31 July 2009

Yay/Boo: WHO DOES THAT?!



This is a billboard I saw on my way to work this morning. It's on the Fourth St exit of the 80 Freeway in San Francisco.

Yay: Good Placement, this is a long red light allowing ample time for everyone to see it.

Boo: I get that the left side is SUPPOSED to be a close up of the bottle's label, but it is too close and thus making it look like a split screen.

Boo: Using Mary Kate typeface for your headline. WHY would you add ANOTHER typeface to this billboard?

Boo: Headline . . .

. . . and the Boos have it.

30 July 2009

Jr. Creative Advice: Grab Yur Pardner Dosey Doe


this is Krystha (left) and me (right) our first semester of grad school.

Today's advice is more for the rockstar adgrads still in portfolio. Get yo self a pardner. If you're an AD find a CW, if you're a CW find an AD. Find someone you really mesh well with and don't mind being around for 36 hours straight. Work with them relentlessly. Build a team book and really sell yourself as one cohesive unit.

In grad school I teamed with a lot of different copywriters. At the end of portfolio 3 I was looking for a new copywriter. Krystha had done some good writing and I wanted to work with her. So I asked . . . asked again . . . and again. She put off giving me an answer for about 3 weeks. Then she tells me that she is working with someone else. Alright fine, so I start to work on a campaign by myself. Then a couple days later she comes to me and says that the girl she was supposed to work with was working with someone else. Come to find out she was intimidated to work with me . . . .

We hammered out the two campaigns in two days. These were the only campaigns that needed a little to no tweaking at all and you guys know how long it usually takes to get something approved by Matt, Maria or Sean.

As we left grad school, Krystha already had an internship in New York (lame, jk), and I went straight to LA. Three months later she moves to Dallas for another internship . . . I wasn't so happy but I figured that at least she was slowly moving west. I was right, finally after NY and Dallas, Krystha finally decided to come to Cali and try to sell ourselves as a team. First try, we got hired.

Our current bosses sold themselves as a team when the concept was unheard of, but they have been together for 19 years so it seems to work out well.

I came across this funny posting of two creatives who currently work at W+K talking about how people react when you are talking about your creative partner.

23 July 2009

Jr. Creative Advice: Don't Limit Yourself



KB and I graduated graduate school in May of '08 (Hook 'Em) and I moved to L.A. and did some freelance while KB did a couple internships in NYC and Dallas. Fast forward to December '08, still no agency prospects on the horizons, the economy is slow and I am still trying to get KB to move to L.A., and it's not really working.

Fast forward to January '08, I drove back to L.A. from PHX and got home at about 2 am. I was exhausted from driving but I decided to check craigslist for jobs before I went to bed. I found a posting saying an agency in S.F. was holding an open house in hopes of hiring a team. I got on the phone, facebook, myspace, twitter . . . and any other social network I could think of at 3 am and left KB a message telling her she needed to meet me in S.F. in 24 hours (she was in TX).

The next morning KB calls me and is like there is no way I can get on a plane and get there in time, so we start to think about her just sending her book and I could put her picture in a frame and set it on the desk during the interview. Anyway, we get off the phone and about an hour later she calls me back, she found a round trip ticket for $250 and would meet me there. SWEET!

KB packed and drove to Austin that night and flew out at 5 am the next morning (shoutout to MJ for taking my CW to the airport!)

We were nervous, excited and didn't really know what to expect. The postings went up 24 hours before the review and Agency Spy even said how bad the PR was for the review. So anyway, we get there and the place is PACKED as you can see from the video. There were over 300 people there and there was this short little asian lady shouting instructions on how to line up and other details.

KB and I got to interview as a team, and met with the ECD for a good 10 minutes which was way longer than a lot of other people were meeting with the CDs for. After our interview we felt good, they liked our work and we liked them.

After the shindig with the review KB decided to move to L.A. and even if we didn't get the job, we could search for jobs in L.A. as a team. Two weeks to the day, we got a call from the short little asian lady and she wanted us to come back up for another interview. Of course we would go.

I went downstairs to the gym and KB was riding the bike. I said, "So guess what we are doing Friday?!" She didn't know . . . and before I could finish saying going to S.F., she had jumped off the bike and was hugging me and jumping up and down with her schweaty self.

We went back up to S.F. interviewed again and we knew this was a place we wanted to be. We figured that we would have to sweat it out and we might get a call the next week, but we ended up getting a call within 30 minutes of interviewing with an offer for the job.

We accepted Friday and started Tuesday. It took me a month of weekends to get all my stuff from L.A. to S.F. It was a crazy experience and S.F. wasn't a place either of us had planned on moving to, but we have been here now for about six months.

Soo . . . the moral of the story is don't limit yourself. Be open to anything, it not only raises your possibilities of finding a job, it makes life more exciting.

09 July 2009

Virgin U?

Virgin U huh? interesting.

