For the first time ever, Rare has teamed up with WPP to offer an exclusive summer internship programme. The WPP Micro-Fellowship is designed to help attract ethnic minority candidates to the marketing communications industry.
Successful candidates will spend three weeks with WPP starting in July. They will spend each week in a different operating company; this could mean a week in anything from advertising, to consumer insights, to packaging and design. In addition to their day-to-day work with WPP, interns will be invited to an exclusive weekly workshop to gain an insight into the world of marketing and communications. There is the only internship like this in the industry.

The application process has now closed. We had a huge amount of interest in the programme – the most we’ve ever had - and a very significant number of applications. After much internal debate, 17 of these have been forwarded to WPP for consideration.

The standard of applications was exceptional. Candidates were asked to introduce themselves is no more than 300 words. One candidate informed us that it was a shame that we had to read about him before meeting him – he reckons he’s more charming in person; another explained that the two parts of her name revealed three hundred years of expansive colonial history and an exciting period in her dad’s youth; a third shared his love for poetry with us and took us on a journey from Chicago to pages of a Chris Ofili catalogue.

Candidates were also asked to describe a solution to a problem solved that relied more on lateral thought than on spending money. Answers ranged from a budget birthday gift involving some lively strangers, a video camcorder and some felt tips, to an innovative way of extending the life of shoes, to feeding 200 people with a single fish – we’re not joking.

The WPP Fellowship is a hugely competitive graduate scheme, with around 2000 people competing for roughly 10 places. The Micro-Fellowship is designed to give people from minority backgrounds relevant industry experience that will enable them to make better applications to the programme.

Jon Steel, WPP’s Planning Director and the man in charge of both the Fellowship and Micro-Fellowship programmes, had this to say:

“I'm delighted to be working with Rare and to able to offer a taste of our Fellowship Program for minority students.
We see this as the first stage in what we hope will be a number of successful careers in our business. Many of our current Fellows have volunteered to mentor the interns, and are all exited about participating.

I look forward to meeting the candidates later this month. “