Tenth Week August 8-10

A shorter week, but so far to go before I am finished!!

Monday

I began my week working on the project I hadn't finished from the week before...gathering the playstation editoria calendars. I received some in from reps in the mail and added those to my stack. It took most of my morning, but I was proud to hand a useful resource to my team when I finished. In the afternoon I completed some positioning for the ABC team from 2004. This team is sooo far behind on their work. It is a good thing they are hiring another assistant because it is obvious they need someone else to get all they need done in a timely manner. I was only glad I could be of some help!! I also continued retreiving checking copies for epson.

Tuesday

I began cleaning out all of my files and folders from my desk in the morning (so sad!) I also began compiling my work for a portfolio and trying to retreive information from our company website (which can only be accessed through the network) as well as through my human resources manager. Later I went to a print status meeting (where they go through all they need to get done.) My most exciting bout of the day came when the supervisor of the team needed my help (this is the first time I had worked with her.) The supervisor and assistant manager were putting together a mini-media plan for the newly aquired Hilton account. To do so, they were getting in media kits from all the publications they were interested in. I got to help organize all of the different documents necessary for them to help make the decision. These included a proposal, two audit bureau of circulations documents, edit and closing date calendars, rate cards, and two copies of the publication itself. After this was through I alphebetized what was left of the media kits and publications.

Wednesday

Wednesday I continued cleaning out my area. I attended a luncheon with bauer publishing that my group was putting on. Bauer basically was arguing that they are the fastest growing publication company and they would soon overtake giants like conde nast and meredith corp. It was a lot to swallow given the reputations of the latter two companies, but they presented numbers to prove their point. I still don't see many OMD clients advertising in publications such as "Life and Style" however. They just dont have the kind of credibility that major products are looking for in a magazine. I can see how the ABC client would want to advertise their, because entertainment is the point of most bauer publications, but it seemed like the presentation was a waste because they already had ABC as a customer and they weren't going to grab any more from the OMD lineup. Later I had my evaluation from OMD (different from the one from AU,) which I wasn't so pleased about and didn't feel truly reflected the time and effort I put into this internship. I will discuss this more in my privat email to you. I spent the rest of the day offsiting for the ABC team because I felt I earned more appreciation for my work from them. I did, however, spend the end of my day writing seperate goodbye emails to all eight members of my team telling them I enjoyed working with them this summer (which I most definetly did!)

I was definetly ready to get out of LA and stop working 40 hours a week for free, but I would miss the people, my fellow interns, the fun environment, and most importantly, the magazines.

Ninth Week August 1-5

The ninth week was kind of a blur. On Thursday of this week (August 4th,) we were to present our final intern project on Axe body spray. Most of our free time was spent putting the presentation together, making last minute changes, collecting visuals for our presentation, and practicing the presentaion. Given this fact, I will not lay out what I did each day this week. Instead I will give a general overview.

I continued my work with the ABC team this week. Most of the help they needed involved checking over estimates, paperclipping them together, and filing them in their correct binder. This was not exactly the greatest or most interesting project, but at least I started to get a sense of the different markets ABC advertises in and how much they spend in each market. I also did a project in the middle of the week that involved marking out the different competition in a slew of publications ABC advertises for. Basically I was given a giant box of magazines and I had to color code the ads with flags based on which competitive network ad I found. ABC's competition is as folows: NBC, CBS, FOX, and UPN. I couldn't complain...I love looking at magazines, especially the celebrity gossip kind that ABC advertises in!!!

While work with the ABC group was picking up, work with my group was slowing down. I continued working mostly for the playstation/epson people. I was still on the hunt for checking copies from the 2005 fiscal year for epson. Most of the magazines I was getting in from reps were scrapbooking publications. I had no idea there was about 10 different magazines only devoted to scrapbooking!! Another interesting fact: epson is a japanese company, so they run on a Japanese fiscal year. It took me awhile to realize that their fiscal ran from April 05-March 06.

