Day 1

Tons of initials for Day 2. I forgot to mention that Day 1 ended with a social event with tons of BU alumni meeting with us (as well as with the BU COM PR trip people). I met a lot of interesting people who were all very helpful and imparted much wisdom about how the real world is.

Anyway, onto a review of Day 2!

CDM- Cline Davis & Mann

Clients You’d Know Viagra (D2P only)

First impressions: CDM provided by far the most professional setting for our visit, which makes sense since it’s primarily a pharmaceutical advertising firm. We entered a conference room with individual place settings consisting of a bottle of Poland Spring water, a CDM keychain and a mini-book portfolio of the company’s work. We watched a reel, then took a tour, and when we got back to the conference room there was a complete panel of speakers representing all aspects of the agency. We had an extensive Q&A with them, from which I learned a ton.

What I took away:
·The holding company of CDM is SSCG, which stands for Substance, Style, Conviction, Grace.
·SSCGU is a semi-in-house ‘school’ that provides courses for all employees, ranging from biology courses (to better familiarize oneself with terminology) to creative courses (if one were considering switching career paths). They even entertain suggestions for new classes.
·Each position has Career Paths, which are like levels you complete, that provide a guideline for promotions, etc. but are by no means set in stone.

Lasting impression: Visiting CDM was a different experience. I loved the idea of their SSCGU program and would definitely enroll in classes if I were to work at CDM (or their sister agencies Lab9 and AgencyRx). My impression was that CDM really cares about their employees and wants them to achieve their full potential while still working in the agency.

Also, they gave us complimentary children’s books created through employee collaboration (written, illustrated and generally put together). It was titled “The Little Girl Who Found Her Heart” and proceeds for the book went to charity. That made me sit up and say “Wow! I’ve never seen that before.” Either Advertising is transcending mediums like never before, or Advertisers can also be people who care. What a concept!

There was also a Tibet march/protest down the block when we left (literally a sea of people as far as the eye could see). It was unreal how many people were involved. Pictures do not do it justice, but here’s an attempt anyway:

BBDO

Clients You’d Know: FedEx, ATT, HBO, M&Ms, Monster.com, Pepsi/MTN Dew

First impressions: Along with CDM, BBDO was another agency that really felt like it was housed in an office building. Also, it must be stressed that BBDO is BIG! They’re now worldwide and also have their own digital agency (Atmosphere Proximity). One of the professors who was leading the tour said that you can really determine what companies will treat you right by looking at where they have meetings. BBDO accommodated us in a conference room full of sofas and armchairs. It was by far the most comfortable meeting, and we were also offered Aquafina water, M&Ms and Gillette shaving gel.

Takeaways:
·Digital, Digital, DIGITAL! If you want to stay on top of things, you must go interactive. There is NO excuse not to have an online presence.
·We had a very eccentric speaker (he had complete control of the room) who spoke to us about his unique job at BBDO (NY). He was the Creative Engineer and his duties were to figure out if an idea would be possible to execute and determine how to do it. I had never heard of such a position before, and was quite intrigued by it. Hopefully I’ll be in contact with him soon (side note: I’ve been purposely leaving out names for privacy sake; I hope it hasn’t been misconstrued as a sign of disrespect!).
·BBDO has an in-house bar! It’s called Central Filing and we were all guests there. The best part was when our guide told us that we didn’t have to pay for drinks!

Lasting impression: BBDO was a little more buttoned-up than the places we visited on Day 1, but at the end of the workday, they sure knew how to party. We even met the supreme head honcho of the company (“Ozzy”) and had a drink with him between rounds of Guitar Hero. It was such a fine duality between business and pleasure. Also, as their in-house lawyer mentioned, one of the downsides to having such a large company is that not everyone gets to know each other. But overall, I respected BBDO for its decorum and like it for its prestige.

Our Boston University School of Communications Spring Break Advertising Trip began at the offices of Publicis USA. Then we had lunch, and then headed downtown to Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners.

Publicis

Clients You’d Know: Citi, Oral B, BMW, Maytag, Charmin

First impressions: We were in a Penthouse-type meeting room with a nice view. They provided some coffee, water, fruit and some finger foods. We had six or seven speakers, about half of whom were BU alumni. According to my notes, we had an Acct Director, two AEs, two HR people, a planner and a Copywriter.

