In the land of Griffins

The COLABORATORY clock seems to run faster than I had anticipated. It's week 3 already and I am no longer at Ascentium. I started Monday at my new internship home, ad agency Grady Britton.


It's an odd thing shifting between internships at such a quick pace. Kind of jarring actually. I felt like I was just getting the hang of office life at Ascentium, finally knew who to talk to when I needed something and even had a few inside jokes under my belt. And then the COLAB wheels cranked a little bit further and it was time for me to move on. I survived my first few days at Grady Britton just fine, obviously, but I think all of us interns will openly admit that 3 first days of work in one summer brings 3 times the first-day-jitter stress. Chalk that up to an added benefit of this program -- our nerves are 3 times tougher than the average newbie.

Grady Britton is proving to be a good fit for me. Among the amazingly friendly welcome I received and the fact that I've already played on the GB softball team, I think what I'm liking most about this placement is the type of work Grady does. Grady Britton has a strong line-up of really great local clients. They even have a grant program they run annually to provide a local non-profit with $25,000 of creative services. Cool stuff all around.

And where do the good people of Grady Britton find all their energy for such awesome work? Well, Ascentium had their coffee robot, but I haven't found such a fountain here at Grady. There's a lot of griffin swag everywhere in the office in honor of the company's logo, but my money is on the well equipped fleet of razor scooters that line the hallway.

COLABORATORY + MUFFINS!

Little Debbie launched a fantastic marketing campaign this summer to promote their new muffins. The Intern Hero campaign is Little Debbie's attempt to feed the under-paid interns of America. Send them a clever shot of you holding a pleading sign for muffins at your internship office and if selected, they'll send you a big ol' box of muffin goodness. Luckily, a bunch of us COLABORATORY interns have an infinity for muffins and photoshop alike. Jimmy Zimmerman and I have been featured on the site thus far. Curious to see how many more COLAB kiddos are going to strike pastry gold.

Lasting Impression at Ascentium

Today marks my last day at Ascentium for COLABORATORY. I started the morning off right, leaving Ascentium with what surely will be what I am most remembered for.



Thank you, Ascentium for an awesome first two weeks!

One Word Reviews

Wet Paint finished our first all-day work session on our Columbia Sportswear campaign Friday at Coates Kokes. The following is our one word reactions on how the meeting went. Or at least our attempts at one word...

One Word Reactions from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

Hello, Ascentium!

This is me, looking all sleepy/excited on my first day of interning at Ascentium.

I have been under the watchful and helpful eye of Mason West, a copywriter and the COLAB liaison here at Ascentium. My first two days have been full of meeting people, seeing how the office works, sitting in on meetings, researching for real projects and even contributing on some brainstorming session for, again, REAL projects. If you had any doubt in Colaboratory's authenticity, get yourself out of my blog.

These first days have really got my wheels turning on what this industry is about, and more specifically how I function within it. Here are a few snippets from my thoughts thus far --

NOT EVERY AGENCY IS THE SAME
I came in Monday morning assuming there would be some sort of all-office meeting to sync-up projects, talk about office happenings and such because that was what always happened at Turnstyle, my former internship home. Wrong. Ascentium has so many different people all under one roof--creative directors, designers, consultants, project managers, web-types, ad-types--and not to mention so many different projects running at once, an all-group meeting would ultimately just bore some with the others with project happenings that they don't ever touch. That's not to say Ascentium doesn't function without cohesiveness. Everyone seems to operate in these self-proclaimed teams. For example, my desk is located in what is known as the "Creative Cave."

Fellow Colab'er Erin Davis Tweeted the other day about 'learning the language' of an agency. I couldn't agree more. I need to go into each agency with a clean slate, without expectations of how they operate and what their culture is like.


DESIGN VS. AD/MARKETING
To some these may seem like tangent worlds. To me, they seem very far apart. Even on the opening day of Colab at orientation I felt pretty out of place discussing media strategy and promotional events as compared to my norm of brand identity and color schemes. I do miss the rub-off creativity you find in a design office that is full of people sketching, sharing photos and chatting about pretty packages they saw at the grocery store. However, I am really loving the feel of working at an ad agency that is upstream from the design world--meaning, being where the concepts are conceived versus on the end where they are executed. Ideas are happening in the Ascentium office so rapidly. It's one creative brief to the next brainstorming session, basically end-on-end all day long. I like that.


TO SUCCEED, INTERNS NEED TO ASK QUESTIONS
Lots.


ARE PERSONALLY RELEVANT CLIENTS NECESSARY TO PERSONALLY ENJOY AGENCY WORK?
I don't really have any finite revelations on this one. I suppose its more of a question I'm posing to all of the marketing professionals reading this blog. Am I going to feel fulfilled by this project management work if the portfolio consists of cool, but personally not-so-stimulating businesses? Will I have to do work for projects that entail art+bikes+traveling+community+coffee etcetera to really get passionate about this work? I find myself generally very excited about the process of the work I've done so far in this industry regardless of the client, so I've found myself wondering what the relevancy of the client type really is. I like wrangling info and people and ideas all into one cohesive product and I even like to think I'm pretty good at that--but, does there need to be more than that there for this to be my career path? Come on wise elders, help a intern out!

