By Sean Stone
On the very last day of June, producer Craig Oppenheimer and I left the (relative) safety and comfort of Philadelphia for the mean streets of New York City. We arrived at our first meeting—TBWAChiatDay—through a labyrinth of freight elevators and creepy hallways, as is usual in New York. After emerging into daylight, we were kindly escorted to an outstanding employee lounge, complete with pool table. Not the first time we’ve come across this in an ad agency, but it never fails to make me jealous. We set out our books and very quickly had a good crowd gathered, enjoying the work and getting educated about Wonderful Machine. Never underestimate the power of the free breakfast and its ability to draw an audience.
TBWA is a large agency with a diverse client list, including Gatorade, Pepsi, ABSOLUT, McDonalds, Nissan and more, so we brought as wide a variety of specialties and styles as we could fit onto two tables. Adam Voorhees, Pete Barrett, Mark Katzman and James Quantz Jr. all got a lot of attention, but we got great responses on every book shown. I heard over and over, “You guys have such a strong roster!” Never get tired of hearing that.
After packing up and lugging a couple hundred pounds of portfolios to the ground floor (of course the freight elevator closes at noon, why would anyone need to elevate freight in the middle of the day?) we headed downtown to VSA Partners, inhaling falafels on the way.
VSA—who define themselves as an independent branding collective—is a small office of creatives, but they have a cool little space. The creatives were friendly and happy to take the time to look through everything we brought. Since VSA works with such enormous clients as GE and IBM, they were intrigued at the size and global coverage of our membership. They also lingered over our iPad, which houses a number of demo reels and sample movies from our members. They were especially impressed with the stunning reel from 808 Inc. After all the portfolios and reels had been browsed, we pack up once again and headed to our last review of the day.
Our last stop was at Seventeen Magazine. Since I’m not the typical Seventeen reader, I had to do a bit of research into the current look of the magazine. I actually hadn’t picked up a copy for myself since I was probably 10 and wanted to know just what my sister was always giggling about. I browsed through the magazine and site, took the “Are you a good kisser?” quiz, (no, apparently I am not), and came away with a good sense of what they look for. Along with a bruised ego.
Our meeting with Seventeen was smaller than the previous, so we took a more limited, targeted selection of books. Of the three photo editors in the room, two were already using Wonderful Machine to find photographers, so we explained in greater depth just how much we do for our clients beyond the website. They were impressed with our capabilities, and the beautiful book Christopher Kilkus sent us just for this meeting. We also learned a handy little tidbit about product photography in Hearst magazines. All of the products featured in the pages of their magazine are shot in house and bought out completely from a short list of photographers. Good to know! Their photo editors enjoyed meeting with us and learning more about Wonderful Machine, and one PE particularly enjoyed her Wonderful Machine t-shirt.
Eventually our meeting came to an end and we said our goodbyes. We carefully packed our hoard of portfolios back into the car and made our way back to good ole Philly, tired and happy from yet another successful Wonderful Machine portfolio event day.
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