Thank you 72 and Sunny

Any opportunity to have our UONYC2018 group together in this giant city is special. Add in a beautiful Brooklyn patio and more Ducks and it is unforgettable. Just to show what the experience did for me, I want to share about what it led to! Me and some friends met an alum that had an art show to go to after. We tagged along, made a new friend, and went to an art show of skateboard photography that I probably wouldn’t have found myself at anywhere but New York. These are the kinds of events that people tell us we need to attend to get a new, unexpected look on things, and it did just that for us! 

Maddie Landers

5.10.18

maddielanders.com

Yesterday I visited two agencies and my expectations of how each would be were completely reversed. The first I wasn’t expecting to feel the sense of community that was actually present, and the second I was completely underwhelmed even though I expected it to blow me away. I have been getting so caught up in trying to find the perfect place for an internship/job and this trip has continued to show me that the places that look so shiny and incredible on paper, may not be the right fit in real life. I have really appreciated all the advice to really follow your gut instinct during these visits. Take note of how people interact with one another, also with how they speak to the students visiting. We are the next professionals in the industry and when some current professionals look at us and dismiss us because of our status as students, that may not be the right place to be. We will all soon join the workforce and will work hard to establish ourselves. When people at these agencies show they know how we feel at this stage and take time to help us find our paths, it means so much. Although exploring the city has been incredible, I am so lucky to have the insight into agency life so that when my time comes to work it won’t feel so overwhelming.
5/11/18
Raven

Wednesday’s Insight: You Will Kill Your Babies, and That’s Okay.

Don’t worry guys, it’s not what you think.

Just some striking words of wisdom from Saatchi & Saatchi that really stuck with me throughout the day. There have been so many lost ideas and scratched projects that I’ve dedicated so much time and energy to, and It’s never easy to let something you’ve put your blood sweat and tears into go. My work truly is my baby and my passion for the things I care about can make rejection totally devastating.

That being said, the loss of something great leaves room for something even greater and that’s the message Alex Braxton, a creative director at Saatchi wanted us to understand. Learn to find inspiration in your failures and let them push you to be better and bolder in not only your work but your life too.

Savannah Nucci / 5.10.18

Fact -> Observation -> Insight!

When I visited Rokkan on Wednesday I learned so many things about my specialty within advertising (while enjoying a great view of the city). Some of the amazing UO alumni that currently work at Rokkan talked to our group of student strategists and showed us their process for finding insights for a campaign creative brief. There are so many ways to find an insight, but I found this particular way very simple and straightforward. To find an insight you need to look at four areas surrounding the client/product you are working with. You need to look at culture, category, consumer, and company. Starting with culture, you are looking for a macro-level force that shapes people’s lives. The next area you research is the category, you must know the other key players that shape this category. The consumer is a very important area of research that helps you find your insights - you need to create a human profile and know what the persona looks like and what attitudes and beliefs this consumer has. One of the last areas you need to look at is company, you must know what your client/brand is doing to make itself stick out compared to everyone else around them. Once you look at these four areas you will be able to see if anything sticks out and makes the client more relevant in the world and then form an insight for the campaign. It was so helpful to hear what real agencies do to form their briefs and I think I will try and use these steps to find insights in the future!

Casey Kromer
May 11, 2018

Ambiguously Skilled

Hands down, Radical Media was my favorite visit of the week. I had a great appreciation for their structure: a production house with a hand in the creative decision-making process, whose content is limited by… pretty much nothing. Although it was a cool studio in itself, a conversation with a resident “Creative Technologist” really got me thinking about myself as a creative in the industry and where I might fit in.

Kelly Vigil explained how he ended up at Radical Media, after he and a partner submitted a video to the studio that they had created. He described himself as a person with “ambiguous skills,” which weren’t able to fit into a single category of expertise. At Radical Media, this allows Kelly to conceptualize an idea using the variety of skills he has, and later be able to “talk shop” to the professionals who can reproduce the work at a final, refined quality. After hearing him talk about his experience, I found myself relating to being “ambiguously skilled,” as a result of my personal enjoyment in trying my hand at a variety of tools rather than honing in on a single one.

Although having a focus in a particular area of expertise is definitely one way that many creatives have found success in the advertising industry, it was exciting to hear from someone who has found their way despite being “ambiguously skilled” as well.

Haley Koch // From 5/11/2018

losing and regaining focus

The other day I was getting coffee with one of the amazing women from Flock and I took the opportunity to delve into a topic that has often been on my mind during the past few years as I’ve waded deeper into the advertising program. In our beautiful little pocket of the ad industry in Allen Hall, it’s easy to get swept up in the sparkling ideas of brand responsibility, authenticity, courageousness, commitment to social good, etc. Our program is so unique in how we focus on these concepts and all of them resonate deeply with me; they are a huge part of the reason why I feel so passionate about this career path and what we all do. I want to make brands better and work for agencies that do good, innovative, responsible work. But I’m often reminded of the negative aspects of advertising, i.e. the vast majority of it that somehow feels both empty and filled with ulterior motives.

