watch what you consume -- or sketch it

One of my favorite Portland bloggers and radtastic Creatives, Kate Bingaman-Burt of Obsessive Consumption, gave an adorable talk today during lunch about her work. Kate makes sketches of all things consumption -- things she buys, receipts, bills, coupons. I really enjoyed seeing her in person and remembering that all these amazing people I covet out in the blog world are indeed just people like us. Kate had little to no artist aspirations growing up, but found herself happily in the midst of projects after she started exploring her interests in peoples' consumption patterns. You sketch, you think, you blog, you talk, you smile -- and thus a good life of projects is born.

Hello, W+K! I've been dreaming about you.

At some point I met the right people, I went to the right place at the right time, I told the right stories that got the right laughs and I managed to not trip and fall as I walked through some really big, oversized metal doors -- which all adds up to me finding out today that I got a job at the dreamy ad firm, Wieden+Kennedy, as a freelance project manager. I am shocked and excited, to say the least.

I was at the point only yesterday where I resolved to not settle for anything but HUGE here in Portland because I knew I wanted to spend more of my energy on the Sirocco Research Labs' film projects in LA. And that is when the universe chuckled to itself and said, "A-OK, Miss Reardon. Let me tell you a funny joke called Getting What you Wished For..." This really couldn't be more ideal, I'm now realizing. I will be working freelance at W+K while still having time and resources to jump down to LA for weekend shoots. And more importantly, the people at W+K are already big fans of SRL. I gushed about all my side projects in my interviews and got a big proverbial high five from everyone for making a werewolf movie. W+K seems to be an epicenter of all great side projects in Portland. Restaurants, films, art shows, bands, webisodes -- you name it, likely someone in that gorgeous building is working on it.

I leave for LA this week to finish shooting Red Moon and then when I get back it is go go go time for my very first real world big kid job at what will likely be one of the greatest play lands I have ever been lucky enough to stumble upon. No seriously, they have a human-size birds nest at the top of their atrium and they bring in premo bands for lunch time concerts in their salvaged lumber auditorium and there's a roof top patio that over looks the Pearl and there are dogs everywhere inside. Gush. Gush. Gush.



Beautiful building aside, these folks also really have their stuff figured out when it comes to creativity and pushing yourself to make bigger and better things. W+K has a motto or two that I couldn't agree with more. The first being the original proclamation of founders Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. "Don't act big, no sharp stuff, follow directions and shut up when someone is talking." Rules to live by.


And a more recent credo of W+K's is to "Fail Harder." Beautifully illustrated in their Portland office by way of more than 100,000 clear push pins.



This is going to be a fun and challenging gig, folks. For sure. I'll keep you updated.

Read more about W+K on their site or on their blog.

this is what summer looks like

in two days i move away from my amazing little home in Portland, away from Ben, Chad and Jeff, back to Seattle. I am excited for the new school year to start, but I can't help but be pretty sad to say farewell to such a lovely summer.

to paraphrase my summer; it was fantastic. allow me to show you.

this is what summer looks like -

this is what summer looks like from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

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.

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.

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.

good ideas

There are few ideas that cross my path that give me such ample fuel to explain and generally geek out about marketing quite like these two.

I often find myself fumbling when I try to explain my business marketing degree to others. I run in a mostly artistic, creative and liberal circle which translates to a generally hostile mentality when it comes to anything business related. After assuring them that not all marketers adore Super Bowl ads, nor do we all focus on profit oriented advertising schemes, I then launch into a spiel about how I really just love people with good ideas. I love the idea of making one person's BIG, good idea happen with other good ideas. Idealistic and hokey, I know, but really, its what got me through all those corporate finance classes in business school.

Best ideas I have heard this week; things I'm willing to word-of-mouth market and would love to get behind in a bigger way -

Contrail

It's bikes, it's art, it's community, it's clever. The Contrail, a chalk tool for bikes, had me at "pretty colors."

Contrail is a chalking device attached to bicyclists' wheels in order to create "trails" or bright ribbons of color in heavily trafficked biking areas. The idea being, bikers proactively create awareness of shared road spaces.

More bikers = more color = heads up for motor vehicles.

Contrail was a concept design submission for a 2008 contest and is not in production yet, but hopefully with enough support something will materialize soon.

Obviously, I think Portland would be an amazing place to kick off a product launch of the Contrail. Can you imagine the colors on Clinton Street or Hawthorne... or, really anywhere in this bike-loving town? It would be great. I suppose the frequent rain could be a problem, but that's a minor detail in the grand scheme of this art+bike+community love obsession.


Carrotmob
It's the opposite of boycotting.

Frustrated with the not-so productive nature of traditional activism and the act of boycotting, Carrotmob founders conceived the idea of "carrotmobbing." A large network of organized consumers supports on-mass a business that is choosing to make socially and environmentally responsible business practices. By mobbing the business all on one day, the business gets a ton of publicity and a ton of cash to support their worthy endeavors.

