Despite the title, I'm going to spare you of baseball metaphors. Today is my first day of mourning the end of football season anyway (congrats Saints!).

If you're lucky (and at the right agency), after months of grunt work, interns and junior creatives are sometimes rewarded with a shot at the big time — an opportunity to pitch for a TV spot or some other high-profile project. It's a looong shot that your work will survive the first round. If you want to better your chances, I always give the same advice: go first. If your work shows a glimmer of promise, this may help you survive.

If you have several creative teams pitching concepts , there's a very good chance some of you are going to have similar ideas. My experiences have shown that by pitching the idea first, you own the idea by default. Unless the other creative teams come up with a much better twist, chances are you may be asked to help develop the spot under more senior supervision. And if no one has a similar idea, a senior team will still be assigned to help you with your concept — or take it over completely. (Sorry. It happens. You're just an intern.)

Whenever a team starts their pitch with "we had an idea similar to (NAME)," your idea further sets the bar others will be compared to.

Now there have been times when going first hasn't worked in my favor. I've had moments where my ideas stunk up the room so badly, I made everyone else look like creative geniuses. But failure has never stopped me from volunteering to present first. And if you are afraid to fail, maybe this isn't the right career for you. As creatives, we are always in the forefront. Agencies build their reputations on your ideas. So get ready to be highly scrutinized for your entire advertising career.

Sometimes interns take my advice. The ones that do are more often given more opportunities to pitch other projects. And those that keep showing initiative are the first to be offered permanent positions over applicants trying to break in the old fashion way.

If you're lucky, you may also have the start of an actual reel at the end of this project, which puts you miles ahead of the competition.