former chair of BBH- cindy gallop.

Bold Color, Small Space: The Black Apartment | Cindy Gallop > for Dwell > by Gary Nadeau from gary nadeau on Vimeo.

amazing woman who wants to make the world better for women. check her.

at long, long last

hey everyone-

it's been awhile, no? almost a year. and i have no one to blame but myself and adjusting to a new life in new york and working and etc. it's been a lot of fun, so i'll just update you quickly.

i've been a planner at euro rscg for the past year. i met my boss, michael fanuele, right out of school and we clicked, and it's been really awesome.

second, i'm never alerted when there are comments to posts, so i really apologize for not responding to anyone. if you have any questions, feel free to email me.

third, if you are applying to the bootcamp, congratulations you made a brilliant decision. if you are currently enduring bootcamp, i can see the dark rings around your eyes from here.  i remember.  keep having fun and bust your ass and the job will come. don't worry.

okay- so check in complete. i'll be posting more, but in the meantime, my class has its own blog we update when we can, so check it:  http://wakeupandconsume.tumblr.com/

later, y'all.

new business pitches

i've helped out with 3 or 4 since i started.... nothing prepares you for the whirlwind of it. but i've never had so much energy. and that's pretty significant since i've also not slept so much recently. looove it.

we all geeked out to this campaign. and all of the other tbwa/chiat/day work as well, specifically snickers, starburst and combos. so when jon lee, deputy head of planning of chiat, came to speak, we were pretty thrilled for his presentation and case study walk-through.

jon talked about 'understanding the issue.' this was a really well-coordinated match between ad school curriculum and speaker, mainly because we got to actually go through tbwa's famous Disruption process for an assignment. Disruption systematically allows you to see every angle of a business problem and figure out where the spots of opportunities are- so it was perfect.

before going through Disruption, which i'll go through quickly in a second, we got some advice to becoming great (junior) planners:

1- i am not an expert

2- i will question everything i see, read and hear

3- i will not get caught in my own underwear

4- plagiarism is my friend

5- achems razor is not a cool term used by medical dramas

these are self-explanatory. and they were needed. if there's one thing ad school helps with, it's confidence, but the real world is awfully different.  being told to consistently humble ourselves and to always question everything - as so much of what we 'see, read and hear' is never bulletproof - are reminders that i use to this minute.  

back to Disruption. we looked at 5 areas to asses how to understand the issue: 

category (what is the environment that the brand works in?)

marketplace (what does the consumer/brand interaction look like? what are the forces at play)

communications (what is being said by whom how and where? what does it look like?) 

brand (what's the brand's history, what does it stand for, what is the issue?)

consumer (who are they? what relationships/behaviors drive the category?)

after you go through an analysis of each of these "planets," essentially you find the convention(s) in each and figure out how to disrupt that convention and then position the brand in a new way that is fresh to the category, marketplace, communcations, brand or consumer. 

that was probably the worst explanation of Disruption ever, so to really do it and yourself some good, read 'Disruption' by jean-marie dru and 'Beyond Disruption' after that. they're both great and take you through some awesome cases.

please don't think i've forgotten

because i haven't.  not that i assume i have loyal readers, either. but i can't stand it when people don't update their blogs and i've committed a sin against my own expectations/standards. but i promise it's not because of laziness. work is cranking (good), my landlord sold my building so i had to leave (bad) and it's been madness the past month. so expect more, if you were expecting anything at all?

recounting the first

each weekend a planner (or sometimes planners) will visit the school, teach a lesson and hang out with the class. typically, the planner will talk about a selected topic, assign the class 2 projects, one for the weekend and one campaign for the weekly campaigns class, then allow their energy and brains to be drained by all of us wannabe-planners. 

speaker #1 was christopher owens from the richards group in dallas.  it was good to open school with chris as the first speaker, if not for his enthusiasm, then for his empathy.  chris was a planner in the school's second bootcamp. 

the week was about filling our toolboxes with the 'proper tools to succeed at bootcamp and beyond.' it was an introduction to what the planner's role is in communications, specifically a combination of storyteller and strategist. we also learned that planning is not necessary for communications but 'creates better communications.' 

one of the greatest things about chris was that he wanted us to ask him questions regardless of their triteness. he liberally gave advice as a former graduate who had to build a planning department in his former agency by himself, fully capable but not entirely directed, then eventually made it over to the richards group and worked on campaigns like patron tequila, red lobster and the home depot. 

the other most useful thing chris filled us in on was the power of resourcefulness. in ad school, there are no iconoculture accounts, no reams of mintel data available or syndicated research libraries.  there is the interwebs. the internets. the tubes. and you find that if you become good at wielding search engines, google labs and idea communities like flickr, psfk etc, you can build a great case and story for your strategies.  also, using these things doesn't end in ad school, they're helpful in an agency role, too. i think it was essentially more helpful that we didn't have tons of available pre-researched data. it made us think and tirelessly find information.

the beginning of ad school wasn't shy and careful about taking into consideration my zero experience as a planner. good thing.  the entire course was trial and error and trial and error, but what better way is there to work?  you just learn from your embarrassing mistakes and omit them the next time around.

