Brands start search for UK’s future marketers

Facebook, ITV and Spotify are among 100 brands taking part in an inititiative that offers young people the chance to land one of 300 marketing and advertising roles.

IPA

The ‘Creative Pioneers Challenge’, which launches today (20 March), aims to fast track young people aged 16 to 24 into paid internships in a variety of advertising disciplines from social media and marketing communications to media planning and buying.

A four month ad campaign launched in The Metro today to support the scheme in 50 cities across the UK.

It has been organised by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the advertising industry trade body, as the latest phase of its push to entice creative talent from different backgrounds to the industry. In December it helped secure almost £1m of government funding to develop the “first ever’ creative agencies apprenticeship scheme for school leavers.

The recruitment drive follows youth unemployment in the UK reaching 1 million in 2011, with more 16 to 24-year-olds out of work than at any time since 1992, according to the Office of National Statistics.

The scheme, however, is open to anyone aged between 16-24 and not just the out of the work.

In November, Marketing Week reported that the marketing services industry is creating and bolstering schemes to get young people without a university education into the profession.

The initiative is also backed by creative sector skills council Skillset and Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey.

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