Here are the top five of the many things I learned

1. Just because it’s a big agency doesn’t mean you can make great work. My visit to BBDO really changed the way I viewed big non-independent agencies. I know that sometimes when agencies get big the can lose their personality, but BBDO is good at change. While I was there, the feeling I got wasn’t completely different from the smaller agencies I visited. I can see myself there one day.

2. Account managers are creative thinkers too. To me, it feels that account managers tend to be seen as the non-creative people who always dress business casual, but after the visits, I really got to see what their job is about. One of my goals this trip was to learn more about other areas in advertising. I personally don’t want to become an account manager, but I learned so much about what they do. I learned that no matter how good the creative is, the account manager needs to defend it, and sometimes they need to get creative to defend that work. If I can sum up what they do, it is that they keep both agency and client in check. They’re the ally everyone needs.

3. Collaboration outside your comfort zone is important. After being in Translation, I saw how important it is to collaborate with colleagues that aren’t even on the same project or client. In Translation, they were all so close. It seemed like they were on the same team working on the same client, but they all worked on different things. Though, Translation has created an environment that everybody is on the same team, no matter what they are working. I really appreciate that they let us see that.

4. Get outside the office. This idea of getting outside the office is something I kind of thought would be a theme. Inspiration comes from outside the office, or like Matt McDonald from BBDO said, outside of midtown. By having a hobby, or something we do outside advertising, can help us brig something different to the table. At Translation they called it majors and minors. A major is your job, and a minor is your side hustle/hobby. Everyone who had their own thing outside work told us how it was incorporated into their work in ad. Joel’s knowledge on Hip-Hop helped him in Translation. Nick’s screenwriting and reading helped him write for Clash of Clans at Barton F. Graf. It’s easier to get an idea outside our head when we’re not stuck in it.

5. You won’t know until you try it. In advertising no one can really say how a campaign will perform. We can say what’s good and what’s not, but in the end it really depends on the audience. Though, the process of good work starts off by saying a good idea out loud (with a solid argument to back it up of course). The Grand Central Station GE project BBDO did might have seen impossible to do because something like that was never done before. They did it though. It was an idea that was suggested, even though it could have easily been impossible to do. It goes to show that if you don’t say anything because you’re afraid of a no, then a great idea might not happen.

Luis Sevilla | 5/13/18