end of week 4

I am extremely distracted right now. For the life of me I can't concentrate on the design in front of me. I guess one of the things I'll have to get more used to when I'm working is having the discipline to concentrate on one thing for hours and hours at a time. The speed at which people work here is much faster than school. I feel like I'm starting to pick up my pace a bit which is great. At this point I can design a lot of decently tight comps in a variety of styles in one day. I also feel like my eye has developed massively and I think that I'm finally starting to come to a decision about wether I would like to be an art director or a copywriter. I'm definitely leaning towards art direction. As much as I enjoy writing headlines I really don't think I would have that much fun dealing with scripts.

This week has been pretty busy again and I've been super tired. I didn't do very much over the weekend but it was really nice just to relax and do nothing. On Sunday, though, I had to spend the whole day designing stuff for Shreddies and ended up staying up until 2 working on that. When I got in Monday morning I had to show what I designed to Ivan and he approved most of them and told me a couple of things to change and by the end of the day I sent it to the account person. I'm not really sure what's going on with all of that. I'm supposed to design desktop wallpaper to go along with the rest of the stuff that I made but I don't know what's going on with client approval from the first things that they saw. I guess I'll find out sooner or later but in the mean time I've been working on the desktop but is pretty hard to make a piece of cereal look interesting enough to want it for your desktop background. At some point during the day Noreel asked me to help him find images for the deck he was putting together for the Coke fountain project that I mentioned earlier so that consumed most of my Tuesday.

Tuesday ended up being a crazy day. Not at work but back at home. My dad took my uncle who has brain cancer to his doctor because he couldn't walk any more so they had to hospitalize him and in the midst of all that I got a IM from my cousin asking if my sister was ok. Turns out Ali was 2 blocks from our house when she hit a patch of ice, fish-tailed, hit the curb and flipped the car into somebody's yard. Thank god she is perfectly fine, just a little sore. The EMTs told her that wearing her seatbelt saved her life. She was stuck in the car upside down until the EMTs showed up and had to cut her out. They took her to the hospital and did all the routine tests and she just has a few bumps and bruises. As for the car... it's totaled. Oh, and did I mention who's car she was driving? Mine of course. Sooooo as of now I am carless. The insurance company is going to evaluate the damage tomorrow and see if can be saved, but let's face it, the thing flipped upside down, broke its windows, and had a hole cut into the side of it. So after hearing all that from my parents I was kinda shook up and done for the day so I went home around 8ish.

Yesterday when I got into work Bee asked me to help her with an emergency rush job for Cogeco because she was busy all day. It wasn't anything particularly interesting. Just a print ad for a trade magazine and convention but that ate up the whole day. I ended up staying until 11 working on it and then some of this morning. The rest of the day has been pretty laid back for the most part and today is the office's monthly Thirsty Thursday.

half way home

I can't believe that I am three weeks done with my internship. I only have two left. Time seems to go really quickly and slowly at work at the same time. I've been working really long hours but as usual there never seems to be enough time in the day. I think by the end of my time here I will be really sad to leave Ogilvy but so excited to go back to school, and my friends, and my boyfriend.

So last night I made some pretty crappy comps for Winners because I was so tired. This morning we had a meeting with Nancy for Nabob and we have a lot of changing to make on that, mostly because we didn't have any copy to work with. After that I spent the rest of the day working on Shreddies stuff. I had this massive and annoying Illustrator file to work with and it kept crashing constantly. By the end of the day I was ready to drop my computer down the atrium all 13 floors. grrrr. So I have to work on that this weekend. We have to send it to the client around 12ish on Mon. and Ivan (and probably Nancy) has to see it before then. We also found out today that our campaign for Crystal Light got approved by the client for testing. :) They said that it has the most "legs" and the biggest idea. It would be really nice if I could be here to see the whole thing through if it survives testing.

I left work today around 6 (finally a normal time) and went to Urban Outfitters with Cara. I splurged as a birthday present to myself and got a skirt and top. Tomorrow we might go to the "Distillery" which sounds to me like an Iron Hill type place. Canadians and their beer. As for right now I am SO looking forward to going to bed.

its a blessed miracle!

It's a miracle. I have 21st century speed internet at my relative's house. I finally picked up some wireless from one of the neighbors.  A nifty 4 bars and all. I really should be getting in bed butttt I've been meaning to update for awhile.