I did some more positioning and filing of Insertion Orders for Nissan/Infiniti as well and completed another round of summaries for the consumer publication updates that the print group sends out to the entire office. I also attended my groups own "emerging technologies training." They presented facts on print including terminology and the different types of inserts an advertiser can choose to produce, as well as some of the things that they do. It upset me that they didn't mention me once in their presentation, however, and didn't include me in putting it together.

The highlight of my week had to be the axe presentation we gave to a room of 30 people at lunch time on Thursday. We had all put in so many hours and were sooo nervous. When it went off without a hitch, we were all so releived. The only feedback we had was good feedback and we were told that out of all of the intern presentations they had seen, ours was head and soldiers above the rest (a copy of the final intern presentation is included in my final notebook.) What felt the best is that, save about two interns, we all worked together as a team and divided up the work equally among ourselves. The only sad part of our day was the food meant for our lunch was definetly gone when we got out of the meeting (some people from the ad agency must have scavenged it!) but we took a long lunch instead and went out to celebrate.

On friday I did not take my last summer friday and instead came in to work on a project for the playstation/epson team that I had been putting off until then. I basically had to compile all the 2005 editorial calendars for playstation, which sounds easy enough if they were all sitting right there, but they weren't. I took some from various binders they had, but most I had to find through the SRDS website or simply by calling or contacting the reps. And there are so many playstation publications! I would say I hunted down about one hundred and fifty different editorial calendars. This project took so long that I took the whole day Friday and still was not finished with it!

And only three more days next week to go...

Eighth Week July 25-29

Wow. This week was my busiest week ever. I hardly had time to stop and think.

Monday

In the morning I did some "important" filing for the ABC teams. The estimates for Radio and Spot had just been faxed over, and because of the tendency for these things to get lost, the ABC team usually trusts no one to do this filing for them. They were a person short, however, and gave me the work. I learned that even they double check their own work a million times (not just intern work.) I had to go through the stack and check everything off. Then it could be filed. Later I was sent on a menial intern task to get an ice cream cake for someone's birthday. I didn't mind as it gave me a chance to get out of the office and allowed me to enjoy the cake along with them. My print team was missing me so when I stopped by for a few tasks, they gave me a slew of odds-and-ends to pick up including calling reps, reviewing magazines, summaries, postitioning, and filing. This had me going non-stop until the end of the day and there was so much on my plate I had to stop by to give my team a status report. Luckily I finished most of my tasks.

Tuesday

I spent the morning calling reps (not my favorite thing!) to search for more missing publications. I am beginning to get a sense for the exasperation my group has at keeping track of all their magazine checking copies and then hounding reps when they dont receive them. There has to be a better system for this then their current one. If there were more room in the office, maybe they wouldn't have to throw every magazine they receive into the nearest bin and then forget about it until it comes time to fill out the positioning and they can no longer find it. Too many reps have told me that they have sent the missing publication, that they already sent it, they always sent it, and it makes no sense that we need another. Its not too fun or responisble to respond "well then we lost it." But I don't beleive there is enough room in this office for a detailed filing system, so the bins and angry reps will have to do. I did more filing of IO's for Playstation and Infiniti in the morning as well.

As the afternoon approached I began receiving publications from reps I had called that morning and began entering them into positioning charts.

An interesting tid-bit of information from the day: we occasionally recieve e-mails titled "media spotlight" which outline different things OMDers have done. Apparantly OMD's newest show of excellence came when a team from North America at a media conference came up with the idea to have Alka-Seltzer sponsor eating contests. The client jumped at the idea and now Alka-Seltzer and the international federation of competitive eating have a partnership.

In the afternoon I met with the interns for a long meeting to try and push out the logistics of our presentation.

