The End

Now, that it has already been almost two weeks since COLAB ended I am updating the blog. Sorry for the delayed response to the conclusion, but for some reason I found myself busier after COLAB finished than during. Weird how that happens.

The final presentations from both Kiwi and Lattice were awesome! It was evident that both teams put an incredible amount of effort into their work, and came out with really CREATIVE ideas for Sameunderneath.

Despite some doubt that the intern's had during the 6 weeks, Ryan was actually told to pick a winner. Lattice was the overall winner, go team! After a series of questions (mainly of the audience addressed to both the teams and Ryan), back and forth between what Ryan liked from each team, and an anxious group of interns Ryan decided on Lattice.

Winning was exciting. Even better though is that Ryan invited both teams to his marketing meetings in Septemeber and October to help him make a game plan. It was nice of him to honor both teams and all of their hardwork.

Probably the coolest thing about that Friday was the presentation. As many times that week that we dreaded the upcoming presentation, it definitely paid off. There was a room full of professionals watching our work, our lives, for the past six weeks. There was no better way to finish COLAB than to present. I've never worked so hard on a pitch before and the reward was sheer amazingness. Special thanks to PAF and Jamie for the flower cookie :)

COLAB was the best thing I could've done with my summer. I've talked to a lot of people about the program since it has been over and I can't wait to see what happens next year!

To The New Group, Livengood | Nowack, Ascentium, Anvil Media, eRoi, Fish Marketing, HMH, Grady Britton, Asterix, CMD and Portland Advertising Federation THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE OPPORTUNITY!

To everyone at the agencies THANK YOU for all of your advice, input and friendship. Meeting such a diverse group of people enriched the COLAB expereince.

To Ryan, thanks for the shopping spree and having such a cool company as Sameunderneath to work on. I'm lookign forward to the upcoming meetings.

If you care to read my current blog on life outside of COLAB check it out.

The Finale

Lattice's final presentation for Sameunderneath.

Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 6

My and Megan's COLAB experiences reiterated to Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo.

The Fifth Week in Perspective

Mon-Wed. Anvil agency time.

Thurs- Heather and I double team at Ascentium working on the marketing plan and presentation. Remote work for Anvil

Fri. About 9 hours at Coates Kokes

Saturday- I had to break from COLAB to try and finish my reading assignments for humanities, about 9 chapters of the Scarlett Letter. 1/4 the book left before Tuesday night. Also volunteered with Heather at Bite of Oregon for the Livengood Nowack "Eat Your Berries" table.

Sunday- More reading for Scarlett Letter. Team Lattice spends a solid 9 hours at Studio Bard beginning wrapping up all things COLAB. Michael Bard helped us make a kick-ass documentation video! 8 page newsletter design for Print Production. Study for Print Production midterm.

All-in-all very productive, exhausting, but fun.

Second day at Anvil

Finished up another project that they had me working on, this time optimizing a press release and updating some social media sites.

Anvil is a super laid back company. There are about 12 employees plus Hallie, the Vice President and Kent, the President.

This agency is the farthest from traditional advertising that I have experienced through COLABORATORY. None of the employees have a background in advertising, but their day to day work heavily influences the online appearance of their clients. In a sense, Anvil's work is its own form of advertising, not as blatant as radio, TV or print yet still has the same intentions of increasing a client's customer awareness.

Anvil has an open atmosphere. There are three groups of desks where the employees sit to hammer out their work. The lunch room is stocked with communal food, and is replenished college roommate style.

Everyone is really nice and dedicated to their work. Kent and Hallie do a good job balancing out work with fun by planning group outings sometimes such as boating or snow machining.

The things I have been learning:
meta tags
keywords
optimizing, and all that it entails
analytics
ad words
month end reports
Google (but a ton more than the search component)
breadcrumb navigation

Welcome to Anvil. Their special numbers are 250, 8, 5 and 2

If anyone, other than Anvil employees, can guess what those special numbers are congrats to you!

Today marked the first day of my last agency. Crazy how fast four weeks can go by.

My time at HMH was a blast and a great learning experience. Out of all of my three agencies HMH offered the most traditional agency experience. I was exposed to radio, TV, print and interactive. I was able to attend a press check, which was definitely an experience in itself. There were three major things I took away from that experience.

1.) HMH pays incredible attention to detail that definitely shows through in their award winning work.

2.) The printing industry has a large amount of waste "make ready". It was sad to see the stacks of hundreds of sheets of unused paper grow every time there was a slight color change in the ink. For the printer to register the change it had to make about a hundred copies. That means that all of the paper and ink was wasted. The printer will try and re-use the flip-side of the paper as scraps, but there is still an incredible amount of waste.

3.) When going on a press check always make sure to have a production manager and an art director present. The production manager goes by an image that was already approved. An art director has the advantage of working with that piece from beginning to end, so they know exactly what the color is supposed to look like.

Apart from the press check I spent majority of my time job shadowing Nathaniel Charlton an Assistant Account Executive. He told me the ins and outs of being an entry level AE. He had me working on a project to research social media avenues that would be appropriate for the internal Digital Evolution Team. At my last day, I gave a presentation to the office (including a person from their Charlotte Office) that described my findings. I'm not going to lie it was a little nerve wracking, but more exciting than anything else.

At Anvil, Hallie had me jump right in and take ownership of one of their projects. I am re-writing copy for search engine optimization. I don't have any experience in SEO or SEM, but I understand the context of its use. It will be exciting over these next two weeks to learn the practicalities and how to apply them. Because the point of SEO is to make certain keywords appear in the copy for a certain % of words, by the end of the day those keywords seemed unrecognizable as a word because I had stared at them all day.

It sounds like there are quite a bit of projects that will keep me busy at Anvil. I think they will all be very beneficial too because I will be learning the tactics of SEO and SEM from a group of professionals.

HMH Culture

It's taken me a little while to figure out how to accurately describe the HMH culture.

There is a little bit of a backstory to this one. Ed Herinckx. the President, started out as an HMH intern 25 years ago and has stayed with the company since. To add to the structure there are partners who have also been at the company for a number of years. New employees starting at HMH have an honorable figure to look up to; someone to aspire to be. It not just simply climbing the ladder, it is climbing the ladder and following in Ed's footsteps. HMH has a lower turn-over rate than a lot of other agencies, and I think that could be because of the example Ed has provided.

The culture of HMH is like the small cozy, winter town of Punxsutawney Pennsylvania from the movie Groundhogs Day with Bill Murray. The people are genuine, dependable and at times slightly predictable. Office banter aside, their work is nothing short of inspiring. I immediately took notice of their attention to detail and impermeable client relationships.