WOO HOO!

we did it.

were done.

we DID IT!

WE WON!!!!

Team Wet Paint walk away with a victory today at the Columbia Sportswear pitch. Silo5 gave us serious run for our money though. Great experience. More blog/reflection later. Right now I'm packing my bag for my 8am flight to Vegas. No joke.

Woo hoo!

Getting a Minor in Google Studies

My third and last agency placement, Anvil Media, has been a whirlwind. As you probably noted by my lack of blogging, things have been busy. I'm already in my second week at Anvil and last week of COLAB!

In the face of the fun, crunch time madness of planning our Columbia Sportswear pitch for this Friday, there has still been time to learn a slew of new things at this agency placement.

Anvil does search engine optimization and social media marketing--two things I'm not even going to try and pretend I didn't Google before COLAB started. This is new territory for me, but it feels good to be this challenged. Anvil has a very lean business structure. Every person in their 12-person team has basically a comparable title to each other which translates to everyone having their own projects, doing their own research, their own analysis and their own pitching. It's really neat to see everyone work together in such a simplified environment. There are even weekly sessions where the entire team gets together and talks simply about cool stuff they've found that week (blogs, conferences, innovations, etc.). The thought being, this keeps everyone in the loop with not only one another, but also with industry happenings.

Don't let the tech-talk fool you though. The people at Anvil are a pretty is lively bunch. The other day, the office playlist took a romping tour of Dragonforce followed by some Gangster's Paradise. Crazy kids, I tell ya.

My basic takeaways from the SEO world so far pertain to client interaction. In my mind, that is really where Anvil earns their money. They take mass amounts of data and statistics and charts and boil it into a very approachable report and recommendations for a client to immediately put into action. Yes, most of their tools are platforms like Google Analytics, Google adWords, etc. that anyone can access, but Anvil's power rests in their expertise of the tools and their ability to immediately get the SEO ball rolling for a company that would normally be dwarfed by that much data.

It's almost as if what Anvil is offering their client base is 1 part concepts/actions and 3 parts education on what they should be doing. I suppose that is the nature of a company dancing in such relatively new territory. The machine of SEO work is moving pretty rapidly, but I can tell just from my short time here, Anvil has a solid grasp on the industry.

Oh, and one of the other big perks of working at Anvil Media; Heather Schwartz, COLAB Class of '08, is employed here. Heather has been a fantastic resource to have around when I think of random Wet Paint questions. And not to mention she's also just a really rad person. Woo hoo, for COLAB alums!

The Oregonian shows COLABORATORY some love

yeah, we are kind of a big deal -- in print and on the web.

It's all about ideas

One of the most rewarding and encouraging experiences I've had thus far during my COLABORATORY experience have been the times when I get to sit in on brainstorming session.

At both Ascentium and Grady Britton I have seen that in the world of ad/marketing no man is left behind. Brainstorm sessions revolve around every member of the team -- designers, project managers, media buyers, copy writers and interns alike. These sort of free flowing, all-out dump fests are so fantastic. The whole shebang is really show to be seen. It all begins with one good idea. I get excited and start scribbling things in my journal, throwing out random stories. Then someone references a seemingly unrelated event which triggers another idea for 5 other people. We all laugh. Someone reads a Tweet aloud. We laugh again. Then there's an awkward moment of deep-thought silence. Then the whole beast gets roaring again and 58 new ideas flush out on to the table, every single one of which can be traced back to the original good idea that the client had that we as an agency are trying to make BIG. Meetings like this rarely happened in the graphic design world--being on the content side of this creative process is great. Gosh. I'm really starting to like this whole creative strategy thing. I really am.

A sharpie rendition of what a brainstorm session looks like at GB.

space and love

I took a break from internship happenings for a project of a different sort.

This past weekend I spent nearly three days 'round the clock producing Jimmy Marble's latest short film, Cleo in the Universe.The experience (my first on a working set) was surreal, rewarding, exhausting, intensely filled with good friends and, did I mention, exhausting?

The film, I am sure, is going to be gorgeous. We filmed the whole piece in Super 8. Mind you, the film is set in space. Cleo in the Universe will be the most dreamy, soft rendition of space exploration you've ever seen. This I can guarantee.

I played Cleo, the captain of the SS Sweatheart who toils with the juxtaposition of finite love in an infinite universe. I wore a blue spacesuit, took advice from Karl, the onboard computer system, co-stared with the muppet known as Lt. Baby Baby and dreamt about a girl named Duke Jupiter.


Note worthy details from the weekend:

CLEO LEAK from Benjamin Bearclaw on Vimeo.

The warehouse we commandeered.




A picture from one of the many Twitter reports from production.

Big thank you to Jimmy for letting us all be a part of his amazing art. I am very inspired by your unbridled, absurd creative expectations and want to make shit with you for a long, long time. Good luck with post-production!

More to come on the Cleo in the Universe premier. Until then, think really hard about space and love. It'll be good for your imagination.

COLAB meets the future; a huge, awesome table

Last Thursday some of us COLABORATORY interns had the opportunity to meet the brilliant folks at Fashionbuddha, via a typetour of Portland hosted by the ever-so-connected Bram Pitoyo.

Creative Director Todd Greco showed us one of Fashionbuddha's crowning badass projects to date: their DIY touch screen table. Think Microsoft Surface ($17,000) meets a small budget ($1,000-ish). It really blew my mind. Interactive art gallery openings and collaborative symphonic sounds all coming out of one relatively simple contraption. It's agencies like Fashionbuddha that make me increasingly thrilled by the creative work being pumped out of Portland. Great stuff, Fashionbuddha. Thanks for having us!



To watch Todd's presentation on how a DIY touch screen table is made and the insane apps Fashionbuddha has made to go along, see his speech from Ignite Portland.