● Jo Harrison Hall 

● Jade Oade 

● Liam Brazier 

● Matthew Underhill 

● Kalyani Nedungadi 

● Charlotte Dunn 

● Arthur Margetson 

● Anthony Cheung