In September, we had back-to-back days of meetings with creatives in New York and with our neighbor, the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia! To start our meetings off, Erika and I made our way downtown, we walked fast, faces passed, and we were NYC bound (did anyone catch that reference?) for a round of portfolio events. Even though we had missed the hustle and bustle of New York Fashion Week by just a thread, we managed to make all of our meetings in a timely fashion. It was exciting for us to set foot back in the city where creatives thrive. Our first visit was with the food-loving team at Food Network / Cooking Channel.
Here, we met with the photo editor, photo manager, and photo producer, who were in awe of Ashley Gieseking’s mesmerizing video of the macaron baking process. They were also impressed by Monica Stevenson’s Aloha protein bar video project and were inspired by Kyle Dreier’s conceptual plating and graphic compositions as a direction for future projects.
Next on our client go-see was a meeting with the creative team of Sony Music Entertainment. We met with about ten clients from Sony Music who expressed major interest in learning about Wonderful Machine and our photographers, as well as developing a relationship with our production team. They appreciated Todd Spoth’s hip-hop photographic style and noticed a few familiar faces within his portfolio, including Action Bronson and Drake. The team also enjoyed Rickett & Sones’ and HollenderX2’s quirky styles and tossed around ideas for potential cover concepts. They were also taken with Roy Ritchie‘s highly conceptual storytelling approach to music photography.
Sony creatives were especially interested in Chad Kamenshine’s impressive showing of alternative musicians, which they knew would appeal to the needs of some of their clients.
For our final meeting, we popped into the Family Circle office at Meredith Corporation, where we were greeted by the photo director. She was familiar with Wonderful Machine and dropped a familiar name, Jeff Wojtaszek, as one of the most recent photographers to have shot for their Local Hero column. During our meeting, she noticed that Lisa Corson, Kristianne Koch Riddle, Adair Freeman Rutledge, and Terri Glanger have a great ability to capture editorial narratives. At the end, we got to snag a copy of Family Circle’s October Halloween issue, just in time for us to brew up some costume and decor ideas!
When we arrived back to the parking lot, we found out we would be trapped in NYC for quite some time, as President Obama was on the verge of stopping in to speak at the UN. Hello, Mr. President! We didn’t actually get the opportunity to see him, but it did leave us with plenty of bonding time, fortunately for us!
After unpacking our photographers’ portfolios from the New York meetings, I had only one day until my next portfolio event with Philadelphia’s Digitas Health advertising agency. So with after some unpacking and repacking, I was on to the next one! Our executive producer, Jess Dudley, joined me for this meeting. The associate art producer at Digitas coordinated an event with a turn-out of about 20 creatives who reviewed our portfolios and grabbed a sweet treat. She mentioned that Gregory Miller and Taylor Roades caught her attention for future projects and that she was inspired after our meeting.
It was so great to meet you both yesterday, and I think it was a really great turn-out!! I got some good ideas to keep in the back of my mind, so happy for that too. Hope to see you and/or work with you both soon.
Art directors at the event also chatted over Cade Martin‘s portfolio, as well as Jorge Oviedo‘s. They particularly enjoyed Jorge’s sports and fitness advertisements.
After we wrapped up the meeting, we witnessed a sneak peek of the Macy’s fashion show rehearsal, which was taking place in the lobby of the building. As we made our exit, we also saw Philadelphia’s District Attorney in-the-running Joe Khan speaking to an audience. I’d say it was an eventful week!
Stay tuned for next month’s portfolio event, where we visit the Big Apple once again with new and exciting opportunities.
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