Wednesday

I continued updating a chart of missing publications as I was receiving checking copies from reps. These take forever to come in! Its amazing how many reps..who should be fighting for your advertising space..end up forgetting to send the book or simply postponing it. I went to another media training weds on the variety of outdoor resources we have at our fingertips. It seems like the major OMD offices are really trying to push their non-strategy groups and I am curious as to why.

Thursday

We strolled into our last intern lunch and learn before our presentation. I had been working on my part of the project all morning. It is amazing how many last minute changes we were making. At the lunch and learn we went over how to write a resume, what HR managers look for, and tips for interviews. All the information was very useful and I came out feeling like I was one step ahead of the game. Later I helped edit some of the written parts of our plan (including a poem and "a day in the life" of our target. I also started working on retreiving some missing publications for the ABC team. These were harder to retreive. Reps of the kinds of publications ABC advertises in aren't as prompt as others and some, like YM which recently folded, are just uncontactable

Friday

Unlike all my other fridays, this friday was very eventful. It seemed like it was crunch time for many teams. I had more summaries to write from the Min and Delaney reports, I was busy getting flow chart information in for our project (so we could have a final copy to show to our supervisors for editing,) and to top it off, at around 3:15 another intern and I were given a crazy project of entering in data for the ABC team. They needed it for a meeting at 4:00 and our task was to get as much done as possible by 3:45. The numbers were simple enough to understand (TRP's from radio stations in different markets across the country) it was just a lot of information in such a small amount of time. It gave me a sense of how crazy the business can be! The project left us sweating..but we got most of it in on time, so I felt good about it afterword. A nice end to my friday, but it left me exhausted.

Seventh Week July 18-22

Monday

I began the week working once again on my part of the intern project. To really get the slides pounded out for our presentation, we each had to get hard copies of our part of the media plan done. I spent the morning putting my part into slides which included: objectives, strategies, magazine selection, rationale, advertising schedule, and costs. I was also informed (a little later in the morning) that we needed to scale back our budget because even a large conglomerate such as unilever would not choose to spen 75 million in a year on just one brand. So we scaled the budget back to 20 million and kept the same ratio of spending. Our new budget:

Magazine - $5,000,000
TV - Network - $1,000,000
TV - Cable - $4,000,000
OOH - $5,000,000
Radio - $2,000,000
Internet - $2,000,000
Promotions - $1,000,000

TOTAL = $20,000,000

This basically required me to cut out a lot from my estimates, but it made decisions a lot easier because I could cancel all the magazines that were on the edge (content didn't quite match target, crosstab numbers were low, no opportunity for added value, etc..) and just concentrate on those large name publications that were sure to be seen. It made me wonder if print planners ever pay attention to small name publications (I doesn't seem like my group does!) and how the small name publications get advertising dollars then.

The second part of my day was enveloped by a project that sounds boring, but was actually a lot of fun and taught me about the world of inserts. As we do with everything, there is a file cabinet where all interesting or innovative inserts in magazines are kept so that the print group can pull them at any time and get ideas or call the rep and get estimates. Unfortunately, many of these inserts had not been labeled properly or recorded into their corresponding chart. I had to label these and learn lingo like: pull-out, pop-up, woven centerfold, cardstock, etc...so I could fill out the chart. The inserts were amazing to me and ranged from a fold-out shoe to an underwear model with a changeable underwear wheel. Needless to say I was entertained for the rest of the day!

Tuesday

On Tuesday I was introduced to a whole new realm of the agency. One of the strategic planning teams (ABC) lost their intern due to the fact that she couldn't get credit and it is California state law that unpaid interns get credit. Since this is the team my sister works for and she happened to leave for vacation this week, the team was really in need of an intern to help pick up some slack. I volunteered and was thrown into a project working with radio estimates on a spreadsheet. Going back to the whole "diversity management" concept, I found myself checking for stations skewed toward the minority audiences. These stations had to be formatted into another spreadsheet and faxed over to a company that keeps tabs on what kind of advertising goes toward minorities. I don't quite know why anyone would need to keep tabs. Could it be to measure our progress as a society toward including all races. It seems like one of those anti-racist/racist acts that the new corporate culture is cultivating in the work place (a dilemma similar to affirmative action at universities.)