So, Tuesday was the inauguration. It was interesting to watch it in a foreign country (such a different culture in Canada haha). I swear they pay a lot more attention to American politics than Americans do. To the point where they don't know what's going on in their own country. Everyone stopped around 11:30 to go watch in the inauguration in one of the conference rooms. I'm sure it would have been a lot more exciting and emotional to watch it at home in a room full of Ameicans. As the resident American in the room I was asked a lot of questions about what I though of the whole thing and how it is to see how much our politics affect other countries. Its really true. You know the whole world was watching yet how many of us can even name the heads of Canada and Mexico let alone what forms of government they have? They were a little freaked out by the prayers and kept saying it was "so American to make such a big deal out of it and waste so much money." They were also laughing at the fact that the amount of people who went to DC just for the day was greater than the amount of people in Toronto.

After the inauguration it was back to work. We had to show our ideas to Nancy again around 5ish and she approved us to move forward with two of them. So for the rest of the night I did a lot of researching for facts and visuals styles. We left after 10.

Yesterday was the big crunch day. When we first got in Nancy told us that she was killing one of the ideas that we had been working on, which of course was the one that we had scripts written for. For most of the day we brainstormed for ambient media for our other surviving idea while Cara wrote up new scripts. At the end of the day all the there was a huge meeting with all the CD's and account heads and our idea was approved for presentation to the clients. They also chose the visual style of animation that I picked out for the commercial which is awesome because if it actually gets produced it means that I made one of the biggest art direction decisions for the spot. :) So by the time the meeting was over it was like 7 and we still had to polish scripts and make a storyboard that Nancy later said she didn't want to use. oy. All in all I got home by 1am.

This morning was the pitch, which I really wish I could have went to but I guess they can't have that many people there. It would be nice to get to see a pitch before I leave Ogilvy but they're pretty serious business especially when you're dealing with a mega-company like Kraft. Nancy said it all went very well and the client will let us know which ideas they are going to put into testing (ugh dreaded testing). They liked the Senior's idea the best but they said that our idea is large enough that they could see it running for as long as 3 years whereas the other idea would have a much shorter life span. So this morning Mike and I got assigned to do a rush job to make point-of-purchase posters etc. for Nabob Coffee which is due tomorrow. So that was most of today. Then near the end of the day I got assigned to make downloadable "campaign swag" like buttons, flags, stickers, etc for Shreddies. They're supposed to launch the new vote website on Mon. so all the freebies could be due sometime this weekend. They didn't tell me yet. And then at 5 today Ivan (who I am told is an incredible, incredible designer) asked me if I would like to do a "typography exercise" for him. He gave me a photo from the shoot he just got back from in Barbados for Winners (aka Canada's nicer version of TJ Maxx) and told me to just mess around with the type and crops but that I should have a really clean style like Gucci. So I'm showing them to him like first thing tomorrow so I don't know how serious or not it is. I think he just wants a head start on some ideas for his own layouts. I wish I had some more time tonight to do more of a variety of layouts but my eyes are closing and if he wants a Gucci look than there isn't all that much you can do.

I'm so excited for it to be the weekend. This week was exhausting but here are some of the SUPER important things that I learned:

1. If you aren't excited about your idea, if you don't get that little butterfly in your stomach then it probably isn't a good idea.

2. If you don't show confidence and enthusiasm about your idea then you will never be able to sell it to a client, let alone your CD.

3. You really, really, really have to sell the client on your idea. Presentation is unbelievably important. You basically have to put on a play and the more theatrical (voices, costumes, props) the better. You have to remember that these people are business people. They aren't creatives and they lack imagination. So, the more you can bring your ideas to life the better outcome you will have.

one day weekend

So Sunday I got up and came to work around 2. I finally figured out how to get here by the warmer and shorter underground route since I wasn't rushing. I couldn't figure out why the elevators weren't working and I called Bee who was upstairs and she was like, ohhh you need a security card so she just came down and got me. Since half the office was dark we decided to go brainstorm for Crystal light in one of the conference rooms and thought that we were getting a lot of good ideas down. We ordered in sushi for dinner and left around 9ish.

Yesterday, it was snowing again! Which I didn't realize until after I left my house in heels. Needless to say I almost fell and killed myself about 1000 times yesterday. For the morning I worked on finishing the goodbye card for Maxwell House and I need to send it to the studio to be printed today. We send off our Motorola layouts to the NYC office for approval from their CD because its really their project that they farmed out to us. Around lunch time Nerelle and Heather brought me in to help them brainstorm for the the new Coke fountain that is coming out. It's pretty neato. And it's another instance where I was told, "if you can crack this you can get a job anywhere." For the rest of the afternoon it was more Crystal Light. We met with Nancy again and she still wants more ideas. So we grabbed some dinner across the street and then went to brainstorm in Starbucks until 9. Everyone is afraid that we might end up pulling an all-nighter or two because the client pitch is on Thurs.

