It's all about the attitude

So... most of the summer, I have been pretty unhappy with my internship. I wasn't learning anything, and no matter how hard I tried, no one would give me any work to do. Eventually, I had decided that it was just that I was in the wrong department, I figured the media people just didn't get interesting things to do regardless of whether they were interns or the Vice President of Media.

Then one day I walked in, and my supervisor told me she quit. I have NEVER seen her so happy. Turns out, she actually does have a personality under all that plainness. When she thought she would be working there for years, she spent most of her time on the computer with headphones in, ignoring me. When I would ask for something to do, she would hand me the same issue of media week (in case anyone is wondering, people really do watch those ultra tacky TBS originals). If I went and found work in another department, she would tell me that I have to stick to her department (even if they had me wake up early to spend 20 hours a week sitting in a chair and starring at a wall).

Well, let me tell you what, as soon as that woman quit, my internship became a lot more pleasant. I can't tell if her attitude change was because she stopped caring, or because she was genuinely happy. But I can finally say that she did manage to teach me somethings. First, your attitude can affect all the people around you (yes, pretty much everyone in media has been more pleasant since she left). And second, if work makes you so miserable that you aren't yourself anymore, it's not job for you.

So I say thanks, I may not know more about research, media, reach, frequency, SRDS, or anything that made me agree to be the media intern, but I certainly did learn something valuable about life. So I wish her good luck, and hope she finds something she loves. And God bless anyone who has to work with her if she doesn't

Networking isn't as hard as I thought!

Heather Hale was right - you really are only about 5 contacts away from reaching the person who can make your dreams come true! I'll explain...

I had a week off so I worked on scheduling informational interviews. At first no one paid any attention to me and I got a lot of answering machines. I was feeling really defeated and ready to give up and then things changed....
Each week University of Dreams has a guest speaker. First it was Emannual Osofu Yeboah (see previous blog post about him), then Heather Hale, then Oprah's exec. producer Candi Carter, and most recently Kevin Adler. Kevin is a sports marketing expert and talked to us about how he found his passion and how his dreams changed throughout his life. During his speech he mentioned that he worked for Leo-Burnett! I had actually called there earlier in the day and they could care less about me. So after the speech I introduced myself to him and asked if he could help me get an informational interview there - he gave me his card and told me he would love to help me out! I just e-mailed him and I'm waiting for his reply. I was so excited I could've hugged him!
Then my mom sends me an e-mail with a link to an article. My uncle's ex's brother works in Chicago in the ad industry but I never knew which agency....the article was about how he just won an Effie award and that he is the Senior VP for Cramer-Krasselt, another place I called and no one answered. So I contacted him today and he had the head of HR call me and I have an informational interview scheduled for Wednesday at noon! Now that wasn't even 5 contacts and I've already got an in at the company!

Aside from my awesome networking skills, I've been quite the tourist. I saw Batman which was filmed in Chicago so it's a big deal here. Then some of us dreamers went bowling where I was high scorer of the evening. My roommates and I checked out the Planetarium, the Aquarium, the Zoo, and the Museum of Science and Industry. We also went to a Cubs game yesterday - ironically against the Florida Marlins. The Cubbies won though and it was a good time in Wrigleyville with everyone celebrating and going crazy. Hope everyone else is having a great summer. I'm so sad mine's almost over!

Chiat and Seals

Hola,

I just wanted to swing by the blog to see what everyone's up to and say hello. I wish I could put my TBWA\Chiat\Day experience into words, but that would just not do it justice! I've been trying to track it on my blog, but still - that doesn't do it justice.

I can't wait for CSII next semester!

Anyways, I saved a seal last weekend in Malibu. I thought it's name was Sammy, but Jeff says it was Rufus so I stand corrected.
Here he is!



Good times...

A blog from Richmond

Hello!  I don't stop by this blog nearly enough.  It's fun to see what some of you are up to this summer.  Sounds like everyone is learning a lot and it's true ... fall semester will begin soon!

Our summer has been extremely busy.  Tom and I are actually in Richmond this week.  As many of you know we have an office in Richmond as well as in Tallahassee.  Richmond is a great city and a wonderful place to celebrate the 4th of July!

