NEW YORK CITY

When was the last time you did something on a whim, last minute, or spur of the moment? For me it was last week. I packed up my most “advertising cool”  clothes and caught a red eye flight to New York City for “Advertising Week” with 28 other BYU Advertising students consisting of copywriters, art directors, account managers, planners, and of course the AdLab director, Jeff Sheets. 7 days, 8 agencies, 1 Broadway show, no sleep, 6 panels, tons of pictures, 1 ferry, numberless subway rides, big city, and several Red Bulls made this one of the coolest spur of the moment things I've ever done!

First off, I was lucky enough to get the experience of knowing what it's like living in New York City as a poor, young, college student. How, you may ask? Well I shared a 1 bathroom apartment with 11 people. It was ridiculously awesome!

Second, I was able to meet some of the coolest people ever, both in advertising and just random strangers on the side of the street. My favorites were the Armenian men that saw me walking home with beautiful women every night. These guys would always whistle at the girls and blurt out ridiculous pick-up lines, so I told them that all 7 of the girls were mine :) Lets just say that the rest of the week my Armenian buddies really looked up to me. 

There are a lot of famous people in New York too.I saw Spike Lee, Russell Simmons, Ricky Carmichael, Justin Timberlake, and spoke with an advertising icon, Dave Droga.

Third, I learned that Twitter can get you into parties. A couple of the people in our group (Lacey Paulson, Sara Martinez, Chad Whatcott) are really good at the whole Twitter thing. This allowed them to win tickets to the “Advertising Week” opening concert put on by “Billboard” that was held at the Best Buy Theater in Time Square. A gospel choir opened, then Bruno Mars made a special unannounced appearance, and then Jon Legend and the Roots played. I have been to some good concerts in my life, and this one easily falls into my top 3. Maybe its because we got free drinks and we were right next to the stage? Either way, it was incredible! The Twitter gurus also got all 28 of us into the Facebook closing party. Once again free drinks, then a demo from the Cirque Du Soleil, and then a dance floor that was pretty much only being used by us, the sober ones. It was hilarious, no one else was dancing. They weren’t drunk enough yet haha.

Fourth, we visited 8 Advertising Agencies; McCann, Naked, McGarry Bowen, Weiden+Kennedy, Droga 5, Grey, Saatchi and Saatchi, and Ogilvy. I learned so much from these agency visits and was inspired by their work. I really am so grateful for Emily Howe and Abby Young for convincing me to buy a plane ticket at the last minute and go on this trip! Because of this trip I realized that I really love advertising! I always knew that I liked it, and that if I was able to do it after college that I would, but now I know this is what I want to do. Jason Bagley, the man who created the current old spice adds, taught me earlier this semester that its important to set goals and do what it takes to achieve them. His goal was to work for Weiden+Kennedy, now he does. After this trip I realized I really want to work for Droga 5, now I have my work cut out for me to get there.

Thanks Emily and Abby!