Obama time!

blackout

Surprise! It's snowing again here. Well this week was certainly was jam packed. I can't remember too much of what happened on Wed. except that I got asked to do image searches for Olivieri for their in-company presentations. They wanted images that showed "teamwork". bleh. So it was one giant day of image searching. Mike, Cara and I ended up staying late to work on more ideas for Crystal Light. We ordered in Thai food and left around 10. I got another free cab ride which was awesome because it was still absurdly cold out.

Thursday morning I had to restart my image search for Motorola because we finally found out the budget and could only afford royalty-free photos. It really narrowed down our selection when we already have very specific criteria. I helped Cara work on copy for Moto and Siobhan one of the senior CWs looked over it with us. I got stuck in a pretty awkward situation for the rest of the day. Basically, Bee and Cara who are partners have very different creative processes that don't mesh very well and they have been trying to make it work for ten months. Bee called Cara out on something in front of Siobhan and once we were out of the room it turned into a huge screaming match. They basically decided that they can't work as partners any more and went to Nancy&Janet about it. There hasn't been any decision made but now there is the possibility of one or both of them being fired. I guess I'm learning a lot about the kind of things they don't tell you about in class like the realities of dealing with co-workers, bosses, account people, and clients.

So for the rest of the day I was very awkwardly put in the middle of this feud. Of course they would each take their turn throughout the day to complain to me about the other. There was some fun mixed in because the office sang a happy belated birthday to me and we had a really delicious cake. I also got assigned by the account people to make a goodbye card for one of their favorite clients for Maxwell House who is moving away. We ended up staying late again to brainstorm for Crystal Light and got nowhere. Things started to get ugly between Bee and Cara again so we just decided to all go home. I got home a little after 9:30 and ate dinner and then all of a sudden, absolute darkness.

The power went out on the southwest side of Toronto and stayed out for 24 hours. So since I had no other options I bundled myself up for bed and went to sleep. When I woke up Fri morning the power was still out and the house was FREEZING because it still has been below 10 degrees everyday. It was so cold in the house that we had to turn water on and leave it running all day so that the pipes wouldn't freeze and my relatives had to leave. It turns out that the extreme cold temperatures had caused a pipe to burst at the hydro plant and they had to turn off the electricity while they dried up the flood. I wasn't sure what to do so I started to get ready for work but then my uncle found out that the subways and streetcars weren't working and he didn't want to drive because the street lights were out. Long story short, once I found out that there was power at work I ended up taking a cab into work and got there an hour late.

When I got there Bee and Cara were in a meeting with Janet about Moto so I joined them. She liked the lines that we had but she thought the layouts needed a lot of work. So for the rest of the day I worked on layouts. At the end of the day I showed Janet what I had and she thought they still needed work. At 4 we had a meeting with Nancy to go over our ideas for Crystal Light and she wasn't amazed by anything so it's back to the drawing board. She told us that this is one of those rare oppurtunites to do something amazing and become famous. Which is why tomorrow (Sun) we're gonna have to go in and work. I'm so jealous that everyone else has off on Mon. I totally forgot about that.

After work on Fri. Cara's friend Jen came to pick us up from work and then we stopped by my house so I could grab some clothes and we went to Jen's house. I decided the easiest thing for me to do would be to stay over there with everyone since we had no idea when the power would be turned back on. We had some sushi for dinner and got ready to go out and headed back downtown. We went to this really cool club called Circa. It had four floors and these really cool installation windows with live models doing weird stuff. There were so many bars so you never had to wait for a drink and the bars were touch sensitive and would light up in circles around your hands when you touch them. They had a lot really cool interactive stuff like that all over the place. It turns out some rapper was performing that night called Clipse so it got a little crazy on the main dance floor for awhile. We went to a different dance floor where we witnessed the hillarity of a 40 year old couple in jazz shoes acting like the club was their very own private dance studio/bedroom where they could makeout. They were doing some serious Saturday Night Fever/ballet moves. The club had one of the most eclectic crowds that I've ever seen. Typically, back in NY you would probably only see guidos in a club but every kind of sub-culture was equally represented at this place from hipsters to ganstas. I actually saw a person with a legit grill on his teeth. It was awesome. We ended up getting out of there at 4 after waiting on the coat-check line which was pretty much an angry mob.