While I was debating the purpose of the assignment, I had a deadline to complete and typing out a load of information into an excel document is not the easiest task. So I had to disregard the contemplation of the effects of diversity management in my workplace and get some work done!

Wednesday

Wednesdays are always exciting because they bring the prospects of meetings. I am a sucker for sitting and listening to reps sell and media workers fend them off. A supervisor on the Direct TV account invited two interns to come and listen to a meeting he was having with reps from the New York Post. Although Direct TV already advertises in their publication, the Post was hoping to win more advertising dollars from Direct TV due to their recent make-over. Since the New York Times and the New York are so established, they are seldom willing to work with advertisers on new concepts such as interesting inserts, or even different sizes and scales of advertising space. The Post wants to establish itself as the New York newspaper that is willing to accept out-of-the-box advertising, and in the process, they've been hitting up advertisers to get them excited about it. The Direct TV supervisor as well as, naturally, the New York post reps, were from New York. So the meeting was rather hard to understand. But the gist of it was that Direct TV as a client does not ever meet with reps and those that work on the account rarely do. The supervisor kept establishing that he was meeting with them as favor and then, after a lot of skirting the question, divulged to the New York Post reps that Direct TV was looking to do something with CD inserts and if they presented a plan for their publication to them, they might end up on top. This apparently was also a LARGE favor and the reps left rather pleased with themselves. We were left with Andy (the Direct TV guy) telling us we should go into dermatology.

Second meeting wasn't quite so interesting. It was about the resources at our fingertips. All different sorts of media programs that we can use or access and where. Interesting, but hardly pertaining to us since most interns are restricted from accessing anything outside of their own teams.

Thursday

More summaries from the Min and Delaney reports and media week. Nothing interesting enough to recall, but a general consensus that ad page rates are going up and will continue to. Included in my summary were results of the Delaney awards...marking Ebony as the best publication of the year and TV Guide as the worst. The reasoning behind these awards came from rate of change in ad sales and basic management choices. Intersting stuff! Also I filed more insertion orders from Infiniti today.

Friday

The first time in awhile without a summer friday, friday was slow as usual. I began a massive refiling project for the ABC team and got to learn about estimates, but most of it was just paper work. Confusing stuff, and I learned that every page of an estimate could be very important in the future. There was waaay too many baked goods in the office today. Ahhhh...don't feed the interns please! I left a little early and got to start my weekend

Sixth Week July 11-14

Monday
The start of this week was kind of like a reality check. We realized we have only four weeks to complete our project, and if we wanted to finish the media plan as well as do something spectacular that would blow them away, we were going to have to buckle down and start working. I had one of my fellow interns send me her media plan for print media (seeing as I had never done one before) so that I could have a template to follow. I then went to work (again) on plotting the pricing, dates, and magazine selection on the spreadsheet (this is the type of thing that has to be done over and over again!) This was all following a planned intern meeting at 10 am. Later I had more summaries to write. I love these because I get to read all the trade publications and weed out the informatioin that is important to the print world. I read the Min and Delaney reports and Media Week and put outstanding information into my own words. And I get to catch some interesting information on the side as well. For instance, I learned about a new technology that allows for bendable electronic paper. One could insert an ad into a magazine and project images (its not advanced enough yet to actually play a commercial.) I love this kind of stuff..it is what makes advertising exciting!

Tuesday

On Tuesday I added new information about magazines being re-vamped (certain publications basically try to relaunch their magazine with different editorial to increase readership) to my summaries. I also updated rep contact lists, which wasn't the most exciting thing, but is very important. I know how it is to try and contact a rep and not get through to them!! I had computer problems the second part of the day. When they were eventually fixed I couldn't get through to the right server to assist a group member because of various security settings on the Playstation/Epson accounts! It made me angry that they wouldn't trust a poor little intern but oh well.