I had heard of Carrotmob before, but the full extent of its awesomeness really hit me this week when I learned about Carrotmob's recent invasion of Hot Lips Pizza in Portland. Carrotmob invaded Hot Lips and racked in a over $6,000 for the business on what typically would have been a slow Sunday with as little as $2,000 in sales. The added income will be used for Hot Lips' commitment to make their locations more energy-efficient.

Watch this video for more on Carrotmob and a look at the first ever Carrotmob event that slammed a liquor store with business in San Francisco.



Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.


Gosh! Good ideas. I love them. They make me want to MAKE THINGS!

my summer with Colaboratory

After a long and adventurous hunt, I have secured the illusive beast: an creative business internship in Portland, OR.

This weekend I found out that I will be part of Portland Advertising Federation's 2009 summer internship program, Colaboratory, serving as one of two Account Managers.

Colaboratory is 6 week program in Portland that accepts 10 junior or senior college students each year who are interested in writing, design, interactive multimedia, account management, production, strategy or public relations. We will be placed at three different Portland ad/marketing/design agencies for three two-week intensive internships over the course of the six weeks. During the six weeks, we will also be divided into teams of five--our mini agencies--and will compete head-to-head to develop a campaign pitch for a local company. Last year's company was Sameunderneath, a local clothing line. We do not know yet who the client will be this year--all they can tell us it is not Nike. The Internet rumors are true--the 2009 Colab client will be Columbia Sportswear! We will be meeting with the director of international marketing from Columbia on our first day of orientation.

Colaboratory's purpose is multi-functional. The local agencies get aptly funneled, highly qualified, eager interns, while PAF promotes young innovation city-wide and the interns get a broader perspective of the market and much more networking outlets. To say the least, it is an exciting program and for that reason and many others, I was highly invested in my application and was elated when I heard I was accepted.

Another function of the program is for the interns to be very public with their experiences to serve as a resource for other students looking to enter into an internship or the Portland business scene. The Colab interns are encouraged to blog, video-blog and Twitter about their experiences all throughout. That being said, I thought it would be fitting to make my first act as a Colab intern of the class of '09 to be a blog post about the details of my application (particularly seeing as it was the source of my blog-distraction for a few months).

My Colab Application ::

We were asked to provide three samples (shown below). I included 1) A group project Internet Marketing Plan for the Broadway Farmers Market in Seattle. Acted as group coordinator, designer and programmer for updated website, 2) DRY Soda Press Cards. With Turnstyle, acted as Project Manager and 3) Current marketing topic report on QR Code applications in package design.

One of the largest and most complex portions of the application was an open-ended response question where we were told we could use any form of media. The question asked us how we would explain to an automaker the value of marketing, PR and advertising when they are only concerned with price-reduction strategy. For my submission (shown below), I created a small book that reiterated my response using first a full page with charts, then just one paragraph, then one sentence and finally no words--the idea being, as an account manager you must be able to convey your team's idea in any way, whether that be a big long pitch or quick and short email. The book's cover was made with kraft paper and hand-sewn binding. Note the extra rad drawings of my "bull" and "bear" for the final page.

I grouped together all the main pieces into two bundles (shown below): the first included my résumé, business card, letters of recommendation, the application with my essay question responses and my little open-response book. The second bundle was my samples.

The whole thing was shipped out in this custom made envelope (shown below). Machine stitching on large sheets of kraft paper. Thanks to Maddy Eiche for letting me borrow her sewing machine!

And... then it was mailed and my Colab fate was resting in the hands of all the cool Portland professionals working with PAF.

The program is young (only in its second year), so I am sure it will be a growing process for all parties involved--but, I think that is what attracted me to the program. It is an adaptive concept that recognizes that there is no feasible way to learn everything about the creative business industry in the course of just one internship. Think bigger! Do more! Dive in the deep end and trust your skills! And most importantly, surround yourself with creative, excited, helpful individuals and figure it out. I am really excited to devote so much of my time this summer to this program. I am eager to find out who my fellow interns are and who our client will be. This summer has officially been dedicated to creativity and collaboration. Go go go.

I begin my stint with Colab on July 11th at which time all of you, my dear blog readers, will be subjected to a steady dosage of internship stories right here on Breakfast for Dinner. Prepare yourself, it is going to be an intense six weeks. You will soon read, see, hear and watch everything I encounter while venturing into the wild mix of the Portland Creative Class.

Über Nostalgic

I think I'm starting to get a wee bit nervous about leaving all of my friends and family for India. This is my last week in Seattle. To cope with this parting period, I've begun to compile my stash of "Home" photos to take with me on my trip to look at when I'm lonely. I'm going to miss a lot of things.

I'm going to miss work and all my super rad coworkers in Ballard:



I'm going to miss Portland--that is my parents and my friends and the brew pubs that all make up what I consider to be Portland:



I'm going to miss Annie and Hollis:


I'm going to miss Ben and pigeons (...no, no, no, scratch that, not pigeons):



And most of all, I'm going to miss Shakeface:


Ohh wait, there's Shakeface in India. I can totally do Shakeface in India!! Yes!! Homesickness cure discovered!

Stay tuned, blog readers. Loads of Indian Shakeface photos to come...