Thursday, July 12, 2007

I'm a workin' stiff just like the rest of 'em

Well, my life as a full-time student is finally over. I can't hold off the real world any longer. I got my Bachelor's degree, went straight for my Master's degree, and now it's time to face the music. Are there Doctoral degrees in Advertising? Ha! No chance.

But even though they are taking away my freedom in some ways, my new job rocks! I just started on Monday for Jack Morton Worldwide, which is an experiential marketing agency in New York. Jack Morton has been around since the 40s, but it has traditionally always been a production agency that specializes in creating engaging brand experiences for corporations. They work in B2C, B2B, Internal Branding, and Public Events, and the stuff they've done is incredible. Check it out: http://www.jackmorton.com/.

The great thing is that I'm coming in at a great time in Jack Morton's history. Like I said, they have traditionally been a production company. Before now, a company would come to them and say, "We need an event that will inspire our customers/employees, and that is in touch with our current advertising campaign." Then Jack Morton's creatives would get together, brainstorm, come up with some cool ideas, and execute on them. This worked very well for many years.

But now Jack Morton has decided to think bigger and smarter than before. Jack Morton doesn't want to just be the people who make an amazing event. They want to be able to answer the tough questions, like "Why did you go for this design for the video instead of the other design? Is there research that told you to go this direction? How will you guarantee success for our brand from this event?" All scary questions in the past.

Laura Shuler, President of the U.S. operations, decided that we need to incorporate strategic planning and consumer research, like a traditional ad agency would, into our capabilities, instead of just getting into a room and brainstorming. In comes the Experiential Planning Group, which I have just joined. For the past year, our group has been working on what the planning process would look like at Jack Morton, and how to differentiate it from a traditional agency's planning process. We have just rolled it out to our NYC office, and now we're going around the world to all our offices to roll out the process.

While I can't get into specifics, it's incredibly exciting. With the fragmentation of media splitting the advertising world into little bits over the past few years, it has become harder and harder as marketers to get a message across to the mass population. Less people watch TV than years before, and if they do watch TV, there are hundreds of channels instead of three networks. There are thousands of different magazines and newspapers, and millions of websites. Not to mention new media options, the iPhone, TiVo, and the other countless ways that people consume (and choose not to consume) media. How can a marketer pick the right place to place their message?

The one thing that will always stay the same, no matter how many different media there are: people always crave great experiences. The chances for someone remembering the brand name after watching a beautifully-made commercial are very small compared to the chances someone will remember the brand name when they are walking across the quad on their college campus and they play a cool game and get free stuff from a brand representative, or they go to a rock concert sponsored by a specific brand, or they see an exhibit in a museum that a brand is sponsoring. Jack Morton creates every aspect of the experience that will engage the person, so that they remember and get involved. I can't talk about examples of our own work, but a great example is the Virgin Music Festival. I went last year, and I'm going again this year. I have told countless numbers of people how much fun I had seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Who at the Virgin Music Festival. I have become a walking, talking billboard for how cool an experience I had with the Virgin Music brand.

One quote from Confucius on the Jack Morton website is something that really hit home with me when I was interviewing, and it has amazing relevance in the fragmented world of today's advertising:

"Tell me and I forget.
Show me and I remember.
Involve me and I believe."

I can't wait to get working.