Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Something to think about
In 1899, President McKinley was assured by the director of the US Patent Office that "everything that can be invented has already been invented."
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Wise Words of My Mother
"It's tought being a big cheese in a small pond."
How true. In fact, I think it might be tought to be any kind of cheese in a pond.
How true. In fact, I think it might be tought to be any kind of cheese in a pond.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Moving Green(ish)
I can in no way say that my move back to Chicago will be a "Green" move. I will be driving 500+ miles, I am using lots of boxes, etc, etc, etc. But I am trying.
Moving out of college dorm rooms four years in a row, I tended to box up the important stuff and throw out the rest. As a person who grew up recycling, that is weird behavior. But I am also a person who hates to move, and so that side has generally won out. This year, however, I decided to try and throw out as little as possible. While I can't call the experience a complete success, I think I've made some steps in the right direction.
I've posted almost 20 ads on Craigslist and Richmond.com and have sold almost half of the items that I put up for sale. I have recycled every piece of paper that I no longer need. I am dropping two large bags of food off at a friend's apartment tomorrow afternoon. I have been to Goodwill's Second Debut store three times to drop off carloads of clothing that I no longer wear and assorted odds and ends that still have some useful life left in them.
Aside from a terrible woman I met today who picked up two dressers that I listed on Craigslist (Pauline from the West End: if you truly think what you did today was decent human behavior, you need a tune-up. Or an overhaul.), I'm glad that I chose this route. The only real problem is that throwing things away was about 10 times faster.
Moving out of college dorm rooms four years in a row, I tended to box up the important stuff and throw out the rest. As a person who grew up recycling, that is weird behavior. But I am also a person who hates to move, and so that side has generally won out. This year, however, I decided to try and throw out as little as possible. While I can't call the experience a complete success, I think I've made some steps in the right direction.
I've posted almost 20 ads on Craigslist and Richmond.com and have sold almost half of the items that I put up for sale. I have recycled every piece of paper that I no longer need. I am dropping two large bags of food off at a friend's apartment tomorrow afternoon. I have been to Goodwill's Second Debut store three times to drop off carloads of clothing that I no longer wear and assorted odds and ends that still have some useful life left in them.
Aside from a terrible woman I met today who picked up two dressers that I listed on Craigslist (Pauline from the West End: if you truly think what you did today was decent human behavior, you need a tune-up. Or an overhaul.), I'm glad that I chose this route. The only real problem is that throwing things away was about 10 times faster.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Namelessly Famous
I (sort of) made Ad Age! More accurately, my jam did. Yes, the jam with the accordian fold brochure I mentioned a few entries ago.
Perhaps it was the small white mound, clearly meant to look like cocaine, sitting next to the art director's portfolio with a straw: "Welcome recruiters!"
Or the tempting stack of cherry jam jars inviting us to take one in exchange for looking at the planner's portfolio.
Or the stylish purple rubber wristbands with the copywriter's portfolio URL.
No matter how the students at VCU Brandcenter dressed their tables to draw attention to their two years of work, you could feel the passion before you even met them. These were professionally trained ad grads with a clear CTA: I'm great. Hire me.
This was my first time at VCU Brandcenter's agency recruitment days. Nanette, our agency recruiter, and I flew down to join dozens of other agencies to meet over two days some of the brightest copywriters, art directors, planners and brand managers entering the business.
This program knows what it's doing and makes it easy in this market to connect with talent. The first half of day one we could browse their portfolios without the students present. That afternoon and the following day the grads were there with their work and we could speak to whomever we wanted -- about them, about their work, about us.
The students had finished their term days earlier and had been up into the wee hours preparing for all of us. Elaborate materials. Impeccable portfolios (online and physical). Clever giveaways (e.g. little white packets of powder).
Nanette and I were delighted to find strong copywriting, gorgeous art direction, sophisticated insights and artful communication strategies. More important, to our delight, we saw ideas and how they connected among the planners and creatives.
On the short flight back to New York, I suffered from two conflicting emotions:
First, I was optimistic about the industry's future. The caliber was top-notch and the work would intimidate and motivate my own staff. These grads were all about ideas, their work rooted in insights. The work was across channels and in many of the portfolios you could see solid digital expression of ideas. The collaboration model among the brand manager, planner and creatives really showed as you went from portfolio to portfolio and could see the strategy for, say, a Boy Scouts campaign expressed in work that resulted in every discipline. Most would say they're media neutral; they really just want to do great work, however that ends up being best expressed.