Jr. Creative Advice: Invest in a Mini Fridge



You're going to have long nights and because pencils aren't a nutritious source of anything, you should buy a mini fridge and stick it in your advertising playpen. I found mine on Craigslist (no the stickers weren't included) for $50. Holla.

06 July 2009

Yay/Boo: Would You Hire Her?

There's a post on Phoenix Ad Blog where an intern writes about her horrible experience interning at an ad agency "which will remain nameless". I am from Phoenix and went to AZ State for GD, anyone who falls into either one of those categories knows the agency with the basketball court & free beer. Way to go Moses you are famous for something.

The internship is unpaid and and that blows because I think internships should be paid at least minimum wage. Intern should have known this before taking the position, Moses has never paid their interns and probably never will because they can get away with it.
>> Boo Intern for not doing your homework
>> Boo Moses for not paying your interns.

The basketball court & free beer is definitely a bonus, we only get free pop & fruit at my agency, but as this is the real world and there is a recession/depression going on. Businesses and people are trying to keep their head above water and food on their table. Maybe Intern should read AgencySpy and realize how many people are getting laid off.
>> Boo intern for being naive to what is going on in the world today.
>> Yay Moses for even having a basketball court and free beer.

Organizing pens by color, moving binders, and running errands suck, but is part of being an intern. It's what makes helping out in the concepting and production phase that much more exciting. The projections you complain about come with proving the work has worked, the scripts you had to re-type give you the ability to see how scripts are written and how you should write them in the future. A lot of interns, even juniors for that matter never see a photo shoot until their second year in the business, you should feel lucky that you got to experience it.
>> Boo intern for bitching, everyone now knows you aren't a team player and you will get picked last for kickball.
>> Yay Moses for being OCD organized.

Intern you are not the only one who has interned . . . everyone does it. It's a right of passage, a shitty one none the less, but still a right of passage. Once you get hired, being a junior is better than being an intern but you still do the projects the seniors don't want to do, you still have to work your ass off, stay late, work weekends, and do whatever it takes to get where you want in this industry. Nothing in life is given to you, and nothing is truer than that in this industry. You made a three month commitment in which you couldn't follow through on. Boo to you.

I do love the fact that intern is gung-ho about creating competition for Moses, they need it, it will only make them a better shop. The only thing is, Intern will have to get her own interns to organize her pens by color because everyone knows she won't do it.

Read the entire letter below that was submitted to the Phoenix Ad Blog:

This open letter was submitted by Jenavi Kasper, who recently resigned as an intern at one of the large local ad agencies:

Dear Local Advertising Agency Named After the Founders,

Well, it’s been one heck of a time interning over at your super-cool office. The Friday in-house happy hour was a great touch. When I landed the internship at your place I was excited. Working downtown in a hip office, getting some experience in the industry and the free beer is what lured me in. It sounded like a dream! And I have to say, when I told people where I was interning they were pretty impressed.

But you guys dropped the ball (figuratively of course). Come to think of it, while I was there I never did see anyone start the pick-up game of basketball I was expecting to break out at any moment–but maybe I was tainted by the YouTube video. (What good is the basketball hoop in the office if nobody uses it?)

I would be crazy to leave, right? Even if it was an unpaid internship it’s still a resumè builder. But, if you can believe it, I left this experience disappointed.

Maybe that’s my fault. I had unrealistic expectations. I thought that interning would allow me to use my brain and maybe, just maybe, apply some of what I spent four years learning. But you proved me wrong. You have snatched my naiveté like a pillowcase filled with candy on Halloween.

The funny thing is, I didn’t get it right away. When you assigned me to organize the pens by color on my first day I didn’t worry much about it. When you asked me to drop off DVDs to your client’s office, I didn’t think twice (though I wasn’t paid for gas). I didn’t even mind when you asked me to help you move binders out of your office.

But it started to get old fast. When “helping with projections” meant reading you numbers off a spreadsheet I became a little discouraged. When “working with scripts” meant retyping scripts I was bummed. It was especially painful when I spent all morning cleaning out an office for the new girl while you guys took off to Starbucks.

It wasn’t all bad. You did let me go to that commercial shoot, which was fun, and it was great to be able to sit in on a couple of meetings. But there are some things you should keep in mind before you bring in my replacement:

Remember, we are ADVERTISING students. That stuff you do for your clients to get the word out, the get the brand promise out to the target audience, we know how to do that too. We also know those Jedi mind tricks.

We want to learn as much about the business as possible and if you can’t provide that training we will find someplace else that will. That place might be your competition.

Or heck, we’ll freelance and become your competition.

So be careful. You don’t want to end up being called out on a blog, do you?

Yours Truly,
The Intern

If you’re looking for someone capable of something a bit more subtle than sorting pens, you can reach Jenavi on Facebook and Twitter, or by e-mail at jenavikasper@yahoo.com.