Nurun
The first studio my group visited was Nurun. They focus on purely digital advertising, and although they have offices in places all over the world, the environment still felt friendly. From meeting rooms named after superheroes, to ping pong tournaments it definitely seems like an inviting atmosphere to work in.
Though it wasn't a far walk from the tour home base at the Underground Cinema, we did have to climb 9 flights of stairs to reach it! I was very impressed by the reception we received by employees there. We were split into two groups, which allowed for a more intimate tour, and after the tour there were representatives from each department (Creative, Development, User Experience, Project Management, Social Media and Human Resources) for us to talk to. They even mentioned that Nurun would be starting an internship program soon, and if we were interested to email intern.toronto@nurun.com.
The second studio we visited was Idea Couture. They are all about innovation and they do this using their philosophy of "d-school + b-school" which refers to people from design and business backgrounds working together to come up with innovative, useful design solutions. Along with design and business people, they also have anthropologists and ethnographers to help translate needs into human experience.
Idea Couture has design internships which are posted on their website as they become available, as well as a company blog, Noodleplay. They also produce a design magazine called M/I/S/C (which I won a copy of!)
Next in the day, we heard a presentation about adaptive marketing from Dave Stubb (MacLaren McCann). Dave is a veteran in the marketing industry, and the three most important things he wanted impress upon us about marketing in today's world were:
1. Helpful - whatever you present needs to be helpful to your audience
2. Relevant - if it's not relevant, it's not important and won't be paid any attention
3. Adaptive - changing your strategy to match with how the audience will want to interact
Dave spoke to us about two of his own experiences using adaptive marketing. One of the examples he gave was the "#internswanted" campaign for MasterCard. Essentially, MasterCard has an internship which they wanted to target to young, digitally-minded people. In the past, they were not able to reach the audience they wanted and couldn't find the right people to hire. To find a solution, Dave used social media to not only reach out to potential candidates but as a way to start the application process. In this way, they were able to find the tech-savvy young people that were ideal for the internships.
We then made our way to Oddly Studios, where we had lunch. Oddly is actually the studio responsible for organizing the Fall Interactive Tour, and spoke to us about their ad agency while we ate. Oddly is a small, privately-owned studio that has been around for about 5 years. Something interesting about them is their emphasis on only working on projects they will have fun doing.
After lunch, we headed back to the Underground Cinema to hear a discussion on finance from three industry experts. They discussed the history and power of social media, different opportunities for getting projects financed and how to use analytics to help present your business plan. Overall, I thought that the panel was interesting, but was definitely targeted to people wanting to start their own businesses.
The third studio we toured was John St. At John St., they do digital and traditional advertising. Overall, their presentation was quite impressive. They first gave us a tour of all the different floors in their building, which is beautifully decorated with artwork that had a creative and eclectic feel. I especially loved the mural in the cafe level that said `Everybody hates advertising` - I thought it was an interesting reminder for everyone who works there to come up with original ideas that audiences will want to be interrupted by.
After the tour, we sat in their cafe area and they gave us a presentation on how they put together an advertising campaign from start to finish. It was interesting to see this process and even more so because the campaign they used was one I was familiar with (Tetley Tea Infusions). I liked being able to see how something so familiar came to fruition.
The last tour of the day was at Grip Ltd. They are a smaller advertising agency located right across the street from John St. Their brand is very easy to spot in the design of the studio space - there is a lot of orange, and even an orange slide that can take you from one floor down to another. (In fact, their company blog is called Big Orange Slide.)
Not only did we get a tour of the agency, but they spoke to us about the kind of person they look for when hiring, and a large portion of it has to do with ideas. They look for future-minded, curious, independent, creative people. They also stressed the importance of having personal, side-projects to set us apart from other students applying for jobs.
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