A win by any other name.

We won a pitch. Finally. It took a year and a half to win one. It feels good to win. Its why we are here, to win new business. So after all the work and time put in and a hard fought win over a lot of great pitches I should feel on top of the world but instead I feel exactly the same.

Well becuase the day you win one account there are 400 behind it that you have to pitch as well. I figure that you lose 9 of 10 pitches you participate in. Unless you work at CPB or W+K, pitches flow together, its great to win because you keep your job and maybe get a raise, if you lose usually no harm no foul. So I'm back pitching again today for Sigg water bottles, and tomorrow on to freezers, salsa, bronx zoo, dickies, One Show, D&AD, and portfolio. No rest for the weary.

Always on Display.

Faces pressed to the glass. Photos flashing. People constantly watching. Your second year feels a lot like this. You're expected to know the easy tricks and avoid them and move bigger and better.

We had our first presentation for the Navy today for our brands class. In my humble opinion I thought we did really well for a branch we knew nothing about. Of course it wasn't perfect but our team was all around pleased with the output. (see creative below)

Which is a good start. There seemed to be a lot of relearning this whole team thing again in the whole class. Some teams clicked had eager eyes to present and some teams leaned and slumped questioning their own work without knowing it, which creates a problem.

All the eyes look to the second years to see what will happen. Will they knock it out? Fail? Humiliate us? And while most of us would probably say I don't care, I feel the looks and pressure, but in a good way. I didn't come to this school just to make a good book. I came for a better work ethic, and god knows I've found one better than the last.

The sense of freedom of being almost gone has its benefits, the ability to just relax and do things you like for one, but that sense of freedom has a cost. Not caring at all. I can see how easy it would be to shrug off criticism in favor of a "I like it so screw it" attitude. To not try to improve it because it looks perfect in your head, and I completely understand.

But hopefully the feeling of 100 sets of eyes in the back of mind help push me a little further. Enjoy the work, comments are always welcome.

Do it for your mama.

Write advertisements for yourself. Its the mantra here. Do things that are cool that you like. Every teacher says it. The problem is no one does, me included.

We walk into review with our little pile of papers clutched in our arms hoping that the teachers see something that we missed or love the ideas that came out of our tired brains late last night. The 3-5 seconds of silence after a presentation are always the worst, unless you get cut off half-way through by Coz bellowing "Are you FUCKING kidding me?"

Most of the time it devolves into this:

"I see what you're trying to say but it isn't clear. This has been done before. Dig deeper. NEXT!"

It feels like the same advice every two weeks. Its frustrating. So in our desperation working on Sylvia's Soul Food my partner and I just went off on a tangent had some fun and came up with this little idea (Click for larger view):

The basic idea here: The high light of C-list celebrities lives.

I wasn't going to present it. I was afraid of it. I thought it would get ripped apart, laughed at, and discarded. I was afraid because it was just a joke that we threw around. I have to thank my partner for making me do it, since this would be lying on a notebook right now if it wasn't for him. It wasn't thrown away, instead it was approved, in a Coz/Wayne sorta way they're famous for.

The moral here was that we did something we liked and it worked. It has personality and humor that came from both of us. It was our idea. Our other ideas were manifestations of what we thought people wanted to hear.

Its so easy to forget that were here not to make things that sell stuff. We're here to make things that are funny or clever or intriguing, and hopefully people will remember that when they go out for groceries. If you make the ad for you, there is more voice passion and voice than any where else and people will like it.

Do it for your mama. She'll like it because you like it. She loves you the most.