In 2011, Lisbon hosted the Eurobest Festival and we needed to promote it to our local ad industry.Our idea:Every top creative in Europe would be at Eurobest: This means our creative director would be there too. And if our creative director would be there for 3 days, we wouldn’t have a creative director for 3 days. Why not replace him? So we created a brand new position in the ad industry: the trainee creative director.

For the first time ever, an agency offered an internship as a creative director.And to become this trainee creative director, young creatives had to compete on a website. The campaign lasted for almost 1 month, covering launching the website, publishing the shortlist and giving the winner their prize: the much-wanted internship. As planned, everything was heavily covered by specialised press, which drew a lot of attention to the campaign.Marketeers, agencies, creatives, specialised press, everyone talked about it. And with almost zero budget, we got approximately €67,000 of earned media.

As sponsors of Eurobest 2011 we saw an opportunity to make the most of this fact by promoting the festival in the city. So we needed an idea that could make people talk about it.

To select this young creative, we held a competition on a website. The participants had to send us a video, filming themselves presenting a famous commercial (gold on a previous edition of Eurobest). And the reason to do this was simple: every creative director must know how to sell a good idea.For almost the entire month of the campaign, we made sure that people could follow the whole process. The website release, the shortlist announcement, and the 3 days of the winner at the agency, everything got a lot of attention from the media and from the local creative community.

By giving a young creative the chance to live 3 days of his future, we promoted Eurobest with a great amount of PR. Marketeers, agencies, creatives, specialised press, basically the whole local ad industry talked about it. And with almost zero budget, we got approximately €67,000 of earned media.And beyond that, with this idea we also promoted Eurobest in Lisbon by giving a young creative the chance to live 3 days of their future. 3 days to be sure the sacrifices one makes over the first years will pay off one day. That’s what we showed our new trainee creative director and, of course, to our local ad industry.

Among other top creatives in Europe, our creative director would be out to attend the festival and we wouldn’t have a creative director during those days. That’s when we came up with this unusual job offer: an internship as a creative director.

The idea of replacing our creative director for the trainee creative director was surprising enough to make the local ad industry talk about it, and in no time the campaign took over blogs, Twitter, Facebook, specialised websites and TV programmes.

Eurobest is one of the most important advertising festivals in Europe. And for the first time it was happening in Lisbon, which was a huge thing for the Portuguese ad industry.