From creating the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, to his numerical conspiracies of our universe. Please join us for an evening that has absolutely nothing to do with Advertising!

There will be food and beverages (non-alcoholic) provided.

Mission Workshop and Bicycle Coffee Co. will be holding a black & white analog photography show to benefit charity and photographers alike in December. The show is open to photographers of all ages and experience who wish to show their work and sell it to the public. Proceeds from the sale of prints will be evenly split between the artist and one of two non-profit organizations listed below as chosen by the buyer of the print:

The Youth Leadership Institute: yli.org

Bikes to Rwanda: bikestorwanda.org

Opening Celebration:
December 10th
6pm – 10pm

Location:
40 Rondel Place
San Francisco
Ca 94103

For more information, please visit: http://www.missionworkshop.com/event/photoshow/

We spent most of the morning harvesting healthy greens from kale to collards, even some bok choy. Then we washed the fresh greens to be bundled and given out for free.

Since opening earlier this January, The Free Farm has grown and given away more than 1,000 pounds of organic produce to its surrounding community. They offer workshops in gardening, environmental, and wellness education to foster their vision of community and generosity.

The Free Farm is open Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10am-2pm. To learn more, visit their site at thefreefarm.org

Christian is a Senior at the Academy of Art School of Advertising, follow at@christiandean

Ready for a FED talk at 60 Federal? This Thursday, November 18, 2010, meet with one of the industry’s top recruiters Anjana Kacker of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners. Time is 6-7PM in Room 505 at 60 Federal. Don’t forget to ask questions and share your thoughts!

The three-day conference also showcased the most innovative ideas in the “Startup Alley” where startup hopefuls battled for audience votes to get on stage to pitch against finalists in the “Startup Battlefield” for a grand prize of $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. An expert panel of judges from the industry were pitched to by 27 startups that are at the brink of rocking our worlds.

There was no shortage of enthusiastic startups in the competition, from gamer targeted dating site, GameCrush to real-time social media curation platform, DataSift. Other notable mentions were website performance and security service, CloudFlare and free text and voice calling provider, Pinger. But the one that rose to the top of the competition and beat out over 800 applicants went to Palo Alto based, Qwiki. They impressed the judges and audience with their presentation of an innovative platform for experiencing information through rich media content and comprehensive verbal text from different web sources. The platform presents the information through interactive video created on the fly without human intervention as an intuitive way of experiencing information.

To check out more about the startups from the competition visit http://tcrn.ch/d5eKxo

Christian is a Senior at the Academy of Art School of Advertising, follow at @christiandean

In times of economic uncertainty, it’s best when you turn to creative problem solving. Good thing we got an education doing that. The question is how can we grab the attention of busy creative directors and recruiters who didn’t give half a damn about us? Our emails got ignored. Social networking didn’t work. We knew we had to go really traditional but deliver it in an interesting way. Direct mail was the answer.

When you check your mail (not the e kind), what do you still get excited for? Not the ads. Not the pizza coupons. Definitely not the phone bills. The one thing I still get excited for is the Netflix envelope. Our solution was to disguise our work in a cheeky makeshift Netflix envelope that served as an unsuspecting surprise in any CD’s mailbox. We went to work. Justin put together a gorgeous reel of our work in After Effects and burned it on to DVDs. I designed the envelope, and added little twists that induced double takes. We painstakingly hand-made 30 of them, and mailed it to 15 of our favorite agencies. The postage was not cheap.

In less than twenty-four hours, we got a handful of glowing responses from some top agencies in San Francisco. We couldn’t believe it! Jump to two weeks later, and we are happy and grateful to call ourselves interns at the Evolution Bureau.

The lesson we learned is that emails can easily be deleted. You have to stand out. Make the powers that be do a double take. And oh yeah, find a talented and hardworking partner.

The story ends here, but our journey is just about to begin. Netflix, please don’t sue us.

Derek Lui is a Copywriting Intern at the Evolution Bureau and recent School of Advertising grad at the Academy of Art.

Evolution Bureau is a pioneer in digital advertising and one of the industry’s leading companies. The agency specializes in both traditional and digital advertising solutions as well as advanced video production services through EVB Productions, its new business unit. By leveraging a consumer-centric approach that integrates strategy with entertainment and interactivity, it is able to deliver innovative advertising campaigns that create brand awareness, enhance customer relationships and encourage long-term brand loyalty. Throughout the years, EVB has directed ad campaigns for many recognizable brands, including Adidas, Levi’s, Sephora and The Golf Channel.

Four hours later, our brains were officially fried. We recessed for a bit to finish tying up all the other account management delights such as billing, client emails and team check-ins.

4 o’clock rolled around and our final regroup was scheduled before the weekend. We all walked in the conference room a bit worn out from the long week. Rather than getting down to business, we randomly proceeded to do a team photo shoot in the conference room as we waited for our director. To our surprise, our account director entered the room and stopped dead in her tracks. We froze like kids who were just caught by mom. But she quickly broke the silence by her infectious laughter of surprise and amusement. I think it’s safe to say that the meeting was highly productive.

Instead of buckling down, we hopped next door to the bar for a quick drink (and team bonding of course). Chuck, the bartender greeted us by name.  He always has the perfect cure for the common advertising brain fog: beer.

After a quick drink, the team decided to regroup on Saturday for a few hours just to wrap up the competitive report. I mean, it was Friday after all, and we were just physically and mentally exhausted.

The following week, we presented the deck and the clients loved it. Can you say, nailed it?! Yes, yes we did. It’s the small victories that really make the difference folks and this project was no exception.

