180 LA — FOLLOW MY JOURNEY

We were at 180LA this week and this is the first advertising agency I have stepped into in Los Angeles - so it was very exciting!

And what a beautiful workspace it was, right on Ocean Ave with a beautiful view of Santa Monica Beach!

Our speaker from the agency was Duco Muller who is from Amsterdam (wonder what his creative concoction is!) and also the Head of Creative Service and Operations. He worked on Adidas' very successful 'Nothing is Impossible' campaign. Being familiar with the campaign made me feel like I was almost meeting a celebrity! I watched the ad when I was a kid in India and remember it pretty vividly - it was BIG.

In case you're wondering what he looks like... Yes! I stalked his LinkedIn page.

Reason #108 why I love the idea of working in advertising - you can have LinkedIn profile pictures such as above instead of the plain old boring 'professional' headshot in your business professional outfit.

Duco started the session by giving us two qualities that you need to have to make it in the world of advertising.

BE ORIGINAL & BE INTERESTING.

I have always wondered that about myself - Am I interesting enough to make it in advertising? (Advertising always fascinated me but seemed like a profession where you'd have to be a hardcore extrovert to be successful at - and I don't think I have enough extroverted traits - but does that make me uninteresting? Hmm..)

Once the session began, we started by seeing a video on 180LA and some of their prominent works - including my favorite - their work on The Academy's Logo. Then, we progressed into a group project where we are assigned in groups to come up with an innovative way to market a generic product on the basis of features such as key benefits, target, target insight, tone, deliverables and execution.

Some of the products present included a brick, a paper bag, a condom, a pencil, a banana and a stapler. My group was assigned the paper bag - yes, we thanked the sweet lord for not ending up with the condom.

We passed around the paper and were involved in coming up with different aspects of each product - so the project kept us thinking on our feet! Some of the ideas were.... pretty out there. But viola! Finally ended up with our beloved paper bag again and decided to market to bodybuilders and fitness freaks at a gas station campaign (that wasn't our choice, if you're thinking why on Earth..but hey! got to have an open mind for marketing).

We presented our idea and Duco loved it! He didn't have much to say to critique us - which tells us something was done right! Prof. Stefl always tells us chase our ideas rather than money and not be above any job or work because learning is everything! And going through this exercise made me think about that a lot.

We took a short break and guess what guys? Duco got us PIZZA!

I just cannot express how much I love Ad Agencies!

One thought I will take back from my trip to 180 LA and probably never forget is to fall in love with change! Because, like it or not change is constant.