Today seems to have been much more laid-back than the last two days, with more panel-style seminars and lots of group meetings with various professionals. This morning was a bit of a disaster though, the train was 30 minutes late so I missed almost all of the IPG seminar with Martha Stewart et al about gender balance in the advertising community. Everyone has been saying great things about it and I plan on watching a video of it later. Once we finally made it to Cannes the seminar room was slam-full, so Maggie and I had to watch the end of the IPG seminar and all of the Yahoo! seminar on a screen in the adjoining theater. Also, when ordering breakfast this morning, what I thought was quiche or frittata ended up being cheesecake, so I ate cheesecake… for breakfast. It was a bizarre and messy morning. The Yahoo! seminar was very cool though, because their guest was Robert Redford, whom I admire so much for his class and talent. He talked a lot about how Sundance developed and a bit about his personal film career, and it was a very interesting and engaging conversation to listen to. A choice quote: “The only thing that really succeeds is change.”
After Redford we had a meeting in the Young Lions Zone with Julie Winskie of Porter Novelli NY and two of her younger associates. Porter Novelli is a PR firm and I was surprised by how appealing PR sounded to me. It’s been a little daunting being here with all of these advertising people who do such amazing creative work, as I really don’t have much artistic talent of my own and I’m not sure I could hang in this world. But PR seems like a field I’d be a good fit for, and I like the fact that it seems easier to do PR rather than advertising for a nonprofit. By which I mean to say, PR seems much less product-driven than advertising, on the whole. It’s a bit strange being here with so many people, some of my classmates included, who pretty well know where their passion lies and what career path they want to follow. I’m just so fascinated by everything I see and it’s all so new to me – almost every job title I’ve heard here sounds appealing, but I’m finding myself more and more drawn to the idea of using creativity in mass communications to enact social change.
Our next meeting was with Noelle Cottrell, the creative director of Fitzgerald in Atlanta. He was entertaining and gave us lots of advice about starting out in the ad business. It’s funny how much advice differs from person to person though – it seems like no one can really agree what it is that gets you a job, and I think this kind of applies in every field. The job search isn’t formulaic like it was for our parents and so much of it just seems to be about a specific relationship between the employee and whatever particular company it is that they work for. It’s almost like dating, as in, the only people who really know what makes the relationship work are the two people in it, and what makes their relationship work wouldn’t work with any other two people. Sure there’s general advice, like be respectful and appreciative, etc., but those things aren’t really the bread-and-butter of the relationship. Same seems to apply to employees and employers, which is scary, because it seems like it’s going to take a very long time to find that right match. We also met with Nancy Seliger of Fleischman Hillard and Greg Pinelo of GMMB this afternoon. I was really interested in the work GMMB does – they work exclusively on political and public service campaigns, Democratic campaigns specifically. They handled Obama’s ’08 campaign so I really enjoyed hearing Greg’s stories about that.
Another note: I won an Xbox 360 with Kinect from a Microsoft Advertising giveaway today! They’re shipping it to me in Athens. Video games generally bore me so I’m not sure what I’ll do with it when I get back, although I have wanted to try out Kinect. I’ve never won anything before so it was pretty cool. After all the seminars ended this afternoon we went to Google’s happy hour on their beach pavilion. They had really good free drinks and lots of other cool free stuff, like a kiosk where you could design your own little Droid character and have it put on a t-shirt. Tonight was the Young Lions party, which I must say was probably one of the most fun times I’ve had on this trip. There was a great DJ (and a mediocre band) and free drinks and lots of swanky decorations. It was also on the beach, with a big dance floor and a stage set up. We had a blast mingling with the other young people there from all over the world and dancing to the DJ. I love how there is almost exclusively American music in bars and whatnot over here, for one because music is such a big part of my everyday life, but also because I’m starting to get a little homesick and it’s nice to hear some familiar stuff. In short, the party was awesome. After the party, not so much. We waited for a cab for a full two hours and when we finally got one it was expensive – and then when I got home, I realized I’d lost my iPhone at the party. Bad end to an otherwise great night, but c’est la vie (I can use that phrase now without it being annoying because I’m in France).
No comments:
Post a Comment