Although the 25 cent agency beers and next door bar are definite perks, in times of hell, it’s the people that that make you want to work your ass off and come back for more.  We’re a large family of hard-working advertising lovers. But be warned, buckle your seatbelt and bring a shot (or two) of espresso, because it’s gonna be an intense ride.

Emily is an Assistant Account Manager at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners is a full-service advertising agency, founded in 1983 by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein. Located in San Francisco, the agency has been responsible for many well-known advertising and marketing campaigns across all media and also leads work on global campaigns for such clients as Hewlett-Packard, Adobe Systems, and Comcast.

It’s Visual Thesaurus, and this is how it works:

When you type in a word, the software maps out its synonyms, which you can click on to move further in the chain.

For example, I typed in “art” and Visual Thesaurus spit back 8 synonyms. Not bad. But let’s say I want to explore “fine art”. Now it gives me an additional 17 words. That’s 23 words in just two chains. That’s a lot of headline ideas, visual ideas, or just ideas in general.

The catch is that it’s not free. But you can try out several searches before it prompts you to buy. (If you’re a starving student, you can always clear your cookies to try it again and again.)

Shout out to Lisa Mueller of Godfrey Q and Partners for the tip.

Tuan is a copywriting student at AAU. See his work at www.copytuan.com

한학기가 남았다. 그렇게 길것만 같던 4년이 빨리도 오는구나.. 이번학기가 시작할때는 정말… 우울했다. 졸업은 코앞인데 막상 세워 놓은 계획도 없고 준비도 되지 않았고 무엇보다 학교를 나가 세상과 맞선다는 것이 두려웠다.

유학생이기 때문에 이겨내야하늗 여러가지 불리한 조건들이 나를 더 주춤하게 했고 생각이 많아 질수록 용기는 없어 졌다.

이런말을 들은 적이 있다. Bad luck often brings good luck.- 불행은 종종 행운이 된다고.. 머리에 쥐나도록 고민하고 괴로하고 있을때 행운이 참 예상치 못 한 문으로 걸어들어 오더라..

예상치 못한 순간이라 준비된 것도 없었고, 막상 내 포트폴리오도 없었다. 항상 듣는 말이지만 인터뷰때 솔직하게 내 자신을 보여주는 일은 참 어려웠다. ㅋㅋ 특히 대화의 주제가 나 자신에 관한 것이 어서 더 어색했다. 그래도 어쩌리.. 그냥 있는 그대로의 나의 모습을 보여 드렸다. 내가 뭘 하고 싶은지, 무엇을 배웠는지, 내가 무엇을 잘 하는지.. 인터뷰를 하면서 느낀 거지만, 광고라는게 어떻게 보면 거짓말을 참말 처럼 하는 일이라 그런지, 몸에 배여있는 습관처럼 자신감 있게 나를 더 돋보이게 말 할수 있었다. 습관이란 무서운 놈이다.

참, 정작 내가 뭘 하는지 설명이 없었네.. Long story short.. 광고과 4학년이고 Account planning 전공. 2006년 여름에 AAU 시작해서 2010 겨울 졸업 예정. 인턴을 하는 곳은 현재 두군데, 하는일은 비슷하다. 잡지사 그리고 새 비지니스 런칭 하는일을 메인으로 하고 PR, 그리고 마케팅 부서 일까지 도와서 하고 있다.

광고를 배우긴 했지만 광고 회사에서 일 하고 싶은 생각은 없다.

광고공부를 하고나서 느낀 거지만,이 일이 내가 하고 싶은일에 있어서 탄탄한 배이스가 되어 주고 또 Account planning 이라는 전공이 내가 하고 싶은 PR 분야에서 나를 업그래이드 시켜 줄수 있는 지식을 제공해 줄것이다.

광고를 배우면서 느낀 거지만, 참 매력적인 분야 인거 같다. 한때를 사람을 농락해서 클라이언트가 원하는대로 물건을 팔아 돈을 벌어야 하는 일이라는 생각 때문에 힘들었지만 ㅋㅋ 이제 보면 많은 무한한 가능성이 있는 공부 인거 같다.

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For those of you who don’t speak Korean:

Graduation, getting a job and the pressure…

Just a semester to go, senior year came much faster then I had expected. When I started this semester I was super depressed. Graduation was right in front of my face and I didn’t have a plan or even felt ready to go out into the working world.

So many restrictions and conditions because of my international student status stopped me from what I wanted to do and made me lose my confident and courage.

Someone once told me “Bad luck often brings good luck.” When I was having a miserable time just worrying about all these things, unexpected luck walked in to my life.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have my portfolio with me or have anything to really show her. People always say, “be yourself,” when you’re preparing for an interview. I knew, being myself wasn’t going to give me a job for sure. Since all we talked about was me, me and me it was even more awkward.

She asked me what it is that I do, what I have learned from the AAU, what I know and what I want to accomplish.

We all know, at least I think, what we do is somewhat… lying. We as advertisers, we tell people very confidently what they need even when they might not need anything. I am not saying that’s all we do but part of our job is to sell client’s products and make them money, no? I feel like I channeled that snarky, know-it-all, “this is good for you,” attitude we try to attain in so many of our ads. I was very confident and sounded like I knew what I was talking about, even though I was pretty lost the entire interview.

Oh I forgot to introduce myself! Long story short. I am in Account Planning. I started in 2006 during the summer semester and expect to graduate this winter. Where I am interning right now, I mostly do PR work. I help the publication company launch their new magazine by doing marketing research, target studies, creating events and more representation to get this magazine/blog out there for people to see and know about it.

I’ve learned a lot about this field and how it works but I don’t think I am in love with this business. After it all, I don’t think I really want to work at an ad agency specifically. I know what I’ve learned from this school is extremely valuable and I hope this information serves to be the base of what I want to do.