everything's fantastic...in retrospect

RESULTS!

It’s been a fucking experience the past 11 days. It really has. I’ve just about experienced every emotion in that period of time. Oh well, not really, but definitely a diverse range. Let’s start at the beginning. The 31st of May.

Results day dawned, like always, without a whimper, except perhaps the usual shout out going out to Allah from the Mosque that is close to our house. I woke up, had my lunch and decided I should meet Ash for coffee. Before meeting her I knew I would need some cigarettes considering my heart was starting to beat a bit faster with the thought of results coming out and the thought of drinking coffee AND smoking cigarettes. It really does feel good. I’m not some SATC sell-out. I am, I am. Sigh.

Well then, by the time I got to the place where she was lunching with a friend they had got fed up with the ambience so we decided to go somewhere else. We decided, minus the friend, to go Ash’s penthouse poolside. Ah…the luxury. We pseudo-sunned ourselves while having our beverages and talked about the various happenings in our life. It was kinda fun. Ashanie is one crude girl when she wants to be. Anyway the hilarity of it all wore off when at 5.15pm I realized that results had been out for FIFTEEN whole minutes. We rushed upstairs logged on and checked my results. Oh it was a bit nerve wracking. I got pretty decent-average grades so it was very anti-climatic. I mean if they had been very bad, I would have been pretty shocked and sad and very possibly I could have cried and if they had been excellent, I know I would have been jumping around. Good grades always give me a super high. So my results were:

Human Resource Management: A-
South Asia: People, Culture and Development: A
Asia the Modern World: B+
Service Marketing: B

I’m a bit disappointed with my grades but I know I shouldn’t be coz I really was pretty distracted last semester and to get these results is positively great but you know, the eternal hope always shines bright even in the dimmest of circumstances. So after much deliberation I pick the “content” emotion amongst many.

THE FUCKED-UPNESS OF SRI LANKAN BUSINESS

My workplace called me and told me that my first day of work would be the 2nd of June. So after spending a sleepless night I woke up at the un-godly hour of 7.30am and got dressed hyperactively in my official best. By the way, the sleeplessness of the previous night was not due to nervousness but coz I am sooo used to sleeping at 4am that the shock of sleeping at 11.45pm was just too much for my system to accept.

Anyway, I tiptoe in the office at exactly 9am and the receptionist tells me to sit down on the comfortable couches. Leo Burnett Solutions does not fit into the stereotypical hot shot firm very possibly located in one of those skyscraper buildings or takes up a monolithic building looking very modern etc. In fact, the office is built into an old Victorian-style house with a compound for parking cars at the front. The front of the building is made of glass which opens into the reception area. This area is not air conditioned. There are huge industrial fans blowing on either side of the reception and there are tiny chimes hanging from the ceiling which are forever tinkling. There are cool coppery ash trays located everywhere in the building. So all in all, the whole interior takes on a very rustic appearance.

Anyway, I formed a very, very positive impression of the place because not only did the place fit my bill for a cool place but the people walking in seemed very friendly and laid-back. My superior, Murtaza, a.k.a Matt, greets me and tells me that he is expecting me but his superior has not briefed him on what exactly I am going to do. He takes me to our superiors, so to speak and Mr. Michael Holsinger basically apologizes to me about how disorganized they are and tells me to come back on the 6th of June. He says this without the slightest indication of how very humiliating and embarrassing this going to be for ME so I tiptoe out again seething with anger. I know I need THEM more than they need ME but..but.. yeah.. it hurt my pride like hell. I have heard sooo many good things about Michael that I did not really want to thing bad about him but I am human after all.

I get home and my mother surprisingly does not laugh and is glad to have me back so she can fuss around me. I make a mental note that I will make use these next few days of holiday fully and with no guilt so I just jump into the sack and fall asleep for the next 4 hours. Ha ha.

But Sri Lankan business has a long way to go.

FIRST WEEK @ LEO BURNETT SOLUTIONS, SRI LANKA

So the much awaited Monday comes along and I make a conscious effort I shall be all relaxed and cool so as to make a favourable impression on everyone. Ha. I try my best never to kiss ass, but I didn’t know what to expect.

I didn’t have to kiss any ass because EVERYONE was very cool to me. I got my own desk in the Brand Planning and Client Servicing Department. This is the biggest department in the firm along with the Creative Department. Basically what this department does is that it meets up with the clients who want to launch an advertising campaign and then gets all the details from them. They then conduct the necessary research of the target consumers and use various resources to come up with a vague idea of what the campaign will look like.

