Million Dollar Idea… Literally

What would you do if you were given one million dollars to spend in four days? Would you pay off student loans? Buy a house? Take a vacation? Be the responsible adult and invest it in a 401K to enjoy a lavish life later?
That was the question my team and I had to answer five weeks ago when given a creative brief from Kevin Tuerff in New York City.
To the average American, one million dollars seems like a lot of money to spend. When you’re in advertising, one million dollars can seem pretty small for a national campaign when you’re accustomed to working with major brands like Nike or McDonald’s. 
Thankfully, I am not used to “Super Sized” budgets. 
I’m a girl from middle-class Bend, Oregon. Among the many talents I have inherited from my beautiful mother, I am most thankful to have gained her thriftiness—especially over these last four weeks. 
Within 48 hours of receiving the brief, I knew that our campaign had to rely heavily on good strategy and less on flashy technology. 
This prompt was exposing my raw skills as a strategist. Whether or not we got to pitch to Kevin Tuerff in New York relied on my ability to find the human truth that brought the pieces of this prompt together, and find the means to make it happen.
Small budgets aren’t intimidating. They’re just little men in green suits challenging you to be more creative with your thinking. 
Four weeks of researching, eight hours of number-crunching, and one day of creating later, I am proud to say that our team not only developed a pitch that excited our professors, we were over $25,000 under budget—that’s including an insurance amount within the budget to cover any unexpected costs. 
We get to pitch to Kevin Tuerff in New York City and I couldn’t be more excited.
I have never been more energized about an idea in my (albeit, short) career. And to top it all off, I owe most of it to being raised by a strong, frugal woman. 
Thanks, Mom. 


-Emily Garcia, Strategist
5.4.2017