Ad agencies reach out to the under world.

This is an ad for Mini Cooper believe it or not. They teamed up with KR a graffiti artist to create this. They really did a cool job with it using the lines of the Cooper with the lines of the fresh paint. It is becoming more and more evident that major organizations are turning to these underground artist to sell their products (Nike, Addidas and so on). They are using them because they are different and create an edge to the product that they are trying to sell. Some people see this as selling out, but it is just creating a larger audience for what they do. And one thing that everyone learns eventually that a starving artist is usually not very good.

This is why I do what I do.

This is an example why I want to be in advertising. This ad is long not a conventual ad that you would see on TV but it is still great. It keeps you interested from start to finish. It informs people that don't know anything about the brand to know the brand. They have a well know Scottish actor to do the voice and to be in it. He is in one of my favorite movies Trainspotting. I want to write something like this really bad. I will have my time and I will do it.

People turn down free beer.

When you hear "Free beer and food," you would think people would come running wouldn't you? I thought so too. I mean that is what I did when I heard it. I made a B-line straight to the party.
I went to the Optimus party in Downtown Chicago. It is a production house that throws a huge party every year. It is where they invite all the ad agencies around and they just supply everything.
But when I tried to get some of my friends to come saying hey there is free beer and food here they didnt want to come. I told them not to worry about it and that they should come anyways. But they didnt. So that is why I writing this post because I never thought in a million years that people would deny free beer. I mean when you give anything out for free people come, but if you give beer out I always thought people would break down the door. I was wrong. I really couldnt believe it.
Ask yourself would you go for free beer and be in a huge party or would you back out?

Cool new ad.

This is why I want to be in the biz. I want to make cool stuff like this. I know I know you are probably saying but aren't you a writer, this is all visual. Yeah I know but a script was written for that. Everything detailed out before anyone started to shoot it. You don't just go into a shoot with an idea in your head, it has to be refined to the essentials then it is ready for production. Sometimes even the best scripts don't make it, because the client doesn't see eye to eye with it.

I am so ready to go to Chicago.

Hurry up put me on a plane and lets go. Ever since I heard from the Miami Ad School that I was going to go to Energy BBDO in Chicago I have been really antsy. I spend at least three or four of my waking hours thinking about the agency. Will I like it? What clients will I work on?

I have to block these thoughts out because it affects my work. But that is easier said then done. I am so excited I just cant hide it, I want to go, I want to go right now.

I dont know if Chicago is the city for me but I think Energy is.

Idea's are like poop it comes when it wants too.

Idea's are something that can't be rushed or unthoughtout. You work on them and work on them until they finaly peak their ugly head out of the hole they come from. Sometimes it takes hours others it takes days and weeks. You never really know. Keeping your mind right is very important for your ideas, for me I have realized I need to do other things to keep me busy and that makes my ideas better. I dont know what it is but when I play video games I sit with a pad of paper and write all my ideas that come to my head about a client. When I am done I look back over my list and pick my favorite things out of it.

Here at CP+B ideas are at a premium. I think it is because of the competition or that altitude. I think it is the altitude because you get less oxygen to the brain making you think of funny little things. It has been working for me, I feel my ideas here have been really really good for some reason, I just need to execute them.

Some say that the big idea is always the hardest thing to come up with, and for me they are right and wrong. Yeah it takes a lot of time to come up with that one amazing idea that will be killer to all that look at it, but the execution has to say your idea simply. Because if it doesnt your idea will become lost. I usually have to come up with about 100 or so executions just to make the idea good.

I have learned a lot since I have been here and I hope to learn a lot more. Right now CP+B is on the top of my list to get hired at.

My choice.

I finally have choices. I can either take the greenhouse internship at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder with the school, or I could continue bothering the people that I contacted for my internship. I hope my luck continues so I can have a pleathra of choices to choose from.

I have something pulling me to Chicago so I will try with the internships there, but you never know. I have a feeling I might be in trouble when I call my lovely girlfriend tonight but that's ok it wont be the first nor the last time I am in trouble, unless she hunts me down.

Cover letter complete

This morning at like 6am I finally finished a really good cover letter.  Or at least I think it is good.  I am trying to apply for an internship outside of the school.  It took me a while to write it because I got distracted by the magic picture box that is in my room.  But once I turned that damn thing off I was kind of stumped, I had never written a cover letter before.  Thank God for google I found some examples and based it off of that.  It took me a while to figure what I needed to write about myself but I think I did a good job of it.  Hopefully this will get my foot in the door.  Now I just have to write to another contact very carefully, Joy.

I am finally getting off my hump.

Today I have been doing something that I should have done a long time ago. Apply for internships outside of Miami Ad School. I am looking for an internship in Chicago, because that would make the girlfriend happy. I will be up really late tonight writing letters to the people that I need to contact and sending them in so my email would be the first one to pop up when they open their mail the next day. I don't know what kind of opening letter I should write I don't think I have ever written one before but I will give it a shot.

Right now I am only going to apply to five but tomorrow I will apply for more. I hope I can go to Chicago so I can get my girlfriend off of my back.

Bulleit Bourbon

Today I was given an interesting assignment advertise for Bulleit Bourbon.  Being a brown liquor fan that I am(especially Bourbon), I figured that this is a good excuse to toss a few back.  I would do it anyways but when it comes to research I am very thorough in my investigations.

