Is it Friday again already? How the weeks fly by.
Given that the U.S. economy has never fully recovered from 2008, we can’t say we’re surprised that people keep coming up with crazy ways to score gigs, from dressing up as famous statues to penning original love songs for agencies on request. But what if someone did something so extreme that it would leave a permanent mark on his or her body?
One entrepreneurial young man appears to have done just that … key word being “appears.” Here is the video junior art director Rudolph Troncone dropped in our inboxes this week.
Dude is lit. We had no idea art directors needed tats, but one learns new things every day.
Amid being extremely distracted by the shaky cam, we asked Rudolph for a little more information about this blatant ploy for attention.
“Working as a junior art director at R/GA has been my dream, and if I don’t get the job I guess my ad career could be over at 24 years old, haha,” he wrote. When we asked why he doesn’t have BBDO or Droga5 over his left eye, he said, “I haven’t applied to any other opportunities.”
It worked.
Angie Hannam, evp and global chief talent officer at R/GA, said, “At this point, it might be hard for Rudolph to go to any other agency. We are strongly considering him for our summer internship program and will be meeting him in person soon.”
This isn’t a new story, really. You probably remember the circa 2005 trend pieces about people permanently renting out their foreheads to brands like GoldenPalace.com for a few thousand bucks.
But Rudolph here isn’t even getting any guarantee of money, so the question follows: is the tattoo real? Was it just a temp thing or the product of some clever editing? We asked him, and he sent us a link to his Instagram profile.
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
We kept pressing him because we honestly hope, for his own sake, that this was all just a big prank. He didn’t respond. Draw your own conclusions and take solace in the fact that you probably have a job right now.
Why do people want to work in this industry, again?