And, on a sadder note, those of you who were in CSII met our partner in Richmond, Gayle Turner.  Gayle was recently diagnosed with cancer.  He just completed his chemo and radiation last week and is in the process of getting ready for his surgery scheduled for August.  It's tough to see someone who's always so upbeat and happy in pain.  However, he has so much spirit and his attitude is always positive that he really is an inspiration.  So, please keep Gayle in your thoughts and prayers!

We'll be returning to Florida next week.  Keep blogging ... it's fun to know what you're up to!

 

where did summer go?

This morning it hit me... I only have 3 more weeks of my internship! At the beginning of summer I thought this might be the longest summer of my life- spending most of my time working. But it has just flown by! I have worked on so many different accounts and feel that the agency has really given me everything I was looking for, if not more. The thought of leaving Evolve makes me sad, but I am excited to have the chance to taste the real world and getting one more year to go back to the college life. I want to get all the people that I work with something really nice to say thank you for a great experience. I want them to know that I really appreciate every opportunity that they have given me here. I have toyed with some ideas but want to do/give something that will show my appreciation and blow them away. Do you all have any cool ideas? Keep in mind the non-existant advertising intern salary. haha

Can't wait to see you all in the fall! Enjoy the rest of your summer!!

it's all about the perks baby...

Greetings from Arnold DC!

So this whole paying FSU to work 40 hours a week for free thing really does suck, but there defiantly are some perks. So far the coolest things have been the “previews”, why did Tom not tell us about these sooner! NBC came in today and brought an omelet chef and made us all breakfast! Then we got to see previews of all the new shows coming (watch out, a lot of them are HORRIBLE! And I hate to be the barrier of bad news, but Dr. Phil is now getting ANOTHER show called “doctors”… he’s “out to educate America”…. Were all screwed!) but I felt cool for being “in the know” anyways J. Then we handed in a 7 question questionnaire for a gift… I thought it was gonna be an XXL tee or a rinkie dink pen, but it was 3 free tickets to Bush Gardens! Thank you NBC! Haha maybe there is something to this whole media planning thing? –ehhh I take that back…

Ps: I spent all morning making powerpoint sides for the “Bahamas” account, and I’m finally done AKA out of work. I’ve already goggled everything I’ve ever wondered about… anybody have any suggestions for good killing time websites? … ehh maybe I’ll just go play ping pong.

xoxo

Round 2

Everyone is really really excited about this United Way project. We just went there yesterday to get a background presentation on the organization. It's really cool because this is going to be the very first student run United Way. They are basically going to run just like a regular United Way except it will be run by the students, and for the students. In other words, any agency that they sponsor has to be something that affect FSU students. They are going to basically be a "hub" where people can come to find ways to volunteer or a way for students in need to find money.

What is really exciting is that Jesse (President) has arranged a "kickoff party" for the beginning of fall. He already has the support of pretty much every adult in the city. From what I gather, all he needs now is students. That's where we come in. Headquarters have pretty much already given him the template for the campaign they want, they just want it to be tailored to students. That, I think, will open up a lot of opportunity for us to be creative without being boundless.

The biggest challenge for AD Club in this project I think will be coming up with ways to convince students not only to care, but to act on it. Meaning we have to think of events that students will want to attend, projects they will want to be involved with, and ads that will convince them to give.

I can see where we might run into sticky situations (only because I don't want to use the word "problems") where our creative juices won't be accepted/ understood by people who are already SO very willing to give up all of their time and dedicate it to such a great cause.

I say, bring it on. This is going to be great fun. Tonight, our first brainstorming potluck! Then tomorrow we meet again with the client (how cool do I sound) and hopefully we will start cranking out millions of ideas.

Symbiosis

I have this 4-walled glass container. Inside of it I have some sand, rocks, saltwater, fish and other sea creatures. I thoroughly enjoy watching the inhabitants of my aquarium interact with each other and their surroundings. It is so natural, but yet so unnatural.