Wednesday

Typically the most exciting day of the week, we had the second of the series of emerging media trainings. Needless to say the interns were the first to arrive. This session was on TIVO as a way to advertise (otherwise the medium would make advertising on TV obsolete.) I have never even used a TIVO before so it was interesting to see the type of lifestyle a person could lead by simple navigation through this technology. So many choices at a person's fingertips. Luckily the TIVO people are willing to work with the advertising world (in part, due to their existing network battles.) They are now offering advertising spots that coincide with choices of consumers. Since people can search keywords (for example, cars or Ashton Kutcher,) advertisers can select stations to advertise on based on the demographics of these people. Their is also an array of types of advertisements that companies can select. For example, you can do a small box that pops up while a person is scrolling through a category, or one that is tagged to a program. They are also offering new interactive types of advertising. A pizza place (it escapes me which one) has a program built in that offers the ability to order a pizza at the touch of a button. Pretty cool, I think!

Thursday

We received news today that OMDLA won the Hilton account for media planning. There was a celebration in the afternoon. I spent some time working on the intern project and filing. Other than that it was a ridiculously slow day. But it was alright because I had to leave early (and miss a lunch and learn put on by the print group) for my oldest sister's wedding.

Friday
Summer Friday.

Fifth Week July 5-7

Tuesday

On tuesday morning I did more apple positioning. A previous temporary worker failed to enter some books in, so we had to go back through and check if the books were missing and if they were we had to contact reps. I shot out a bunch of emails to various magazines requesting checking copies. I spent some time later that morning reading articles one of the interns had found on axe body spray. I also continued to update the price chart I had been creating for the intern project. While, for some magazines, it is easy to find rate cards and media kits, I was still stumped on a few and so I spent the afternoon searching the internet and various other resources for the missing pricing. While I am doing a good job collecting this information, I am kind of confused on where to go next in the media plan. I am hoping to pick up a few tips from my group over the next week or so.

Wednesday

I started the day on the Nissan-Infiniti account and updated some positioning. It amazes me how long it takes some publications to send checking copies when they are requested. We finally received the final two missing copies for the fourth quarter and were able to complete the positioning grid. Later this day we had an intern meeting to discuss our progress on our project. The interns that were assigned to broadcast did a good job researching which cable and network television channels axe users use most and then going through what sort of content each station was expected to air for the coming season. The general consensus was that we should advertise on cable stations because space was cheap, available, and targeted toward our consumer. While we are on track with things like broadcast and outdoor media, we still haven't begun to plan our radio advertising. We did tweak the budget a little based on crosstab information. The new budget is as follows:
Total $75,000,000 Magazine - 25% = $18,750,000 OOH - 25% = $18,750,000 Cable - 20% = $15,000,000 Network - 5% = $3,750,000 Radio - 10% = $7,500,000 Internet - 10% = $7,500,000 Promotions - 5% = $3,750,000


Thursday

I started the day with some basic office work and filed insertion orders for the Nissan-Infiniti account. Later I had two conflicting meetings. I went ahead and skipped an opportunity to learn about emerging technologies and went to our weekly intern lunch and learn instead. Here we met with a manager on the playstation account from Chiat Day (the account/creative side of the agency.) He showed us various spots he had created for playstation (39 in total!) and explained the daily happenings of his jobs, benefits/downfalls, what he enjoys, and how his job affects media as a whole. Again we were reminded that pay is the major downfall of the job, and that the perks that come with working directly with the client (if they want to go out for dinner and drinks, you have to take them!) are endless. He also told us he has been working with Chiat for 5 years now, which is a long time in advertising. He happened to get an account he really gelled with, but most people move around a lot, especially when they are starting out. In most jobs this would be a bad thing, but in advertising, moving accounts and even agencies is not frowned upon. It is actually looked at as a good thing. This was an encouraging gest depending on how you looked at it, but the pay issue continued to be discouraging. In the afternoon I learned to use a program for offsiting and we cleared out a bunch of old checking copies that Apple no longer needed.