At the same time, I couldn't shake some disappointment. In a generation that I thought included digital natives, the work wasn't. There were decent digital ideas, sure, but not bold ones. The uses of technology for the idea would be fine if I saw it in my generation's books, but I was secretly hoping for more from them. I mean, I have to be patient at work and with partner agencies, but can't I hope for more in those who will take my job soon enough? And while my staff would be impressed by some of the conceptual ideas, they would shrug off a lot of what they saw in digital as a bit old school.
My advice to present and future grads is to keep the idea central, but beef up your use of digital. Not in quantity, but in adventurousness and in role. In some cases, such as a campaign for the Boy Scouts of America, you might find your target is to be found first online and your campaign should center on engagement there.
In the end, I wish I had purchased some extra one-way plane tickets to take a few grads back with me to New York. These folks are good. They are smart. They are highly creative and passionate. They know ideas and they know what they want. So my advice to agencies is:
Next year, not only attend but get involved in some of these top school programs and perhaps we can help influence the use of digital in the work.
In the mean time, there's this year: If you see a VCU portfolio, be sure to give it a good look. They're going to get great jobs -- I hope a few from me.
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=127407
Students for Hire
My Recruiting Journey to VCU Brandcenter
 Mat Zucker |
Or the tempting stack of cherry jam jars inviting us to take one in exchange for looking at the planner's portfolio.
Or the stylish purple rubber wristbands with the copywriter's portfolio URL.
No matter how the students at VCU Brandcenter dressed their tables to draw attention to their two years of work, you could feel the passion before you even met them. These were professionally trained ad grads with a clear CTA: I'm great. Hire me.
This was my first time at VCU Brandcenter's agency recruitment days. Nanette, our agency recruiter, and I flew down to join dozens of other agencies to meet over two days some of the brightest copywriters, art directors, planners and brand managers entering the business.
This program knows what it's doing and makes it easy in this market to connect with talent. The first half of day one we could browse their portfolios without the students present. That afternoon and the following day the grads were there with their work and we could speak to whomever we wanted -- about them, about their work, about us.
The students had finished their term days earlier and had been up into the wee hours preparing for all of us. Elaborate materials. Impeccable portfolios (online and physical). Clever giveaways (e.g. little white packets of powder).
Nanette and I were delighted to find strong copywriting, gorgeous art direction, sophisticated insights and artful communication strategies. More important, to our delight, we saw ideas and how they connected among the planners and creatives.
On the short flight back to New York, I suffered from two conflicting emotions:
First, I was optimistic about the industry's future. The caliber was top-notch and the work would intimidate and motivate my own staff. These grads were all about ideas, their work rooted in insights. The work was across channels and in many of the portfolios you could see solid digital expression of ideas. The collaboration model among the brand manager, planner and creatives really showed as you went from portfolio to portfolio and could see the strategy for, say, a Boy Scouts campaign expressed in work that resulted in every discipline. Most would say they're media neutral; they really just want to do great work, however that ends up being best expressed.
At the same time, I couldn't shake some disappointment. In a generation that I thought included digital natives, the work wasn't. There were decent digital ideas, sure, but not bold ones. The uses of technology for the idea would be fine if I saw it in my generation's books, but I was secretly hoping for more from them. I mean, I have to be patient at work and with partner agencies, but can't I hope for more in those who will take my job soon enough? And while my staff would be impressed by some of the conceptual ideas, they would shrug off a lot of what they saw in digital as a bit old school.
My advice to present and future grads is to keep the idea central, but beef up your use of digital. Not in quantity, but in adventurousness and in role. In some cases, such as a campaign for the Boy Scouts of America, you might find your target is to be found first online and your campaign should center on engagement there.
In the end, I wish I had purchased some extra one-way plane tickets to take a few grads back with me to New York. These folks are good. They are smart. They are highly creative and passionate. They know ideas and they know what they want. So my advice to agencies is:
Next year, not only attend but get involved in some of these top school programs and perhaps we can help influence the use of digital in the work.
In the mean time, there's this year: If you see a VCU portfolio, be sure to give it a good look. They're going to get great jobs -- I hope a few from me.
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=127407
Saturday, May 31, 2008
I'm Freaking Out
In late July of 2006, almost two years ago, I was an Account Management intern at Euro RSCG Chicago. I knew that I would be leaving for the VCU Adcenter in a few weeks. The next two years of my life, unless I failed out of school, were planned out for me. It seemed daunting, but not actually scary.
