Portfolio Night Round-Up

Portfolio Night 8 is history and by all accounts it was a great event. I had a chance to chat with a number of attending Creative Directors and the feeling was unanimous: the work is remarkably better this year. Now, call me biased, but I honestly think that is a reflection of what's happening down at the Lakeshore Campus and here's why: there was a far stronger showing by Humber than any other school. Sure there was representation by Seneca, George Brown, Georgian, Miami Ad School and Creative Circus - but Humber outweighed everyone else by almost 2 to 1. I think we're onto something here.

As you've probably noticed, I'm a big fan of collectively learning from each other's experiences. So with that in mind I've asked those who attended to reflect back and offer up some advice for next year's participants.

What I found interesting, is what some of you may find frustrating: there's conflicting advice. So what worked for some people, didn't in fact work for others. The biggest battle seems to be what format to show your book. Digital or printed.

Laura Kitching

• When selecting the ads to put in your book, make sure that all of them are your absolute best work. Anything less than your best will stand out and bring your book down a notch.

• Last year (PN7) I showed my book on my laptop and this year (PN8) I showed a hard copy book. I think the physical book was better, people were less hesitant to touch it, flip back and forth through the pages and compare various pieces. I found that people only really looked through my digital book once or maybe twice - there is something nice about holding a physical book... or so I've been told.

• I stayed long after my session and managed to see a few more CDs and meet new people. I think it's beneficial to hang around afterwords because you never know who you'll end up talking to and where that may take you. It's actually interesting, the people I was least excited to talk to, proved to be the most insightful, helpful and beneficial in the long run - and if I hadn't stayed I would never have learned that.

Unicorn Tuesday brings good news and glitter

On what was otherwise a pretty terrible day for me, yesterday I got this piece of fantastic news: Anderson DDB interns Chelsey and Sarah are now Anderson DDB juniors. Here's how they tell the story:

So it's Unicorn Tuesday, and obviously that makes it a magical day. As Sarah has already mentioned, we created Dress Up Fridays over here at Anderson DDB, but one Tuesday a senior copywriter wore a t-shirt with two unicorns throwing up rainbows and since then we are dubbing every Tuesday Unicorn Tuesday.  I'm wearing a button with a Unicorn on it.  Anyways, our internship is up at the end of March and we have been pretty sad about it.  We both have gained amazing experience working here and don't want to leave.  But today the Unicorn threw up rainbows and glitter on us and handed us a magical 6 month contract. And in the words of Brendan "Dancing and typing at the same time is very hard!!"  Many, many, many thanks to Brendan, Humber and the entire staff at Anderson.  Happy Unicorn Tuesday everyone!

Big congratulations goes out to Chelsey and Sarah. They worked their butts off and deserve this awesome opportunity.

Celebrating our successes: Sarah & Chelsey

It's been a while since we've heard from our forth year students who are out on placement this semester, so check out the story below from Sarah and Chelsey who are currently crafting their craft and doing their thing at Anderson DDB.

And if there's something cool happening at your placement, please write it up and send it my way. As mentioned before, this isn't a forum for bragging, but instead an opportunity to check in and support one another.

I always assumed my internship would be grueling. And I guess, in a lot of ways, it has. I am working 11-12 hour days on average (give or take 4+/- hours) and am writing more than I probably ever have in my life. My partner, Chelsey, and I have really taken all the internship advice to heart – first ones in, last to leave, ask everyone if we can help, and deliver more than what’s asked. We have even initiated Dress Up Fridays for the creative team.

So far, we have been very fortunate – we are working on real briefs and are starting to see some exciting results. Chelsey and I have been working closely with the Creative Director Jane Pritchard on another new business pitch. Our work is being pitched tomorrow and is going head to head against Tony Miller, the other Creative Director’s creative senior team. Tomorrow is also my first pitch to the client (up until now, all my work has been vetted through senior creatives). I have been working with another Art Director to develop an online campaign.

Today though, was by far our biggest success to date. We helped win a new client for the agency! The client actually bought two campaign ideas we came up with – one will be for print/ direct mail and the other will run online. We worked with another junior team to help execute the idea so we can’t take all the credit, but we were competing not only against other senior teams for the account, but other agencies.

They certainly are keeping us busy - but I love it. Some of the science can be a little over my head, but everyone is great to work with and they are very supportive. They really fight for good ideas at DDB (we don't always win), but internally they respect the creativity.