I was going through some of my pictures today and realized that it has been over a week since our eventful visit to New York where we pitched some sweet commercial ideas to Smith and Wollensky and Seiter & Miller. For those of you who don’t know what happened I’ll explain the project that sent the Adlab into defcon 2 for the month of February.
In the October issue of Adage there was an article written by Livingston Miller, Pres. of Seiter & Miller Advertising, that did more than imply that an undergraduate’s degree in advertising was about as valuable as tan bark. He felt that the best entry level interns and employees in agencies were the ones that had gotten a more well rounded education… or in other words, he stated that advertising was not something you could learn, but rather something you were born with so why not go out and learn something different that you could bring to the table.
The BYU Adlab is comprised of about 95% undergraduate advertising students, 4% aspiring undergraduate advertising students, and 1% cool people ( that’s you Skyler). So, it would be an understatement to say that we wanted to prove Mr. Miller wrong. One of the honchos in the program (I’m not sure if it was Jeff or Kevin) somehow got in contact with Seiter & Miller and got us a chance to show our mettle. Seiter & Miller gave us the assignment of coming up with a few TV spots for one of their clients: Smith and Wollensky. For those of you who think that Sizzler is an upscale steak house (me) it may be time for you to become acquainted with S+W. And after a couple of weeks of brainstorming, comps, pitches, revisions, and meat-recalls we came up with a good understanding of what fine cuisine is and a few campaigns that we felt would impress our clients.
A few of us got to fly out to New York on the Adlab’s dollar and pitch it to the folks in person. We blew em’ out of the water. It was interesting to pitch to a real client face to face that was not going to let us off easy– a real learning experience. But, overall, the pitch went off without any tears (we came close when a certain member of the team didn’t know what USDA Prime meant, luckily I was too tired to cry).
It looks like someone threw sand in Chad's eyes. We were so tired that we stooped so low as to try 5 hour energy.
And “tired” does not begin to explain how some of us felt. The majority of us had spent the last three days working late into the night and a couple of us spent that entire night in Queens in the business “lounge” of the Fairfield Inn. Collectively we may have had 6 man hours of sleep between the five of us. Welcome to the biz I guess.
That being said, just getting out of Provo and into the city that never sleeps (when in Rome) was worth all the hard work. Jeff treated us to a night out on the town the night before the pitch. We spent about half an hour in Times Square just kind of walking back and forth trying to find something to do. Somehow we found our way into the M&M store for a bit and then back out into the Square for another half hour. Finally we “settled” on dinner at Bar Americain (Bobby Flay could cook a plastic bag and I would still eat it) and then we “settled” on desert at Serendipity 3. Now this is a fact, the frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity 3 is made out of the tears of baby panda bears and the smiles of unicorns.
The trip was a success. The best advertising campaigns happen when everybody gets exactly what they want. We went in to Seiter & Miller and blew their minds with some serious advertising kung fu. Smith and Wollensky got a good look at where they can take their company in the future. Seiter & Miller got a little free advertising help. Undergraduate programs got the representation they deserved (and i think we are entitled to ask for some serious thank you letters from all you undergraduate programs out there). We got to go to New York and represent just how awesome the BYU Adlab is, and Jeff Sheets got to go into the M&M store. We all came out on top for this one. Especially this guy, check out his amulet! You gotta love the subways in New York.
We all came out tired winners.
A special thanks to Mr. Livingston Miller. I didn’t want him to come off as the bad guy in this post. He did so much to help us get a great learning experience. He came out to Utah from NYC to talk to us about the business and about our opportunity to work with him. Then once we were in New York he was a great host. He showed us around his agency, he was in our corner during and after the pitch, and he even treated us to lunch afterwards. This was a great opportunity and it wouldn’t have happened without him. Thanks.
by: Andy Laugenour