Investigating the Cost of Unpaid Internships for the UK Advertising Industry

Abstract

Existing literature pertaining to unpaid internship focuses largely upon the resultant implications for students. As a result, implications for the additional parties involved - educators and employers - have seldom received research attention. Within the advertising industry, despite championing this there appears to be no detailed research. In this paper I asK, ‘why?’. Why do advertising agencies over-index in the practice of a phenomenon identified as problematic and what does this mean for them specifically? Case study research of a diverse range of practitioners at a leading UK agency investigates this question through novel perspectives on the phenomenon. Three central themes emerge as a result, including: Comparative - whereby practitioners indicated an expectation of ‘anticipatory justice’ in light of comparing the difficulties they faced ‘breaking in’ with those ‘breaking in’ today, That’s The Way It Is - whereby practitioners referred to the practice of the phenomenon as concrete, refuting any responsibility of instigating change, and Filter – whereby practitioners alluded to a deliberate sociocultural filtering mechanism, of which the phenomenon serves an integral role. The latter theme, combined with the institutionalised ideologies of the former two, establishes a force that engineers a sense of ‘specialness’ surrounding the case agency and its practitioners; a sense of specialness entitled The Club. It is The Club that concludes this paper, alluding to why the phenomenon perpetuates and the implications that are likely to emerge as a result. In addition, this paper confirms the inadequacy of leveraging social capital and experiential learning theses, often used as a rationale for unpaid work, to justify perpetuation of the phenomenon.