And so it goes

Sometimes life passes you by so quickly.
You blink and it’s gone. Nothing you can do about.
Lights flash and cars rush by, all yellow and black. No variety.
But the people, they vary. Diverse and cultured in more ways than one.
One minute French, then Spanglish, then some words from West African languages I can’t identify.
I love that I can’t identify. I’ve known so little for too long.
But now I know more.
I know there is more. I know I want more.
New York City, is more.

They say it’s the city that never sleeps,
but they lied.
The city sleeps in ways you wouldn’t imagine.
The darkness takes over and the quiet settles in.
And while the silence is short lived, it’s just long enough to know that there is serenity.

Ten days. Sixty-one students. Three professors. A formula for success.
But true success comes from understanding a sense of self and
where you fit in this maze of trash bags and skyscrapers.
Knowing you are one small cog in the infinite clock of NYC you’ll know exactly how to time it.
But then you’ll fail. Because success isn’t about timing,
it’s about dreaming.

I’m here, and I’m not leaving

Well, I’m in New York City and I must say I’m seriously in love. As many may know I visited NYC for the first time earlier this year; however, I was so busy with conferences and panels that I was unable to really explore the city. I’ve only been here since Sunday but in that short time I’ve been able to explore more than I ever imagined. I’ve walked through Times Square, eaten in Little Italy, strolled through Chelsea, counted rats in the subway tracks, and even visited a number of wonderfully diverse agencies. 

But one of my favorite things I’ve gotten to do thus far is tweet on behalf of the ONE Show’s 2012 Design Award Show. This was an amazing opportunity and was truly such a wonderful learning experience (not to mention inspiring). Everything from the building to the h’orderves to the people were designed to the the upmost degree. I loved it. During this event I also had the opportunity to talk to some amazing designers from the likes of  BBDO and Taxi (in Canada). I won’t tell you too much more because if you follow me on Twitter then you saw the huge Twitter-bomb we dropped at the end of the awards show. You can also see what we tweeted by searching #OSDawards. I’ve also created a mini photo collage of what I saw at cocktail hour and the award ceremony. Enjoy!

Ad Team: the good, the bad, the ugly

As many of you may know for the past nine months I’ve been involved in Ad Team. This is a group of thirteen media planners, strategists, writers, and art directors all working together on a brief from the American Advertising Federation (AAF). This year the client was Nissan, which at first was extremely exciting. Who wouldn’t want to advertise for a major car brand whose main thought is “Innovation…for all?” 

However, the brief was much more complex than expected. It asked us to build a marketing campaign geared towards multicultural millennials. This means they wanted us to advertise to specifically African American, Hispanic American, and Chinese Americans between the ages of 18 and 32 (give or take a few years). 

We felt that addressing those groups directly and in-language would be offensive to many multicultural Americans (like myself), so we did some research and found that multicultural millennials relate more based on interest than heritage or background. So we set out to do a campaign that attempted to unify Nissan with this bold group of young individuals, and here is the good/bad/ugly of these past nine months.

THE GOOD
 The biggest thing I learned throughout this process was actually about myself. After working in a group as dynamic and skillful as this year’s ad team I learned how I fit into a team setting. I learned how to stand up for my ideas, when to back down, and how to motivate people. People—that was definitely the best part of this all. Everyone I got to work with taught me so much and even though we got frustrated with each other in the end I learned so much from each and every one of them.

Another good part? We designed a campaign and book that was entirely kick-ass and even though we didn’t place first I honest-to-goodness wouldn’t change a single thing.

THE BAD
 Remember how I just said that sometimes we got frustrated with each other? Well, that was the worst part for me. When tensions ran high, they were HIGH. At times it got hard to separate the personal from the professional. It got especially difficult because as a headstrong creative director I wanted a campaign that was risky for all the right reasons, and at times people wanted to reign in the risk to play by the rules of the competition. And while in the midst of an argument it sometimes gets hard to see the other person’s point of view. But looking back I think we did a good job of balancing it all out. 