this is jan and the baby. (and in case you're wondering if he's supporting her/his/its neck, i think so. but he also could be using pressure points to sedate.) our first campaign was for encouraging breastfeeding amongst teens in the UK (or US). to build our working relationship with the creative team (jan/ad, branden/cw) my partner carlos and i started off the process with a collaborative brainstorming session.  i think 9 out of 10 times, both planners and creatives working in the school will agree that this is the best way to work for a couple reasons 1- you're not some god/goddess of revolutionary strategies and thinking and 2- being able to spot the best idea (from a creative, from your planning counterpart, from your mom) is really helpful.  was that preachy? i hope not, it's just something that worked really well for our group dynamic and most creatives in our class liked being included in the beginning.

after some group talks and lots of thinking, our campaign had the tone of a movement, based on the strategy 'we are the new mom.'  we had to speak to girls who weren't even thinking about having babies yet, therefore making breastfeeding even further removed from their priorities.  we thought the best way to intersect their lives (always 'on' or connected, obsessed with pop culture, particularly fashion and celebrities) with breast feeding was to create a new image for the antiquated concept of public breastfeeding.

back to jan and the baby. the team took this strategy and decided to brand 'mother' as a role with a contemporary duality. they recruited a fashion photography student, jeff irwin, to take photos. jan and i went on a shopping spree with his credit card, charging about 2 grand for (refundable) clothes used during the shoots. 

lesson: the creatives at the school do not joke around.

we shot at different locations, some temperamental like the beach, some controlled like in jan's apartment with lighting, hair and make-up, all glam.  i was allowed to work with all kinds of students from varied disciplines in the school and saw how they were truly resourceful and helpful to one another.

jeff, photographer

we liked the campaign. here are a few examples of the work below:

pippa sent me this video. it is so rad.

last night together: a toast.

 

the last night we gathered in john's apartment and each went around and said something meaningful about how this experience (and one another) affected us.  it's amazing that we are so close.  that's one thing about miami ad school, as much as you gain the fundamentals of planning, you make a family and connections (both personal and professional) you'll keep for a lifetime. 

something i miss about miami. the yellow sauce. i haven't a clue what it is, but fried yuca never tasted so good. 

agency exposure extravaganza 2k8

in total, we visited 10 agencies: pHD, Lowe, Draftfcb, TBWA/Chiat/Day, BBDO, Euro RSCG, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, Y&R, Deutsch and Wieden + Kennedy. 

the planning departments had wildly different attitudes and styles, which i think made us all get really introspective and think, "what will really benefit me in my first planning role?" 

for some of us it's the planning role in the agency, the philosophy. for some of us it's the label, is it a badge agency that will set me up for a hot career? for some of us it's having a hands-on mentor that will guide and bring us up in the department. for some of us it's whatever we can get to start paying off these loans. 

but more than anything, i think that it allowed us to see how we could fit in somewhere. this is both good and bad: you want to feel as if you can craft yourself and your personality to any experience, be a well-adjusted individual who can overcome the toughest situation. but that is not always right or brave. it's a matter of feeling some kind of weird, metaphysical sense of well-being and belongingness to a department, a group of people, that you will both celebrate and suffer with for days, months, maybe years. and from what i've heard from my friends, there were a couple places we each thought could benefit our personalities and needs as juniors.

but regardless, we definitely looked the part: 

so maybe john and i don't really look the part here.

one bit of information from kate at tbwa: when interviewing for jobs, arrive a little too early. while waiting in the lobby, take note of the interaction amongst those passing in the hallway.  are they friendly? cold? interactive? can you sense a good energy from this place?

job search week 1

this is my first day of being truly unemployed. i can't rely on school anymore to occupy my time, but the past week has been great for meeting planners, seeing agencies and distinguishing the tone between planning departments.  i have a rundown of the week and will post all of this soon. (i need to get photos first- my camera broke. ugh.)

miami is a treasure chest

 
on lincoln road, a bin full of dolls' heads.

 
and other appendages.

 
gelato that is so pretty i almost hesitate to stuff my face with it.

get used to this chair

because you will be sweating in it like the rest of us did.  classes are structured so that 2 planners work with a creative team composed of an art director and copywriter, who then fully execute a campaign assigned the week prior.  that means:

research + creative brief + briefing + multiple creative executions fully rendered = about 5-6 days.  

each wednesday 40 of us met in this room and sat in these chairs to present our strategies and creative. it was a tremendous amount of fun, but intense with a healthy dose of friendly competition. everyone in my class was about helping each other out, collaborative thinking and praising others' work.  there was no covering notebooks if other teams walked by. 

a lead planner at y&r miami critiqued the planners' strategies each week while a creative director from another agency gave feedback to the creatives.  the pressure was on every week to deliver something different, wild yet relevant, pretty, well-done and most importantly, on strategy.  i called this class 'baptism by fire.' 

first observation: miami is colorful.

even the school.  i remember shuffling my way to the lobby of the Miami Ad School. i'm not typically a nervous person, but starting a program that would hopefully set me up for a career i wanted since i entered advertising, plus enduring the constant pinch of my left shoe (my left foot is bigger) which was purchased with private loan money (not responsible), plus meeting 19 other ambitious (presumably competitive) classmates made me anxious. 

but the lobby made me feel comfortable and it wasn't only the bright color palette. it was the showcase of student work playing on flatscreens on the wall, the casual bleacher seating in the center of the room with computer power outlets overhead, the multiple clocks that kept time for each Miami Ad campus around the globe and, most of all, the unleashed dog panting in the corner. the lobby was kind of like a nice, unassuming synopsis of the school: it breathes creativity, encourages social exchange, knows the importance of what's going on internationally and the place absolutely loves animals.