Deciphering Code.

For those of us looking to enter the industry (students) and fill our own niche are faced with certain decisions to be made. Study in this field will require that you to choose a discipline in which to study intensely, whether it's art direction, copywriting, account planning and the countless others that I will go more in depth in later entries. Another choice that has emerge out of today's industry is the choice to choose a more traditional role/agency or an interactive digital role.

Personally I'm more for the latter, I see our industry is already heading in that direction taking more of a technological approach. In that regard I wanted to touch upon one of the disciplines that is growing and becoming more in demand (developers). This can mean a multitude of things such as flash developers, information architects and coders (front end/back end development). Today's consumer is more sophisticated, tech savvy and harder to reach then yesterday's consumer, couple that with them having more choices in media. This translates to customers being more in control than brands, and herein lies the dilemma. Brands have to incorporate integrated media into their brand experience in order to grow.

In this day an age of Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Blogs, Vlogs and other social media. Brands are looking at digital agencies to help them deliver engaging content that is compelling. That's were one aspect of the mentioned disciplines comes into play. The web2.0 consist of websites no surprise there, but what most don't realize that all of these websites encompass coding to execute the development. Now coding is its own language in itself from HTML, XHTML, CSS to JQuery and too many others to mention, is what those websites are running on. Learning coding takes a great deal of time to learn especially when you start to get into high level code.

It would be a wise decision for students to study a more digital discipline than a traditional one which I believe is dying out slowly. Well actually I don't think it will die out completely as there will always be print (magazines), TV and radio and even those mediums are being remodeled to accommodate this new tech world. Learning programs like actionscript/motion graphics, BBEdit, Java, PHP, C++, SQL etc... Would benefit the user immensely, just something to think about if you’re looking to emerge in this industry and take it by storm.

Advertising Week 2010

Well I would like to start out by saying that I know I'm late on posting my thoughts on this years Advertising Week, which was held Sept27-Oct1.

I'm sure you can identify with being grotesquely busy, sometimes you have the best intentions of doing something and they can at times get recoiled to the back burner. So with that in mind let's get on with it.

Advertising Week 2010 was held at the infamous New York Times building in mid-town, the building has a superb architecture structure. The entire building is one big screen basically in which you can see out into the street but not in. Upon entering the doors every news station was there in addition to AOL, Bloomberg, Yahoo, Microsoft etc… All of the industries agencies were there such as Razorfish, DDB, Organic, BBDO, TBWA Chiat/Day, Big Spaceship, JWT and a whole slew of other.

Some others notable mentions are non ad agencies like Facebook, Louis Vuitton, YSL, Fast Company, Contagious, St. Regis Hotels, Google, The Huffington Post, Cirque Du Soleil, NBC Universal, Adobe, MediaBistro etc… In addition to schools/students attending from Academy of Art University, Miami Ad School, VCU BrandCenter, Portfolio School, Parsons, SVA and some others coming from as far away as Canada.

The seminars spoke on engaging consumers on a multitude of platforms such as traditional, digital, media networks, public relations, social networks and mobile. Plenty of free stuff handed out books, food and coffee; the last two were of major importance I must have my coffee or I won't feel right as though somethings missing in the day.

Upon entering I went in with the intention of soaking up as much knowledge as humanly possible. And at the end of each day my head was spinning. Tons of creative talent coupled with brilliant minds that are the movers and shakers of our industry. Information on our fragmented society and how we can reach this new customer that is desensitized. How agencies created out of the analog age would benefit, from breaking down these silos that cater to an analog age and create new silos that embrace an technological digital age. Additionally how we can cross collaborate with brands fusing traditional creative with an integrated technical aspect.

Next event was the Big Ad Gig, which took place high up in the sky of the New York Times building. Eight creatives fought tooth and nails to win one of the coveted five internships at the following participating agencies, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Andrew Keller), Ogilvy (Tham Khai Meng), JWT (Ty Montague), TBWA/Chiat/Day (Jimmy Smith), The Ad Council (Priscilla Natkins) and Atmosphere Proximity (Andreas Combuchen). The lucky five presented work for the Ad Council to the previously mentioned names serving as judges for this competition, as well as a large audience. If that wasn't nerve wrecking enough advertising hopefuls had a limited time of 4 minutes to present. Talk about pressure beyond belief! In the end needles to say was five very happy individuals who have a bright future ahead of them.

Now to the juicy part I attended some pretty wicked parties. One was in a movie theater in mid-town somewhere around the 50's. It was for Night Of The Ad Eaters tons of people attended and boozed it up at an open bar, in addition to some good dance music, some half naked dancers and nude body painting. In-between the festivities were running ads from all over the world which never see the light of day (meaning they haven't been run on any media before).

As a student entering Ad Week it was full of fun and extremely informative. Not to mention an awesome student discount of about 20 dollars, as opposed to $90. All in all beautifully run, all seminars ran on time and I look forward to next years Ad Week.