They were all informative and friendly. But here are the takeaway points:
·Understand the brand!
·Integrated Creative over different mediums is important.
·New business= new jobs!

Also, their bathroom was super nice:

(Yes, that’s a shower!)

Lasting impression: Publicis is very people-based, and build their accounts around the people instead of finding people to fit rigid slots. Their offices were modern and looked really comfortable, and I could definitely see myself working there.

Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners

Clients You’d Know: Kenneth Cole, Panasonic, Wendy’s, Mohegan Sun

First impressions: We were in a conference room with stainless steel tables (reminded me of working in food service). The walls were frosted glass with light pouring in from the hallways. We started with a reel (that was really more like a short film with several cameo appearances), had three to four speakers, and then a special treat- Jon Bond himself spoke to us personally.

Here are some key points from Mr. Bond:
·Radical is good. Be different and take the less obvious approach (pretty much KB+P’s mantra)
·Multimedia campaigns are the way to go- solve problems using different mediums.
·(answer to my question: how do you know where the envelope is so you can push it?) It depends on where you think the brand can go and if its believable. As a corollary, know the brand!

Lasting impression: KB+P tries to break boundaries in everything they do (just look at their Kenneth Cole campaigns), and the personalities of their workers reflect that. By their account, they created what we know as reality TV (with their Snapple Lady commercials). KB+P seemed to be more creative-driven (we even had a Creative volunteer to stay afterward and review our work). The higher-ups definitely know where they want brands to go, and it’s up to the creatives to figure out the means. And that’s how wacky ideas come about.

I do some freelance graphic design on the side. It doesn’t pay the bills and is inconsistent, but it keeps me busy and with pocket money.

So seeing stuff like this breaks my heart a little bit: Twitter Paid Designer $6 For Its Icon

Thanks to James for the link.

This isn’t necessarily exclusively related to Advertising, but society in general. The question I pose: What came first? Technology or this need for instant gratification?

I was thinking about this topic on my bus ride back to Boston from NYC while doing business-like things on my new phone, which happens to be very Smart. My phone is the HTC Fuze, which (trying to not seem too much like a shill) has a touchscreen along with a million other features. I’ll touch on these aspects later, but first let’s talk about touchscreens.

My love of touchscreens spawned from when I worked in fast food service and we inputted all orders on a touchscreen terminal. Then I saw all the kids I taught at my summer job with their new Nintendo DS portable gaming consoles, which also had touchscreens. From that point on I wanted a touchscreen laptop because I figured it’d be awesome to do design stuff on (I settled on a tablet). And three years later I have arguably the most advanced phone on the market.

The Nintendo DS and HTC Fuze with their respective styluses
(Yes, I used to play Pokemon)

Where was I going with this? Oh yes, the touchscreen (isn’t it ironic how in a post titled ‘Instant Gratification,’ it took four paragraphs to get to the point?). The phone I had before this had actual buttons for menu navigation! That seems like such a foreign concept to me now, but I had that phone for three years. You know those phones are, you have to use arrow buttons to move up and down, and you’re only limited to where the arrows can go. With all this new touchscreen technology popping up everywhere (iPods, iPhones, GPS units, phones, computers, etc.), it’s becoming so much easier to get exactly what you want. One of these days, we’ll forget what it was like to have to use a computer mouse to move the pointer. In fact, maybe the pointer will become obsolete because you have an actual pointer you can use (which is very ironically, digital).

So back to my original question. Is technology fueling our desire to have instant gratification (since all the things we didn’t think possible a decade ago are now commonplace)? Or is it that we have to develop newer and better, faster, gratifying ways to implement technology because that’s how we live in the modern world?

Chicken or the egg?

Well, it’s happened.

I finally completed my portfolio website. And by ‘completed’ I mean it’s a work in progress, but it’s finally online (and not just on flickr).

The URL of course is Ad-SHARK.com, and if you’re reaching this blog via a link from that site, then welcome! And if you’re here for some other reason, that’s a little weird.

I’m going to continue to use this site to talk about Advertising news, trends, and pretty much everything I feel is relevant.

And if someone feels like giving me a job, that’d be nice…