I recently got a cleaner shrimp to add to my aquarium (pictured left). I was having a major algae fight at the bottom of the tank and it must have weakend the immune system of my beloved yellow tang (pictured right). So long story short my yellow tang came down with ich, which is a common aquarium disease in both salt and fresh water aquariums.

Since I was already treating my tank for the algae at the bottom of the tank (which was actually a bacteria (but for some reason everyone refers to it as red slime algae (scientifically Cyanobacteria)), I felt like it would be a bad idea to also treat the tank for ich. So I did a little research and I saw that cleaner shrimp will eat parasites off of other fish. I said, "Now that would be neat! I can get this little shrimp, have him clean off my tang and hopefully prevent it from spreading and also get to add something neat to my aquarium."

So I got in the car and went down to High Tide Aquarium, which is my favorite place to buy all of my saltwater aquarium supplies and live animals. We (Kristin and me) looked into all the little cubbys and looked at the shrimps. Then we consulted the associate working there and chatted a little bit about how the cleaner shrimp work. I was so amazed, and honestly troubled by the fact that the fish know to come to the shrimp when they have a problem. How does that happen? It makes no sense. These small little fish know to go to the shrimp when they have a parasite on them, just like we know to go to the doctor when we are ill.

Symbiosis. Nature is just as smart (or smarter than humans).

Well after acclimating the new shrimp to the aquarium, I was surprised to see the cleaner shrimp jumping from the rock that he was on to the yellow tang. It worked! You could definitely tell that it was not comfortable for the tang, and he would occasionally run off (or should I say swim off), but the tang kept returning to the shrimp. By the next day, it looked like the tang had no more white spots on his body.

Now I just hope that the cleaner shrimp will be able to find other things within the aquarium to eat so that he doesn't die and he can continue to fight off the evil parasites of the saltwater aquarium!

Amazed and Inspired

Last night I was granted the honor of hearing an inspirational story about a young man from Ghana. His story moved me to tears and to hear him speak about perseverance and making a difference inspired me. First, here is the story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah:

When Emmanuel Yeboah was born without a tibia in his right leg, his mother was advised to kill him. In Ghana, a disabled baby is considered a curse and is either poisoned or left in the forest to die. The lucky ones are hidden away until they can make their way to the streets, where they'll spend the rest of their lives begging. Emmanuel's mother made a choice to keep her son alive and teach him to transcend all limitations. Every day she carried her son three miles to and from school. At school, Emmanuel was ostracized. But it was when he was turned away from the soccer team that he decided to take a stand. Earning a dollar a day shining shoes, he bought his own ball and offered it to his classmates on one condition—they had to include him on the team. With this small step, Emmanuel began a mission to forever change the treatment of Ghana's disabled population. »

To show his countrymen that disability doesn’t mean inability, he pedaled a bike donated by CAF 610 km (379 miles) around Ghana using only his left leg. Now able to stand on two feet (thanks to an operation and a high-tech prosthetic donated by Loma Linda University Orthopaedic & Rehabilitation Institute), he works vigorously to ensure that opportunities are available to all physically challenged Ghanaians.

An award-winning documentary, Emmanuel’s Gift, produced by Emmy-winners Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern of Lookalike Productions, has allowed thousands to share his emotional story. Being a recipient of Nike’s Casey Martin Award and a co-recipient of the prestigious 2005 ESPN Arthur Ashe Courage Award, Emmanuel’s achievements have now been recognized.

Something he said last night that really struck me was that in all of the disabled people he has met, whether they are missing legs or arms, he has never met a person without a head. As long as you have a head you can do whatever you set your mind to. Life is a gift and no matter what physical state you may be in, you are not your body - you are a human being and you are alive. You can transcend phsycial limitations and use your mind and your ideas to change the world. He never gave up and never let someone tell him that things are impossible. He believes that when you do something selfless and give to others that it will come back to you ten fold and that is very true for him. It was an amazing story and I'm thankful that I was able to meet this man and hear his inspirational words.

More pickles for V dot Mc Donalds Dr. Phil

Thats code for Vanessa Mc Phil- V dot= . /Mc skip the Donalds and stop on Phil. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it does to me. Anyways back to the pickles.... Pickled people, guess you can pickle anything. 

