Today Is The Day

Ai que nervoso que da. Here I am in the search for a job again. I've been dreaming about New York, literally. I had a couple of dreams tonight where a potential employer at TVP said, "sorry, I tried but we don't have the budget to hire you". Did I say dream?? More like a nightmare for sure.

Nothing worse than daytime TV and the many ads about debts and community colleges. It sucks the ambition and encouragement right out of you. I need to keep in mind that in order to keep excited about searching for a job, I need to get out of this house. Go to wireless coffee shops. That's right, that's what I'm doing tomorrow.

Some caffeine never hurt anybody's confidence.

Open Eyes

I was born one month earlier. Some people say that’s because I’m always in a hurry. I say that’s because I’ve always been curious.

When you’re curious, you seek out. And that’s what I have always loved to do. My favorite part of everything has always been the middle, the courtship, the process, the seeking out, the means to an end. That’s where the fun happens; learning, observing, absorbing, connecting the dots and making something out of it. In another words, making ideas happen out of it.

Someone once asked me what animal I have a lot in common with and I picked fish. “Because I always have my eyes open and I could die for a snack”, I said. It’s true, my eyes always wonder and roam, searching for new experiences and emotions, for human truths, and big ideas.

I love to uncover new insights and use them to develop new ideas through different mediums such as paintings, short stories, movies and advertising. I believe you can find insights everywhere, especially in the shower and through random train conversations. A professor of mine once said, “If you are not excited about thinking of ideas during your morning shower, it’s probably time to quit your job”.

I live for the moments where ideas spark on my brain and spit out of my mouth.

Inspiration

Tonight I just feel like writing. Like mapping out my thoughts and feelings like Scott (Mullen) said. If I were a brand, what would that experience be like for the people around me? For my potential hire? For God's Sake, let it be a hire. Let my writting make sense and let my brain communicate well with my mouth. Let my nerves chill and my heart beat faster. Let me come out. The real me, the motivated, interested, hard worker, dependable, excited, idea-driven, fact searching, idealist, professional amateur come out.

Dan is such a great husband. He compared planners with movie directors and music producers. They conduct. They direct. They demand. They are infectuous. They know what will work or if they don't know, they have the best huntch. They inspire. Bravo, Dan.

I also want to acknowledge Russel Davis. Just learned about him from Claire Hassid. I just read a few of his postings on his blog. Love it. Love his Valentine movie for his wife and his appreciation for his son's poem ("The seaside is open" The best line, he says).

I wish I could write and archive everything I notice and appreciate. Or at least the things that I notice and are different and weird. Like that Opa restaurant in South Beach. Women dancing on top of the tables while the middle-aged tourist from the Midwest quietly sits on the next table eating his food. Well, not so quetly since he went on and danced on top of the table himself. This is South Beach.

Change

I think I am pro change. I just recently cut my hair out of impulse but also boredom and heaviness. I just moved from Chicago to Miami out of hope and motivation. I just left a job in project management to pursue one of the hardest jobs in advertising, become a planner. I left my home country when I was 15 to live in a town that was not even on the map. I left my pc laptop for an Apple one. I am about to leave the 20's behind. I have started to seriously consider the possibility of motherhood. I have just asked my brother for a financial favor which I would never have done that last year out of pride. I decided that I do not indeed like cats (I was under the impression that I did like cats when I first moved in with Carolina but Mushy just pisses me off). I have left my husband to live with a lesbian roomate. I have become more of an American than I ever wanted to.

Rick from Leo Burnett said that planners are change agents. We need to be comfortable with change and being the change agent. We have to not blink. We have to come from a place of Integrity. We gotta find who is that one person that is more receptible to our ideas and invest in him/her. We got to embrace tension and trust our instinct.

Had I trusted my instinct, my TrueBetty, Oil and Heineken projects would have had better creative. I need to learn from that without killing myself over it.

Total brand experience

I wish I had though of this before but why the hell didn't I write the most interesting learnings that I collected from this bootcamp?? Why? How dumb. I have to start thinking faster on my feet.

We had a visiting planner from Mullen. He was interesting. He was a runner and his toe nails were the longest I've seen in a guy. I'm sorry that this is the one thing that I think of when I think of him, but I was sitting in the first row. Anyway, he talked a lot about the brand experience and how can it become better? We discussed Amazon (make the boxes more interesting, with copy on them or a cool design?), Tide (better engineered lids), Base (super cool store on Lincoln Road--make it more local by having local artists displaying art or a fashion show or change bits of the decor every month)...It was encouraging to think that whatever it is, there's always a way to make it more of an interesting experience (except for Apple maybe because it's already absurdly amazing).

He also told us to "map our brand experience". Be very detailed about everything that happens in the store. How the consumers behave, do they buy anything, do they spend a lot of time at the store, do they come to socialize, etc... He also talked about how can your brand be an authority in something. For instance, they did a campaign for carbohydrates where they talked to nutritionists who backed them up by saying carbs are healthy. How can Starbucks be the authority in coffee? Or Apple in creative technology?

People also always ask what is a brand? A promise, an idea, a person, a friend? I guess I think of it as acquaintances. There are lots of people out there that you don't know, lots that you recognize and you smile to and that you flirt with, lots that you have actually taken the step to interact with and there are those that you liked that intereaction and you continued to come back for more and they become friends. So I guess that brands are like people...they can be strangers, acquaintances, friends and best of friends. There are brands I can't live without: Apple, Trader Joe's, Ben&Jerry's, Gap, H&M, all drugstore cosmetics, Diet Coke, Payless, FOX, wow, this is harder than I thought. I don't know how loyal I am to brands actually.

He also talked about the 5 senses and how that is important to a brand experience. Base, for instance, has the best smell as soon as you walk in. Design is amazing, music is inviting and intriguing (world music). They don't have a cafe which it would be a cool place to hang out at while reading all the amazing worldly magazines they have.

Rigor

Today our visiting planner asked us to "define what makes our partner special as a planner". A few things went through my mind but I guess that what I have been learning from Lee is that he knows how to conduct our meetings. He knows what he wants to get out of the meeting and he premeditates how he's going to do that. I guess that when I go into meetings I have an idea of what's going to happen but I kind of go with the flow, the vibe, the inspiration or whatever you wanna call it. I gotta work on that.

I also find it very hard to take compliments. I'm overly self-critical. I think I'm a masochist sometimes. Lee mentioned something about me being "a rigorous idea explorer". Whatever that means. I guess that I do seek for so many possible answers and avenues that it it can be exhausting. I gotta work on that and turn that into a positive thing. Or make it my "mystique" or whatever. Rick (planner) said every planner should have its mystique.

I can't wait to go back to Chicago. We have 2 more weeks of school to go and it's a scary time. Networking and looking for jobs is all ahead of us. Again. I need to send an email to Frankel to let them know I'm interested in doing some freelancing as soon as I arrive in Chicago. $$$$ But I have been working on my book lately. I guess that I decided that I'm going to include Special K after all. Weird how I keep working on the same brands...Miller, Coke, Special K. What's next Mr. Goodwrench? I want to because I want to work at Lapiz. I have to tell Gustavo that. And I have to tell Jenny that I want to work at Leo Burnett as well because it's true. Rick is such an intense motivator. Such an enthusiast. He brings out the best in me, I think. Now back to the briefs...TrueBetty, Glow, Special K, Oil and Wendy's. All possible contenders.