I asked Amelea how she balanced wanting to make brands more responsible with the reality of sometimes having to work with companies that don’t care about that and how to keep being inspired when your work might not feel as fulfilling as you want. She agreed that it’s hard and can be tough to navigate, but said something that has definitely stuck with me for the last few days: sometime’s it’s not about working with brands that already are responsible, but trying your best to subtly push them in a better direction. That makes a lot of sense, right? Everything has room for improvement and there have to be people willing to put in the effort to help others improve.

I was reminded of this idea this morning at BBDO when Lily and Patrick were discussing their respective work with GE and Bacardi. Those are two brands that wouldn’t immediately pop into my head if someone asked me to name a company I see as responsible and charitable. But learning about how these two UO alums got to help GE expand their efforts of getting more women into STEM and assist Bacardi in giving Caribbean musicians the chance to bring their dreams to fruition reminded me that we are here to help guide brands in the right direction. If they were already perfectly authentic and generous, or always precisely culturally sensitive and aware, our jobs would be in jeopardy.

It was a good reminder that sometimes you might momentarily lose sight of why you’re doing this, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. It just takes a creative, generous peer to help you find it again.

Adriane Hershey / 5.10.18

You Can Go Your Own Way

I get stuck in what it should be, what it should look like. I obsess over other peoples’ path and how I can replicate their success. But even those people I look up to know that is no way to live.

The most important thing I learned on this trip is that it will happen when it will happen and will happen how it will happen. Some of the incredibly talented and inspiring people I got the honor of speaking with all had different paths to get where they are. They all got to where they are by being themselves and staying vigilant. Success may not be instantaneous, but the journey is none the less still beautiful.

-Brendon Maier 5/10/18

An Unpopular Opinion

If there is one thing I’ve learned from being a writer, it is that words are powerful. Very. Powerful. And recently I keep hearing the same words over and over again: advertising creates culture.

Hearing this genuinely made me feel uncomfortable, yet at first, I couldn’t wrap my head around the reason behind why. It seriously took me days to figure it out. But I finally realized why I was upset over this simple phrase. Because just as simple as the phrase was, so was the reason it made me so hot-headed: that phrase is blissfully ignorant.

So, with that being said, here’s my unpopular opinion:

Advertising doesn’t create culture. Advertising adapts to culture. Maybe, when done well, we could say that it influences it. But before my fellow advertising die-hards tune out, hear me out first:

What would strategy be if it wasn’t looking for the insight in culture that already exists? The culture is already there. Created by the people. From history–deeply rooted history–that evolved over a long period of time.

Think of it this way: Culture is the book.

But let’s back up and find out what culture is. It is the accumulation of mindsets and ideas and physical representation of its people. I believe it is naïve, even pretentious, to say that advertising creates culture as a whole. Simply, mindfully, because it doesn’t.

Pop culture, however, is different. Pop culture, by definition, is “transmitted via mass media and aimed particularly at younger people.” Now THAT sounds more familiar. Pop culture is a few of the pages that go into the larger book we’ve previously referred to as “culture.” So here’s what Advertising can do: advertising can influence and even create pop culture. Some might argue that, other than selling products and services, this is exactly what advertising is for. 

So, let’s regain our credibility here.

Advertising does have the power to influence, and even create, pop culture. But the roots of culture… in its purest sense… in the deep history of a people or place from its long past… I just can’t, with good conscious, claim to say that my future television commercial will have an effect on that. It’s not our place to make that claim. And look, it’s not about staying in our lane–it’s about recognizing that some things are plainly bigger than us. Let us let go of the ego that says this isn’t true.

We can be the BEST, the GREATEST, the FINEST, at creating pop culture. But it is a disrespect to history to say that we create culture as a whole. It is a disrespect to the real people that created and formed and developed the roots of culture over a very long period of time. It’s even a disrespect to ourselves.

We can make this world better through what we do, our creativity, our optimism, our endless hours of working to make something that truly resonates with the people we are trying to reach, but this thing has to be done one page at a time. We can’t write the whole book in one sitting unless we don’t care about the content. 

So let’s be thoughtful enough to step outside ourselves and not let the natural (or unnatural, actually) inclination to be egotistical creatives overcome us. And let’s start with this: 

Think before we speak. Adapt to culture. Be open minded and learn enough about culture to create a trend. From this, create pop culture. Create it well. Be proud of that. Because, damn, in the scheme of things, it is most definitely something to be proud of. 

Talia Bootz