Greetings from Chicago!

So I'm in Chi-town working for the Chicago Machine lacrosse team. The team has very little money so I'm learning how to advertise on little to no budget. We rely on guerrilla marketing and non-traditional stuff. Today was only my 3rd day and I think we're finally done delivering this cross-promotional coupon/pocket schedule stuff with Cartridge world. We have a company car that we drove all over and we've been walking the streets and what not passing out free tickets and the pocket schedules. I will also be working the Taste of Chicago event - the players will be there signing autographs and I'll be passing out pocket schedules and merchandise. It should be interesting.


When I'm not working I'm exploring the city. It's amazing here. I'm learning how to use the L train and I learned how to use the Metra. I live close to Michigan Avenue in the South Loop area. I get along with my roommates really well and I've been having a great time making new friends and going out.



It's awesome to hear about everyone else's projects and internships. Can't wait to see you all again in the fall but until then I'll be checking everyone's blogs. :-D

Hey guys!

I haven't been in here for a while now, it's nice to read about everyone! hope you all are having an awesome summer!

I'm actually in Miami, I got an internship in Zubi Advertising! :) And I just love it! Everyone's super nice, and they gave us an awesome project. It's like creative II all over again, but now with budgets and detailed media plans :S  

If anyone's around Miami let me know so we can hang out some time :)

Good luck everyone! 

30 years later!

So I guess I'm in charge of the summer Ad Club advertising team. I'm ridiculously excited. We are going to do a campaign for the United Way Student Association that will be launched in the fall. Thank god I already took creative 1 lol. Any advice that anyone has is welcome and needed. I'll keep you updated on how it's going.

OH! and by the way.

I've been meaning to do it all semester, now it's finally here, my blog.
http://alldayeverydayatfsu.blogspot.com/

Calling all Creative Minds!

Hello all! I Hope everyone is having a fantastic summer! To those of you who still read this, I need your help.

I am the Assistant Marketing Chair for Dance Marathon 2009. For those of you who don't know what Dance Marathon is, it is the largest student run philanthropy at FSU. Each year about 800 students stand for 32 hours to raise money for Children's Miracle Network at Shands' Hospital in Gainesville, Fl. More than 700 other students also volunteer to make this event possible. Last year we raised over $409,000.00, about $100,000.00 more than in 2007. Our goal is to continue to increase the amount of money raised as much as we possibly can.

My job as Assistant Marketing chair is to try and find as many corporate sponsors as possible. Right now we are finishing making our new marketing packet to send out to companies. Usually we just mail the marketing packet with a cover letter. However, as I learned in Creative 1, there is a better chance that our letters won't get tossed to the side if there is something creative with it or something that makes it stand out. Large companies get tons of letters every day asking for money or sponsorship and I need to think of something that will separate FSU DM from all of the others.

I have thought about sending childrens' shoes with the letters, decorated with pictures of the Miracle Children, our tag line "Give a Weekend, Save a Life", and/or saying something about "dancing shoes"...

What do you guys think? Any advice or ideas would be very helpful. Also, if you know of any companies that would be willing to sponsor Dance Marathon, please let me know! It is for a great cause and is something that I am very passionate about!

Catch Your Limit Consulting, I will be sending you a letter.. :)

Thank you everyone!

For the Kids,
Erin

P.S. I will be posting another entry later about my summer!

Lookin for a project

So I started at Zimmerman, pretty cool. Right now I am taking one God awful class and I am working (but only on weekends). But I've been sick all week so I haven't been able to do any of that. And now I am incredibly bored. I have watched literally EVERY episode of The Office this week (can't wait til September 25th!!!!!). I need a summer project, something I can do a little at a time when I'm bored outside of my mind. The original game plan was to paint my house, and make a website on Dreamweaver. Problem: My Adobe stopped working, what else is cool? You guys are creative, help me out =D. Miss ya!!!

It's been a while...

Hey guys. 

So, the internship has started at BBDO in New York. I'm working in Planning and I love it.

