More of the First Day

Alright, I have no idea where to begin. Overall my day went very well. It started with me walking up to the reception desk and me hearing “ADAM” from the office to my left. My boss, Grant, walked up to me and introduced himself and then told me I looked exactly like my facebook photo. Inside I was thinking, “Oh god, what have I gotten myself into,” but now it’s just funny. I’m laughing about it right now as I think about it.

So after I got a tour of the office, I sat in on the weekly WIP (Work in Progress) meeting. I learned about their clients and what they have planned for them. From their Grant gave me a quick history of MEC and Y&R. It is easily the smallest agency I have ever been in/heard of. From what I understood a small agency usually encompasses 30-50 people. Here Y&R and MEC combined have a total of 9 people. I guess they are all pretty happy they have me to help them with their work. So the head of the agency is Jason, and right now I don’t really know what he does but he is a cool guy. Then the one account manager is Rowena, but everyone calls her Row. Then my boss is Grant and he is in charge of strategy and media. Under Grant are Steve and Matt who are media planners. Then in the creative department, there is Louise and I can’t remember the other girl’s name. They are both the junior creatives, and the senior creatives are in India. Perks of working at a global agency huh?

After my crash course at the agency, I started to be trained on the software and I learned how to buy TV spots. Matt went over the program with me, and boy did it look hard when he was doing it. Sure enough when I started it on my own it was pretty easy. The only hard part is making sure you stay under budget and buy spots that will reach enough people.

It took me forever to do this because I almost had to teach myself to do it. Matt did a good job of explaining it to me, but it was just one of those things I had to do myself to figure it out.

Besides buying TV spots, I went to all these different client and rep meetings. One was with AdShell at the café below the office. AdShell is an out of home company that sells media to MEC. Then I had a client meeting with Colgate-Palmolive about a direct mail campaign that they are doing with the NZ Post Office. When the guy introduced himself as from the NZ Post, the first thing I thought of was, “why is Colgate using a newspaper to do direct mail?” Cultural differences collide yet again.

that was my whole day in a nutshell, it felt pretty good being there too. Grant asked me what I knew about advertising too, and I gave him my answer and, to my surprise, he was impressed. I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t think my answer was that good, but apparently Grant thought that would be my answer when I was done with my 10 weeks. So I guess they think I’m pretty smart. Hopefully I can keep impressing them.