Meet Our New Intern: Bella!

A few months ago, we decided to go about recruitment in a different way. We created our own office in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, put up a creative brief on our board and opened our call for submissions to anyone and everyone in the world.

Because we believe in investing and training new talent, we have offered a lot of internships over the years. It’s important to us to give people opportunities and we wanted to attract candidates who may not usually consider a career in advertising or have the right contacts or way in.

Many people got into Animal Crossing: New Horizons during lockdown as a form of escapism, and we saw that it tended to attract creative people, so we thought it would be a good way to attract a broader range of creative talent.

“By recreating our office in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we were hoping to engage with a much broader, more diverse talent base. It was fantastic to have such a variety of responses from all over the world, and it was also heartening to see so many women applying, given that digital and creative roles are often dominated by men. The competition inspired real creativity and it’s clear that every applicant put their heart and soul into their entries.”

Tasmin Lobley, Senior Art Director

We’ve always had a big focus on creating and retaining communities for our clients, and we realised that building a community in Animal Crossing, which has a huge ready-made audience, was a great way to reach out to a new generation of creatives.

Following global publicity for the initiative, we received a total of 67 responses to its brief, with well over half of the responses coming from women. We had applicants from locations all around the globe, including Brazil, Russia, Columbia, China, the USA and India.

We were blown away by the quality of the submissions - and although it was tough to choose, we finally chose Bella as our new intern! Funnily enough, Bella lives quite close to us in Bury and has recently completed a degree in graphic design at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.

“My idea was based on my personal experience of playing Animal Crossing and sadly having no one to play with, tying that in with one of the UK’s biggest TV events ITV’s Love Island! I’m thrilled that Waste liked my response so much, and very excited to be starting my internship.”

Bella Loughlin, new intern

Her winning response was inspired by her love of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and featured a tie-in with the ITV show Love Island. She is now taking up her three-month paid internship in Waste’s creative department, working remotely from her home in Rawtenstall, Lancashire. You can check out her other work on her website!

Here's her submission:

“Bella’s response stood out because of the brilliant way she used insights and tapped into popular culture to create an idea which had a natural place within Animal Crossing. She is a great addition to our creative team and we’re looking forward to seeing what else she comes up with.”

Tasmin Lobley, Senior Art Director