As an intern at Euro RSCG Chicago one of my tasks was to work with the other interns to form our own agency (we cleverly called ourselves INTERNational) and develop a recruitment campaign for the office that would appeal to junior and mid-level prospective employees. Overall, this was probably the best internship experience I've ever had. We were given a lot of guidance and help, but were also trusted to get it right without someone constantly shepherding us. Our four person agency worked to craft the strategy, create three creative concepts, flesh-out the winning concept, generate lots of background information, present to lots of people with VP and SVP in their title, and write POVs and other pieces of communication in order to continually keep moving forward both internally and with our client. We sometimes felt overwhelmed and we squabbled more often than necessary, but I've never learned more in such a short period of time.
Long story short, at the end of July we were weeks behind and about to lose one of our Art Directors, Devika, to a previously planned African safari trip with her family. She was devoted to her work and incredibly talented. As someone who didn't want to put anything less than her best foot forward, who had just graduated from college, and who was about to leave on Safari and had a week left to get everything done, she was a bit stressed out. In the middle of her last week, I found this post-it note on my computer screen:
Devika's note made me laugh, but it also made me try even harder to make the project come together. In the end, due to both internal and external problems, our project didn't get to the point we had hoped it would. Still, I left Euro feeling proud of our work and proud of how much we had all learned. And so instead of throwing away the post-it note, I kept it on the first page of my planner. Now, every time I open my planner I have a little reminder of the fantastic mix of love and stress and laughter (sprinkled with Saturday's spent working) that it takes to create something memorable.
Maybe I'm a bit weird, but as I go through my own Freak Out, scary as it may be, her post-it confession makes me smile. Looking at that simple statement, I can actually take a deep breath and move forward. After all, it worked out for Devika.
As an intern at Euro RSCG Chicago one of my tasks was to work with the other interns to form our own agency (we cleverly called ourselves INTERNational) and develop a recruitment campaign for the office that would appeal to junior and mid-level prospective employees. Overall, this was probably the best internship experience I've ever had. We were given a lot of guidance and help, but were also trusted to get it right without someone constantly shepherding us. Our four person agency worked to craft the strategy, create three creative concepts, flesh-out the winning concept, generate lots of background information, present to lots of people with VP and SVP in their title, and write POVs and other pieces of communication in order to continually keep moving forward both internally and with our client. We sometimes felt overwhelmed and we squabbled more often than necessary, but I've never learned more in such a short period of time.
Long story short, at the end of July we were weeks behind and about to lose one of our Art Directors, Devika, to a previously planned African safari trip with her family. She was devoted to her work and incredibly talented. As someone who didn't want to put anything less than her best foot forward, who had just graduated from college, and who was about to leave on Safari and had a week left to get everything done, she was a bit stressed out. In the middle of her last week, I found this post-it note on my computer screen:
Devika's note made me laugh, but it also made me try even harder to make the project come together. In the end, due to both internal and external problems, our project didn't get to the point we had hoped it would. Still, I left Euro feeling proud of our work and proud of how much we had all learned. And so instead of throwing away the post-it note, I kept it on the first page of my planner. Now, every time I open my planner I have a little reminder of the fantastic mix of love and stress and laughter (sprinkled with Saturday's spent working) that it takes to create something memorable.
Maybe I'm a bit weird, but as I go through my own Freak Out, scary as it may be, her post-it confession makes me smile. Looking at that simple statement, I can actually take a deep breath and move forward. After all, it worked out for Devika.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Jam Labels
For recruiter session many people made business cards. I made jam. I was worried at first that this might be a bad idea; might look like some sort of weird bribe or 1950s homemaker gesture. But I made jam and I really like how it came out.
On the jam lid, I put an 1.5" x 1.5" accordion fold brochure with some information about me and my contact information.
On my table, I put the following few sentences on a table tent.
WHY JAM?
If you hire me, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together and there are only so many hours we can spend discussing my resume or my portfolio.
An agency is more than the work that comes out of it. It is the people who spend every day creating communication together, laughing, arguing and sharing their lives with each other. And so I made jam with berries picked from a local farm.
Now, you have my contact info and you also have a little sample of who I am beyond the book: a cook, an avid tourist, a point-and-shoot photography addict.
If only I could have fit my love for jazz music in there somewhere.
On the jam lid, I put an 1.5" x 1.5" accordion fold brochure with some information about me and my contact information.
On my table, I put the following few sentences on a table tent.WHY JAM?
If you hire me, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together and there are only so many hours we can spend discussing my resume or my portfolio.
An agency is more than the work that comes out of it. It is the people who spend every day creating communication together, laughing, arguing and sharing their lives with each other. And so I made jam with berries picked from a local farm.
Now, you have my contact info and you also have a little sample of who I am beyond the book: a cook, an avid tourist, a point-and-shoot photography addict.
If only I could have fit my love for jazz music in there somewhere.
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