THE UGLY
 Okay, so the ultimate worst part of this whole experience? The fact that our score sheets came in today and we got low-balled in a MAJOR way by one of the judges. When we found out we lost in Boise I was sad, but I kind of expected that we wouldn’t place first (I mean we took major risks and we weren’t sure if they would pay off). But when I heard about our scores today and realized that we could have placed first if not for one score….I got frustrated. It’s a good thing I was driving when I found out because I was able to focus all my aggression on driving (not road rage people, just really focused good driving). 

I just find it unfair we can get scored so favorably by three judges and then have one judge score us so low that it knocks us from first place. To me, that seems unjust. That’s why you are supposed to throw out the outliers…to prevent fluke judgements. 

But it’s over now and I’m so proud of all we accomplished. If you want to see elements of the campaign or view our plan book feel free to visit my portfolio site. And if any of you are thinking of applying for ad team let me know, I’d love to talk more about this experience.

Is it really over?

As busy as this term has been you would think I’d enjoy a break from all the madness. But to be completely honest now that all the essays are written, projects turned in, books published, and pitches made Im incredibly sad. This has been a wonderful term full of great insights, lots of disagreements, and great teamwork and Im going to miss every moment.

One of the best things about this term has been all the people I’ve had the honor to meet and work with. This was especially true in ad team (I’ll write a whole blog post about this later) and in my digital production class. I’ll loved my digital production class simply because I was able to connect with so many wonderful student and professional minds. Even though it was only a three hour session once a week I couldn’t have been more excited to learn.

If you’ve been following my blog you know what I’ve been learning. But just to recap here are some of my favorite topics from the term:

• iteration is key
• user over customer
• simplicity is best
• and collaboration always produces better ideas. 

Even though this term is over Im going to carry these lessons from the digital world with me. So watch out for new digital ideas in my portfolio because they are coming and Im stoked!

HUGE (but really, it is)

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for awhile, but finals week and Ad Team completely consumed my life. But now that all of that craziness has subsided I am so excited to tell you all about the wonderful insights I learned from Aaron Shapiro last Friday. Aaron Shapiro is the CEO of Huge, a wonderful digital agency that has clients like JetBlue, BBC,  and Samsung. He also recently wrote a book called Users Not Consumers which focuses on the shift in the industry from a consumer centric market to a user centric market. If you haven’t read the book you definitely should, it provides great viewpoints on how the ad/digital industry is changing and how to keep up.

But my biggest take-away from the hour long Skype session with Aaron was that you can’t just apply digital tactics to a project simply because digital is the “it” thing. So often clients see the digital world as the next market to take-over and want to develop a presence just for the sake of being there. But what Aaron emphasizes is that you must be smart when entering the digital world. You must have purpose and it must work for your brand-user relationship. If your user demographic is never on Twitter, then don’t spend money on a giant Twitter campaign. But if your user-demographic loves online shopping then streamline the online shopping experience to be fun and friendly. 

I know it seems like common sense, but a lot of brands are trying to develop useless apps or pointless microsites. Not only is this annoying as a user but the worst part is these brands aren’t taking full advantage of what the digital world can offer. So many brands are just taking traditional print ad tactics and applying them to the digital world. And as Aaron says, that simply cannot work. The digital world is a unique place where users choose to experience brands in more intimate way. Brands need to recognize this and provide useful and genuine services. Companies that do this well are Amazon, Pepsi Co, and and CNN. 

Amazon works because it provides a convenient service that no one else can beat. Pepsi works because it’s Refresh project actually helped the community and got people involved. And CNN works because it takes advantage of platforms like Instagram and apps to provide up-to-date news reports in a convenient and user friendly way. 

Overall, I truly enjoyed listening to Aaron talk about how we can be more forward thinking. I can’t wait to apply some of these techniques to brands that I work on as a student and on my first “real” clients!