“I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Umbrella”

I arrived to NYC yesterday afternoon at about 3pmEST. After transcending my mother’s strong advice of just taking an UBER from JFK to my uncle’s place in Brooklyn, I decided I wanted to get right into it and took the Airtrain from JFK to Howard Beach. There it met up with the A-Train of the Metro and it was a straight shot to Brooklyn-Easy enough. .

Right now, it’s only about 6:30AM, my Uncle who’s a PA at a clinic in Manhattan just left for work and as he left he saw that I was up. He proceeded to grab an umbrella and say “it’s supposed to rain today, I’m giving you this umbrella-just in case.” I laughed (being the Oregonian I am) and said “I’m good, Werner, I brought my rain coat.”

Anyways, on to the good stuff for today’s agenda cause I am way stoked. At 10am, I’m meeting with member of the Radical Media team. I’m already a big admirer of the work that they’ve put out across a variety of different forms that stretch beyond simply advertising. However, after doing some very extensive research on my plane ride (most productive place to get things done) I realized this member has a pretty dang interesting career path.

He began his career working at Nike (through which we became acquainted) in the ‘90s, working as both the Ad Director at Nike Europe, than also later in the US. One of the main pieces he’s known for during his time there is the “Tag” spot (found here–> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h76w0BkfGuY). I also came to find out that, in 1999, he played a vital role in consolidating Nike’s advertising partnerships down to one primary partner, Wieden + Kennedy (as many of us are aware of).

After his tenure at Nike, he took a bit of a hiatus before diving back into the advertising industry to help bring to life Mother’s inception of their NYC offices in 2003. One random notable piece of work he helped work on was with Dell and their many new casing-design offerings for their laptops, which included patterns created by Mother designers and work from up-and-coming artists. Following his time at Mother and before joining the Radical Media Team, he again took a bit of a hiatus from AD. During that break, in 2012, he and a longtime friend & restaurateur decided to open their own restaurant here in town, called ‘Sauce’ (anyone want to check it out with me?).

I am beyond pumped to get the opportunity to get to chat with someone who has had such a non-linear career within advertising and hear what his thoughts were when he was our age, graduating college and diving into the industry.

Also, to make today even more exciting, after this meeting I’m grabbing lunch with the infamous Kim Uong. Kim’s now working in strategy at AKQA and I’m looking forward to picking her brain on what her experience there and overall time in NYC has been like.

I know this is more than 200 words, but there’s a lot to write about this AM and I’m excited to report back after. This is gonna be a great week of learning and a great week of exploring one of the main heartbeat’s of the advertising industry.

-Noah Wilskey

***END OF DAY UPDATE-I decided at the last moment I wouldn’t let my Oregonian stubbornness to rain mess with me here so i took the umbrella… VERY glad I did. As 50 Cent says “when it rains it pours”. Today it certainly poured… ****