Friday

Second summer friday!

Fourth Week June 27-30

Monday

Monday brought more positioning (hey, i'm not complaining. I love this stuff.) I entered in some new publications for Nissan/Infiniti. I also continued tracking down checking copies. This is such a hastle for the agency; it seems like there should be a more efficient way of retreiving the ones that the reps forget to send. Maybe I'll get to work on figuring that out?! I also did more work on our intern project. I took on the print section of the media plan and used crosstab information to determine the magazines that axe users read most.

Tuesday

On tuesday I started out doing positioning for the apple girls. I then attended a "Town Hall" meeting. Susie Vye, a person high-up in OMD west coast, had just returned from Cannes where the Lion awards for advertising were being held. OMD USA did not win any of the awards, or even make the short list, but her account of what happened was still extremely interesting. The US in fact had very few advertising (creative and planning) submissions win. The known reason for this: We simply have too many regulations as opposed to European and South Eastern countries. We can't do things like cut into programming, be extremely shocking, lower the temperature to 4 degrees celcius in a movie theatre. Those countries can. She also attributed the loss to anti-american sentiments that have apparently hindered the states preformance since the Bush administration came to office. Anyways, Susie showed us one of the winning campaigns for the category of broadcast. In the midst of a soap opera, the network drained the color from the program and left it in black and white for awhile. A few minutes later a screen flashed with Clorox bleach and a message reading "Do you want your color back?" A great idea, but evidence that something like this could not be done in the states. For more information on this awesome awards undertaking go to: http://www.canneslions.com/winners/media/. When asked why the agency continues to pay money to go to this festival that obviously doesn't appreciate American efforts fully, Susie replied that OMD's goal is to be creative and shocking and winning one of these awards, regardless of the regulations, would be proof that the agency is doing just that. Later.... I had one of my team members send me a grid of different rates for magazines and began putting together a chart so that the interns could use it easily to find prices on all the top publications for male axe users.

Wednesday

I finally learned the difference between gross rates and net rates! The gross rate is given to everyone for buying ads in magazines. The net rate is for all recognized agencies and is equal to the gross rate X .85. I also learned that the "rate base" is the gauranteed circulation of the magazine (to the advertisers) as opposed to the actual circulation. I made another binder and made my way to lunch with a client from good housekeeping (my third rep meeting so far: I went to one with PC magazine and a new launch: Cookie before.) They brought us lunch and chatted about how good housekeeping could benefit epson if epson were to advertise its printers in the magazine. The topic of conversation was the 'good housekeeping' seal that advertisers (three or more times) get to use on all of their products. It was interesting to see how these friendly reps tried to maneuver their way into the good favor of my group. Members from the epson team attended and explained that the new epson ads were not going to be printers, but special ink used for trade practices more than in-home. This would mean Good Housekeeping wouldn't be the best choice. The Good Housekeeping reps seemed dejected and we left the meeting with a 'maybe' in the air. I felt only slightly bad for them as I left the meeting carrying a plate of sandwiches and munching on a brownie.

Thursday

Went to a playstation 'status' meeting and learned the difficult logistics behind coordinating work between different strategy teams (playstation, nissan, apple, etc..) and specialized groups like mine. Communication problems were the focus of the meeting, and although I didn't understand much of their jargon, I left knowing that playstation would take care of insertion orders for the enthusiast publications while the print group would take care of those for consumer magazines. I also went to a meeting with a maxim rep who was a little disorganized, but again very nice and excited to tell us about the added value that comes with advertising in maxim and participating in maxim events.

Friday

The whole office is off today and monday for the fourth of July weekend!