About a year ago, a 22 year-old kid named Colin Murphy showed up out of nowhere. Sporting little more than a bow-tie, he’d make his way to ad industry events, networking and meeting folks, trying to shop his super-raw book to anyone who’d look at it. He was from Ohio, had no idea what he was doing, but used that tie and his Twitter feed (@colinmurphy) to get a job. It’s been a year since he arrived in New york, and Murphy has transcended from complete unknown to a gainfully employed creative at Carrot Creative. Not bad. Here’s how he did it, with the help of an unlikely industry figurehead.
It’s simple really. Doug Jaeger, a regular Twitter user (and current ADC president), saw Murphy’s book linked in a tweet. He liked it enough to retweet it. It was then that Jeremiah Rosen of New York’s Campfire saw the tweet. Soon after, Campfire hired Murphy as an intern.
After that ended Murphy picked up another internship, this time at Brooklyn-based Carrot Creative. The agency recently hired him full time.
Speaking with Murphy, he credits Jaeger’s tweet as the spark that lit his young career’s flame. It’s a case of person-as-medium — Jaeger’s broad social reach placed Murphy’s book (website) in the right hands. And though it took about a year for the young creative to land a full time job, it still worked. Consider that Carrot receives gobs of internship applications each month. Murphy jumped over the pack and from there used his talent to convert the opportunity into a job.
Say what you will about any of this as a model for getting work — but for today’s eager hopefuls, it’s proof that there’s room to earn one’s place outside of gimmicks. It’s something our fore-bearers called “hard work” — it’s slow, arduous, and arguably more impressive than stumbling on an idea. Congrats to Murphy on his job, and kudos to Jaeger, Campfire and Carrot for helping him get there.
More: “Who is Going to Buy MIR?”