For example, if GAP came to LBS and told them to launch a print campaign, LBS would then conduct research and find out that the 14-26 old age group would be the most viable and that magazines such as Cleo, Vogue, Playboy and GQ would be most effective. The department also has responsibility for coming with the creative idea before passing the job onto the Creative Department. What this means is that it tries to provide as much as relevant information to the creative department so as to inspire them. For example, if the brand planning department finds out that most men in the 14-26 age group are also avid PlayStation fans, and if they think that it’s a relevant characteristic of their personality, in the sense that it’s an indication of how competitive, childish they are and if they think it’s something that the creative department can use to come up with an ad, they inform them of this in what is called a creative brief or memo. The creative department can usually overrule what the brand planning department tells them to do but since they are so very busy they usually follow the train of thought that originates with our department.

This kind of thing excites me because I love doing research and finding out exactly who the consumer is and I also love being able to contribute creative ideas about interesting aspects of the consumer’s personality. My first job was based on launching a website for a Fashion Knitwear company branch in Sri Lanka but headquartered in Germany. I had to write a report on how they could communicate the existence of this website to the stakeholders as well as potential clients and employees as well as to attract repeated usage. It was quite a small thing to do but I managed to conduct some research and wrote a 3 page report on it. My superior, Matt liked it quite a bit and decided that it was good enough to send to the client directly with minimal correction. This bit of praise really helped me out because I was finding it very hard not to fall asleep because I have never been called on to be attentive for 8-9 hours straight.

My second project was to analyze a bit of research done by LBS for one of their clients who want to re-launch their product which is a brand of milk powder for mother’s and kids. I had to look at this research and conduct my own primary research to come up with new, innovative ideas of how to launch the milk powder. Since milk is such a routine and boring product and also that advertisements usually show the same thing (mum’s calling their kids in to drink milk) it was something of a challenge. We (another intern and I) had a very tight boundary to work within because we couldn’t go way out there coz the target audience is still relatively unsophisticated.

We collected our research by going out to a mall to ask mother-like figures questions. This was surprisingly quite a pleasant thing to do because mostly all the people we asked were very friendly and helpful. Anyway, our final product was not a report but what is called a ‘Concept Board’ in the advertising fraternity. A concept board is basically a collage of pictures which when collectively viewed give you a clear idea of who your target audience is. In the sense if you were to advertise, for example a Football match, a concept board would show pictures of something that would clearly explain who your target audience was; therefore pictures of beer, chips, a couch, a few porn magazines would tell you exactly what the alpha-male was interested in.

So at the end we collected pictures of tea parties, recipes, soap opera ads, romance novel covers, working mother stuff, telephones etc. It wasn’t anything too new or anything but I hope that my creative brief will impress them more than our concept board.

I come home everyday around 6pm totally shagged which is the only bitch in the whole experience (and getting up early) but I suppose I will get used to it. I hope so coz I need a social life.

THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL AND ADVERTISING?

My first week at this amazing firm came to an end last night when they had an office gathering/party. I didn’t know this but the Cannes Film Festival, in addition to screening films also screens the best television advertisements for that year. So what LBS usually does is that they acquire the entire reel of the 50 ads they show at Cannes and screens it for their employees and their biggest clients in order to inspire them and also just to meet up and mingle. These ads were amazing and really, they were fucking inspirational. The ‘Intelligent Shoe’ ad by Adidas was one of them and McDonalds came up with some great ones too. Basically they provided each of us with a form with the list of advertisements. We have to mark out what we think are the 20 best advertisements so that when the results are announced next week, the scores of each form are tallied up and the three highest scores get some prizes which include a holiday at some beach resort, a mobile phone, a bottle of liquor and some other shite. Fun!

There was a dress code for this party too. We all had to wear something red and they painted our faces with red and white paint to make us look like warriors. I don’t know exactly why but it was great fun. There was a bar too! Free drinks! The long island iced teas were gross and I got drunk on two of them but of course that didn’t stop me. I hung with Matt and this girl called Shehara in the creative department. She is very cool. Piercings everywhere! Rock on! And oh yes, Matt, is 24 years old and is an awesome, awesome guy. I am very happy to have him as my boss. And Michael, the guy I very briefly hated, is very funny and lets you smoke with him on his rounds around the office.

After that met up with friends at Clancy’s and got drunk on arrack, B&H and beer. Came home at 2.45am.

Early night. Yawn

Song playing: Wonderwall- Ryan Adams
Movie about to be played: Osama
Food about to be eaten: Apple

I’ve got a date tomorrow! Yay!