One of the live installations.

happy birthday to me

Sooooo, yesterday was my birthday and I'm old now. I still get confused when I think about people who are like 23/24 because my automatic reaction is still wow, they are so much older than me. It still takes me a second to remember that I'm in my early 20's too. I swear in my head I am still 17.

So uh yeah, my weather widget says, its -6 right now. With the windchill it feels like -11. Unbelievably cold. I am wearing leggings under my jeans, super thick socks, boots, a turtle neck and a sweater and tomorrow its supposed to be even colder. I guess if you dress properly its bearable to be outside for short amounts of time. The horrifying thing is that Toronto has a homeless population around the size of NYC. I saw a man this morning sleeping in a sleeping bag over a steam vent on the sidewalk. I hope he was okay. Mike says they city tries to round them up when it gets this bad but a lot of them resist. One of my best friends from home is going skiing in Montreal this week. He's nuts. The forecast is -17 there.

So yesterday was kinda uneventful during work. It was snowing again all morning. Cara brought me a balloon for my birthday. :) On my first day they said something about the department having cake for my bday. Yesterday most people were busy so maybe Friday. We had a brainstorming session on Crystal Light for most of the the morning and then in the afternoon I did a lot image searching for Motorola.

After work I went out for dinner with Cara and her friend Jen. We went to Little Korea and had Korean food which I've never had before. It was good and different. Toronto has one of the largest Asian populations any where in North America. There's a "little" everything here of pretty much any nationality you can think of. After dinner we went and browsed around in a used book store. They had a lot of good deals but I didn't get anything. When I got home my relatives gave me and card and some money so that was really nice of them. And there were flowers and a teddy from Tom <3.

someone has a case of the mondays

Each day that I'm spending here seems to be getting better than the last. Although this morning started off with some frustration it was still a very good day. When we first got into work this morning we heard from our account person on Motorola that they killed the first part of the campaign that we were supposed to work on for their rugged line which of course we all spent the weekend working on. It didn't bother me too much but everyone else was pretty pissed. I felt especially bad for Bee who is really sick and only came into work because we were supposed to present our ideas to Nancy. So Bee left half way through the day. The other half of the campaign is still in the works and we have to show Nancy what we have on Fri.

I had butternut squash soup for lunch. One of my recent food obsessions so that made the day pretty good on its own. After lunch Cara brought Mike and I in on the work she had been doing for Crystal Light before Christmas. I think there are a few senior teams working on it as well because Kraft is making it one of the major products they are trying to push in 2009. They had some pretty great ideas that almost got approved before the break which somehow got squashed. Clients again. The Crystal Light stuff is for TV so that's pretty new and exciting to work on. I had my first real brainstorming session with them after the meeting and then Mike left too because he's pretty sick as well.

Cara and I decided that we were going to stay and work late which actually turned into us going shopping and getting Vietnamese/Thai for dinner (at expense of Ogilvy of course and another free cab ride home). It was really nice to have someone to finally talk to up here. She was telling me about going to Cannes last year among other things. It sounds like a pretty crazy experience. There was talk about us going out this weekend for my birthday so that would be pretty awesome.

So the two things I've learned thus far this week:
1. Clients really do in actual reality truly suck.
2. Enter EVERY competition you can. They are super important.

bilbo?

Ok, I think I'm listening to the weirdest song I've ever heard. It's about Bilbo Baggins???? Why was this playing on the radio in a coffee shop?

everybody's working for the weekend

I am currently in an internet cafe down the street from my aunt&uncle's doing work on a Saturday night. We just got breifed on project Fri. and its due Mon. It's snowing for the 3rd time this week and FREEZING. Next week it's supposed to be under 10 degrees for most of the week. Brrrrr. Good thing I love snow.

So yesterday was definitely the best day so far. First thing in the morning Cara, Bee and I got briefed on a project for Motorola and their new line of "rugged" phones. The main concept was taken care of Ogilvy Global but we have to adapt it for these specific phones and a Canadian market. The idea is really fun. So I think it will be some good work when it is done and it is something that I will actually be here to see until the very end because of the super short deadline. The first ads are due at the publishers on the 22nd and the second ads on Feb 4th. So after the meeting I had to immediately begin image searching which is what I am still doing now. After that Mike and I had to present our layouts to Nancy and she chose mine!!! Wooo! I was so excited. So if it gets final approval from the clients then it will be a real life print ad. I don't think I can really use it in my book though because I only designed the extra back page of the ad and had nothing to do with the actual concepting but still, I'm excited! 