As you might have heard or read for that matter, Joe and I took a road trip cross country to LA last week before I headed to NY. It's all in the blog. There is more to come as I will be documenting my internship experience as well, over the course of the next few months.

Way to get us blogging, even after the semester is over. Miss everyone in creative strategy!

Take care. Enjoy your summer. :)

blog: http://www.itappearstobe.blogspot.com

in a New York state of mind.

So I'm having some down time during the day at my internship in NYC [Woods Witt Dealy & Sons] and I was showing the other intern [coincidentally from UF...ew] our beautiful, and what I assumed, desolate blog. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the old guy is still up & running. Good for us [I'm including myself because I'm writing now.]

Now that I'm here, I want to announce to those of you who are in the NYC area, or will be in the next few weeks, an opportunity that I think is kind of exciting. It is an event that is being held in Coney Island by the agency I'm working for called 'Wrath of Cannes.' It's calling for all advertising rookies to submit their one BIG idea, BIG project, BIG [insert something advertising related here] for the chance of winning a BIG [well, not really THAT big] trophy. All of the information is posted on the website: www.wrathofcannes.com and it was highlighted in an AdAge article http://adage.com/adages/post?article_id=127063. Even if you're not in the area-- check it out.

This is a cool way to maintain our World Famous status... or at least become Coney Island Famous.

Hope everyone is having a fan-effing-tastic summer. Oh, and if you're in NYC-- holler at your girl! :)

Best,
April

Miss ya guys!

Hey guys!
Ok so at first I hated blogging, but I just missed ya’ll so much I had to say hi!
So I’m actually writing you guys from my very own cubical at Arnold Worldwide here in DC and we actually just won the “Carnival cruise line” account! Which would be awesome, if I was actually working on it… but no, lucky me got “Trex” (which I quickly learned is an indestructible, environmentally friendly deck company) and JEA, which… get excited… is the Jacksonville waste plant! Haha but it’s actually been really fun! I’ve gotten to go to all the meetings (which are usually done via conference call) but make me feel important anyway, and I have my own phone number and official “Arnold” email address, which is exciting… bad part def = the whole 9-5 thing, but I guess I’ll get used to it! How’s everybody else’s internships!? I’m dying to hear the dirt…
Xoxo!

Time Warner to test pay per KB

Time Warner Cable is changing the way some people pay for cable. On Thursday Time Warner will start to test a service that charges customers of high-speed Internet service based on their usage.

Subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will be charged $1 per gigabyte above monthly allowances, a company spokesman said told Reutres. Consumers in the test region will be offered several levels of service, and if they stay in it, they stay within the contract, not additional charges (similar to cell phone plans).

A $29.95 per month plan for 768 kilobits per second and a 5 gigabyte limit would let users send and receive about 349,525 e-mails, play 170 hours of online games, or download 1,383 digital songs per month. Or there is a $54.90 monthly fee for a 15-megabit-per-second service and a 40 gigabyte monthly limit would allow subscribers to watch 124 hours of standard-definition videos or download 11,070 songs.

The new policy is intended to address the top 5 percent of users, who have spent a "disproportionate" amount of time on Time Warner Cable's network, a company spokesman said. These people are "taxing the infrastructure," the spokesman continued. "In order to make investments in the infrastructure, we have to find the revenue to pay for it."

Now, I understand that business models change. But how do you roll this out? We constantly find ourselves looking for ways to make more money and squeeze more out of the customers we already have, but this will be interesting to see how many customers Time Warner loses because of the restrictions implemented.

We find similar problems throughout the Internet, and for me, especially in regards to online publishing. Many users feel that everything online should be free, especially if it started free. If you were required to pay $1 to read each news article written online, most people would leave before even seeing its content. But with skyrocketing paper, printing and mailing costs, magazine publishers are searching for additional ways to make money.

The one catch I foresee is that people will not pay for it.

Good luck Time Warner. (Oh, I should have mentioned this earlier. Look what happened to AOL. They used to hand out these discs with hours of Internet access on them.)

The blog has begun!

I'm almost finished with the road trip blogs and I start Chiat tomorrow! Wish me luck.

Check it out at http://lovinsummersummerlovin.blogspot.com/