Anomaly - where to start. NYC’s top creative shop IMHO locks down five floors of creative-inspiration space in SoHo, Manhattan, and their work is equally as impressive. Never have I felt more excited and simultaneously challenged by the prospect of one day working at Anomaly. Their work, from the Budweiser immigrant anthem to “This Season On Baseball,” Anomaly makes the spots that make us stop and pay attention amidst the buzz of everything else on TV that just isn’t as good. The fact that they can pump out multi-pronged campaigns that take the industry by storm and create a revolutionary chapstick product that removes “stick” from the equation (for EOS) demonstrates the full range of their firepower.

The best part of our visit from my perspective as a writer was learning from Kyle, a writer and UO grad now working on Carhartt and Sonos, among others. In the anthem spot “Wake Up the Silent Home” he wrote for Sonos, he showed us how the idea of killing/eliminating silence with music enhances all aspects of life, and how this idea, that was initially supported by a MANIFESTO, turned into a full campaign with multiple iterations of the spot (full, 30, 15) complete with OOH and social. To top it off, Kyle’s sense of self-deprecating humor brought his shining work down to a very digestible and human level.

- Cameron Kokes