There were introductions, questions, hugs, business cards, beer and post-it notes

COLABORATORY orientation was on Friday and all of the above was a plenty.

As you all can tell from my last post, I was a wee bit anxious before orientation. I arrived on time and ready for whatever was behind the doors of POP ART, the agency hosting the event. What I found was an immensely welcoming bunch of familiar faces--ones I had seen on agency websites or Twitter profile pictures--all eager to meet me. There was also a killer post-it note art wall, but I had little time to gawk with so much to get started on.

First, all the agency representatives introduced themselves and their companies. The hour or so of client/agency run down is likely more than most could hope to figure out in the first month of working in a new town. It was really insightful into the tone and personalities of each and made me feel very affirmed in my assignments to work at Ascentium, Grady Britton and Anvil Media. While they all varied in client base and offerings, each seemed to have a common thread of strong mission and strategy focus which made me happy.

And then it was on to meeting the fellow interns and finding out which teams (or mini agencies) we would be on for creating our campaigns for Columbia Sportswear. Classic red rover style, they called us out one-by-one to our groups. Then they gave us 15 minutes to come up with an agency name, tag-line and strategy and then present it to the whole room of ad executives, our client, COLAB committee members and even a reporter from the Oregonian. No pressure... really no pressure at all.

My group is great. We all meshed together quickly and eagerly jumped into our assignment. At the end of 15 minutes, we emerged with --

Wet Paint
Every brand could use a fresh coat.

Agency team Wet Paint!

The other group of five interns named themselves Silo 5 - Ideas that ignite. I'm excited to see the directions we each go with our campaigns. (Video of the presentations soon to come!)

After a thorough and informative client meeting with Mark Shea from Columbia Sportswear, the day transitioned into a social event with more PAF members flooding through the POP ART doors, all kicked-off with the unveiling of our new COLAB shirts.

Shirts for each Lab Rat/Colab Intern.

Mingling+Networking+Snacks+Beer

These pictures and others can be found at the COLAB Flickr group.

I think my big takeaway at the end of the orientation day was how immediately impressed I was with the intense community feel of the PAF group. I suppose it was evident all along considering I was jumping into a program in which "competitors" literally share employees and students are allowed to have creative control of a real advertising account--but, wow. Perhaps it's a Portland thing? I took this internship with the intent of exploring the Portland business scene in comparison to Seattle's. I feel already this much more potent sentiment of group-good. Jamie Sexton, the director of PAF, stressed to us her belief that Portland has this ability to be a creative hub for business in the country if all the agencies work together to build a stronger network of entrepreneurs, new thinkers and young talent. I'm excited to see what this mentality looks like from the inside during my next weeks interning.

Big BIG thank you to all of the PAF COLABORATORY Committee members, Mark Shea from Columbia Sportswear and POP ART for hosting a most fabulous shindig. I feel really lucky to be a part of this program and this community.


Tomorrow marks my first day of interning with Ascentium.

Looking Forward To...
Having the veil that is the first week of being an intern over me when asking as many gosh darn questions as I like, whenever I like.

Scared about...
Making this transition from the graphic design world of project management to the ad/marketing realm. My work before consisted of brawls over Pantone color chips. This media buying stuff and multi-outlet campaign craziness has me on my toes.

Today's the Day - COLAB Orientation

This afternoon is the kick-off event for my summer internship with COLABORATORY. I will finally be meeting my fellow interns, finding out which team I will be on, meeting folks from all the agencies AND, as if that weren't enough, having our first meeting with our client, Columbia Sportswear.

I think I am ready.

I ought to be ready.

Just found out a reporter from The Oregonian will be there.

Golly, I hope I don't drop an f-bomb.

Still freaking out about stupid things, like what to wear.

So EXCITED!

So, so, so... AHHHHHH!

My feelings can be summed up in this, my first ever video blog -

The Morning Before COLAB Orientation from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

I will blog more tomorrow morning or tonight after all the festivities are done (yes, there are festivities and even our very own custom COLAB shirts). Until then, you can follow my Twitter happenings live.

Here we go...

A Map to COLABORATORY Treasures

For a preliminary act as a COLABORATORY project manager intern, I want to make sure all of us interns (and coordinators alike) know where we are going.

Check out this Google Map directory of all the participating 2009 Colab agencies and locations for our Friday group work sessions. The Map is open for anyone to, dare I say, collaborate on, so feel free to add anything I missed.

No excuses! Download your directions to our sites now and don't get lost; for sure an intern first-day no-no.


View COLABORATORY 2009 in a larger map

COLAB Agencies

Upon receiving my COLABORATORY Survival Guide--a 15 page PDF detailing everything I need to know about my summer internship--I found out which three agencies I will be interning at.

Three very different agencies in three very different chunks of the Portland-metro area -

WEEKS 1 & 2

Ascentium is an interactive marketing and technology consultancy firm.




WEEKS 3 & 4

Grady Britton is an advertising, marketing, media and communications agency.

WEEKS 5 & 6

Anvil is a search engine marketing company.

They all make me very excited and very eager to get the Colab ball rolling. With my project management skills spanning simply my limited knowledge from my three years at a graphic design agency, I'm sure all three of these locations will prove to be extremely educational.

Orientation is this Friday where I will meet all my fellow interns and then I start this Monday, the 13th at Ascentium.