A few weeks ago, the Midlands’ best marketing and creative students went head to head to compete for paid work placements on offer at the region’s top creative agencies and brands.  

Now in its fifth year,B-Hive rewards top students with highly sought after paid placements and this year we’ve awarded 115 weeks of industry experience. This takes the total amount of placements we’ve awarded in the past few years to over 500 weeks and we’re exceptionally proud that many of those students have gone onto secure jobs with the employers taking part in this scheme.

We set the scheme up back in 2009 with the aim of arming students with vital experience to help them get on the creative career ladder, via competing in a Dragon’s Den style competition. Students graduating in this economic climate have a difficult job getting a foothold in the industry and through B-Hive, we’re committed to giving them an opportunity to do so.

This year students were tasked with raising awareness of a new 4G online training academy. The top entries then had to pitch their campaigns to leading industry professionals from a range of agencies and in-house communications teams.

We saw some exceptional presentations across the course of the 3 days and all the judges commented that the standard was higher than ever this year.

Five students were named overall winners of their categories which include PR, marketing, advertising, digital and graphic design. Up to four runners up per category were also rewarded with placements.

Overall Category Winners

• Olamide Sobodu was named overall winner for the PR category, scooping placements at Bright, Leader, Seal & McCann
• Sophie Clarke won the digital category and as a result, will enjoy placements at 383 Project, Freestyle Interactive and LHM
• Ben Smith followed this, securing the top spot in the marketing category and a placement at First Utility
• David Brookes ended up taking home the overall graphic design accolade, in doing so winning placements at Holman Group, Orb, Cognition and Viva Aspire
• Jenny Middleton secured top spot in the advertising category, winning placements at Big Communications, Chapter, Golley Slater, McCann, Palmer Hargreaves and The Unagency.

As always, we’d like to offer a huge congratulations to everyone who took part – whether you walked away a winner or not – and of course our heartfelt thanks to all the judges who gave up their time to sit on the panels and offer placements. We couldn’t do it without you.