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.
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