I hope I get around to writing up the story about how these posters came into being. Would be nice to put these on the VC/UD Facebook page. Here is an outline to get things started.
Drove to Ogilvy (NYC) for an evening talk on 360° Advertising
3 speakers including Peter Wood (friend of mine who was a Group Creative Director at Ogilvy), Brian Collins and President of Ogilvy.
Talking afterwards with Peter, he told the students to come by and show their portfolios.
I said that was a hollow promise as he was never around (always traveling)
5 minutes later that sunk in.
I asked for him to call me sometime when he knew he was going to be out of his office for 2 full weekdays. He said, “Sure.” And he called.
The idea was we would sit in his office for the two days and breathe the rarified air and work on an advertising design project. Turned out it would be the One Club’s student competition project on an advertising campaign to promote Vietnam as a vacation destination.
This got us there.
Then there is the other story about what happened after we got there.
Turns out Peter, who was supposed to be in London, was in his office when we got there. I had been concerned with what was going to happen when we got to Ogilvy. My plan was to walk up to the receptionist and say, “We are here to occupy Peter Wood’s office.” She gave is the directions without a moment’s hesitation.
We produced a series of posters to warn the people at Ogilvy that we were intending to invade the place.
The text at the bottom of each poster reads :
Edge. Having it. Not having it.
An experiment in uncommon air.
DEsigners invites itself into Peter Wood’s office
Wednesday, November 17 and Thursday, Vovember 18
to think about advertising, lunch, 360° branding.
getting other people out of their offices, and taking
on Vietnam for the One Club College Competition.
Party crashers invited.
Thinkers invited.
People tired of their wallpaper invited.
We’ll make room for you on the floor.
Bring your own tools.
Anyway, the following group of students produced these posters using the blueprint machine in VC.2000 — Jenn Dehghan, Todd Eisner, Drew Haines, Joe Ibrahim, Kara Mayberry, Julie Prager Palaez, Andrea Scaglione (all of VC’00) and Michael Tavares (VC’01). Maybe Michael remembers exactly how it was that he got invited.