This Bourbon has a really interesting story, just waiting for someone to tell it.  It all started back in the 1830's when a tavern keeper in Kentucky named Augustus Bulleit set out to create a unique flavor of Bourbon.  While transporting barrels of his bourbon from Kentucky to New Orleans in 1859, Augustus vanished.  He could have been robbed, killed, or even abducted by aliens, who knows, no one ever heard from him again.  No one in the family picked up his torch to continue making the family bourbon.  The recipe sat and sat waiting for the day that it could see light again.  

In 1987 Augustus' great great grandson stepped in to revive the recipe.  Tom Bulleit gave up being a lawyer to continued the almost forgotten family tradition.  

As for the taste, I don't know yet, I still need to try it.  But to me it is a interesting story non the less.  I give Tom a lot of credit to pursue his dreams, it shows that the American dream isn't dead.

I hope to have another post rating it by the end of the week.

The Adobe Project

This was for a class assignment, we couldn't use our computers so we made it by hand.

Not knowing where I am going is always fun.

After going to the Miami Ad School for a year you are allowed to travel and take greenhouses, internships or even classes all around the world.  

The greenhouses are classes that are in an agency.  They can give you live briefs but not that many, you do have teachers in the agency to give classes.  They are a great opportunity to work on your book and learn in an agency atmosphere.  The only problem with the greenhouses is that there are not very much of them, so sometimes they can be very hard to find a good one.   It doesnt help that after every quarter one more agency drops it.

Luckily there are more internships to apply to, except they have good agencies and bad ones.  The good ones everyone seems to apply to.  The bad ones accept you right away because they may not see anymore books.  You can learn from both it is just with the better ones you learn more.  The worst part about the internships is that they take for ever to tell you that they want you.  They make people want to jump out of buildings because they can not take the waiting.

Classes are boring, it is what you have do for the first year.  Why keep going, I just don't know.  The other two you put on your resume which make them cool.  Classes are fine, I will probably do that my final quarter, hopefully at the San Francisco school.  

One of the big problems right now is some of the biggest agencies are pulling out. They didn't pull out at the beginning of the quarter but very close to the end.  This is leaving people like me, stuck without a place to go at the moment.  My first choice DDB Chicago pulled out last week.  Five weeks after I applied, so I sat in NY with a thumb up my butt because I thought I was going to go there.  I haven't heard a peep about my second (Draftfcb, Chicago) or my third (Saatchi NY).  But I am holding on to these moments as they pass.  I know I will go somewhere, I just don't know where. 

Working on my book

For the past year I have been working on my book.  I have been going to the Miami Ad School for help creating the best book I can.  Here at the school advertising is life.  My book has come a long way since I started and I still have a little way to go before I am really comfortable with showing it to get a job.  I am trying to add something every quarter that is worth while in my book.  Hopefully I will have enough to get a job at where I want. 

Idea stealers

One thing the advertising industry hates, are idea stealers.  People who take ideas and claim it as your own.  Sometimes it just happens but other times people steal ideas because they cant come up with anything themselves.  These people always get caught because the ad community will call you out as soon as they can.  

Since I have been at the Miami Ad School I have never had anyone steal my idea, that was until now.  My group had an idea for the history channel and now I have learned that another group has taken it and called it theirs.  The exact same IDEA written in the same way.  They stole it because when they originally presented it they had nothing even close to it.  I just cant believe it, they are spending the money to go here and they are stealing ideas.  Maybe I should be happy that it was my groups idea to begin with, and they say imitation is the best form of flattery.  I think it is complete bullshit.  It has me questioning them all together, they never show up to class with marker comps or anything finished for the class, they make them in class and they always go last.  In fact they have had ideas that are similar to other groups before as well.  But it's hard to say when they never have anything set on a page when they show up in class and they are the last to present that makes you wonder, are they taking ideas that the teachers spew out from other peoples ideas or what? 

I didnt get into this industry to copy people

The advertising industry is about finding what is new and taking it to the new level.  New ideas are not easy to come up with because so much has already been done before.  But that is what separates the good from the bad.  The good always finds a way to keep things interesting and fresh.  While the others try to recycle old tired ideas that have been used for a long time.  I have seen this in Ad School and in many different ads.  I will even admit that I have thought that way sometimes, and I have made sure that they are not in my book.

To get out of this rut you have to take yourself from the situation and think; what is different about this, what sets it apart, what do people don't already know, how can I say it in an interesting way?  These questions are very important to ask yourself while you are thinking of strategies and executions.

Have any suggestions?

My AD and I are working on a product for fresh direct, a online grocery delivery service in NY.  We have a couple strategies that we are working off of:

1  Food at the super market is older then you think.

2 48 hours is better then waiting 7 days.

3  Different Climate rooms for different food.

If you have any suggestions on what to do with that let me know.

This is what I do.

I have had people ask me, what is an advertising copywriter?  So I thought it would be important to tell you what I do.

First of all Copywriters are the ones who write all of the ads you see.  We write everything from scripts for commercials to pamphlets and everything inbetween.  We are "writing machines."  Getting into the mind of the many is a difficult job.  

We have the privilege of coming up with the idea for the ad.  What it is going to say how is it going to say it and so on.  But for this task we are not alone, we have Art Directors as our partners to help us come up with the idea.  

Working in groups with an Art Director can be very frustrating at times, but also very rewarding.  People can work together for years, while other groups split and go their own way.  It would be great to have a partner, but it is also great having the chance to work with anyone.

My typical day as a copywriter consists of looking at the internet, writing, watching videos on youtube, writing, playing some wii, writing and just for the hell of it writing some more.

This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.  I love my job period