So the rest of the day was more image searching and I will most likely have to go into work tomorrow so we can really brainstorm because we need to show multiple finished products to Nancy on Mon. at 5. After work I decided to go do some shopping and stumbled into a giant underground mall with all the favs like Urban and Forever.  The weekend has been pretty uneventful because uhh... I basically know no one in this city.

Day 4

Today wasn't busy until later on in the day but things should be picking up next week. During the morning since I didn't have any assignments I figured I might as well make use of my time and work on somethings for my book and I tried to write some more lines for mine and Garrett's Long's campaign. We're just gonna enter them in the One Club Competition and see what happens.

A bunch of us went for McDonalds for lunch today (yuck) so I met some more people and I'm doing a decent job of remembering names. Everyone's been dealing with finishing up projects from before Christmas so I haven't been involved with too much yet but tomorrow B, Kara and I are getting briefed on Motorola I think we just won the account from BBDO. Everyone seemed kinda confused about it but it looks like it will be really fun to work on. I'm excited. Kara also mentioned that she wants me to help out with some Crystal Light stuff. It would be nice to be here long enough to actually see something go through all the steps from the brief to the finished product.

Today we were talking about how they don't have as much for me to do because most companies cut their singles due to the economy. Blah. It really doesn't make much sense for companies in trouble to cut their spending on advertising because people really don't buy things that aren't right up in their face all the time. You don't want what you don't know about. I'm really curious to see how Dave&Emily are doing at the New York office because Nancy told me that they laid off a lot of people on Tuesday. My Dad seriously jynxed everything. For the past four years all he's been saying is "Gee I really hope the economy doesn't get bad, you might be graduating right into a recession. Things could get pretty bad real fast." But I guess its more like he actually knows what he's talking about.

During lunch I got made fun of for my American accent and my lack of knowledge "aboot" Canadian food chains like Tim Horton's and Swiss Chalet. I was told that I need to try Swiss Chalet sauce although they didn't make it sound too appetizing. I was told it is brown, spicy, gravy water??? For most of the afternoon Mike and I worked on revising the Shedded Wheat advertorial and we're showing them to Nancy for approval. It sounds like she's a Tricia/Ashley because she's not crazy about all the crazy type that Ivan loves. Well at least its aligned-left. I left around quater to 8 today. The latest so far.

Days 2 & 3

So yesterday the morning was pretty slow. Mike was still waiting to hear what was going on with the Shredded Wheat brief because people were going in and out of the office all day. The art director on the campaign is Ivan Pols. In the afternoon we finally knew what was going on so we worked on creating layouts for an advertorial. Ivan liked the one direction we were heading in so we just made different variations on that. I didn't get to hear anything else about it because both Mike and I were out of the office today and Ivan is on a shoot in Barbados anyway. Lucky. I found out from my Dad that I finally have cell service up here even though its pretty pricey but its nearly impossible to live without one these days.

Today Toronto got a snow storm. We were supposed to get 10cm which I think is around 7in. Which as a result caused most of the city to decide not to drive to work today so the subway was complete insanity. Thankfully I left early this morning because I was hoping to be allowed to go to the editing of the Quiznos spot that Mike&Cara are working on if one of the other creatives decided not to go. That didn't end up happening anyway but at each of my two stops this morning I had to wait for FOUR trains to go by before I could squeeze onto one and ended up beign 15mins late. Not that anyone honestly cares.

I finally got to meet Nancy Vonk this morning and she is SO incredibly nice and funny. She even gave me a hug. awww. Since nobody left me anything to work on she took me with her to the editing session of Shreddie's Campaign at School Editing. Their office was awesome. It was kinda like Radical Media's with the whole industrial feel but a lot swankier with chandliers instead of regular lights. Two of the other creatives working on the final cuts were Ken Rogers and Schvonge. I learned so much today about making a TV Spot and there's a lot that I wanted to write about but can't remember right now. One of the things is how incredibly annoying clients are and you really have to use pyscology to sell things to them because no matter how good the idea is if you don't convince them then it doesn't matter. The other is that advertising really is awesome. I just love how you get to dabble in a little bit of everything.

We eneded up being there until 7:15 and went through 9 cuts of two commericals. The editior Brian was amazingly fast at what he does. They would suggest changing something and in two clicks he would have it done. During lunch which was free (yay) Nancy talked to me about Delaware and how to get a job in this economy all you have to do is be the best (easy to say not so easy to do) and that we would talk a lot about how I could become that person. I also got a free cab ride home today and didn't have to wade through the slush!