WEEK 4

Chaos

2/11/2022 – 3/11/2022

Once things were a little calmer, I was asked to work on some social media mockups to explain different ideas for trends. I felt more on top of things this time and have a better understanding of what to do.

I was sent an Adobe Illustrator template for a Tiktok video which I thought would take me no time to edit, though I found that the brief said that it had to be a Tiktok live, which had a different format from a post, so I ended up making my own template for a Tiktok live, fumbling a little as I wasn’t familiar with Illustrator, though I eventually got the hang of it. For mockups that I wasn’t completely sure about, I drew quick sketches to send to the team to make sure this was correct before I made the graphics.

The social media mock-ups I made on Adobe Illustrator:

Some messy sketches I did to get an approval before I made the mock-ups:

The morning of the presentation was…chaotic, to say the least.

The client presentation was at 11am. I arrived at the office at 10am and no one else was there. My boss showed up at 10:40am looking slightly frazzled as he suddenly asked me to open the presentation file and call the rest of the team. I didn’t realize the weight of the situation until he said that the copywriter who had half of the presentation (and was supposed to meet me at 10am) couldn’t be contacted. He suspected that she had passed out from working on this the night before.

As I was the only person there, it was suddenly on me to gather everything together and relay my boss’ comments to the rest of the team who were either on their way to the office or working from home. Some of the graphics I made that they hadn’t planned to use had to be used, and my boss ended up having to call the apartment lobby to have someone go up and check on the copywriter, who eventually woke up and sent the rest of the presentation. I felt extremely bad for her, knowing how bad she felt and how hard she worked to the point that her body gave in. I wondered if I would be able to manage my time well and avoid that if I were in her position, or if it was a harmful part of the job.

Though we ended up finishing the presentation on time, things weren’t looking good. The AE team had another presentation to the client an hour ago and they were already quite upset by the other team’s work, so we all braced ourselves for another difficult presentation.

Then, as the feedback came in, it was to everyone’s surprise that they liked it, saying that this was the best work they had received from this agency thus far. My boss’ eyes were wide, the account executive joked that he was going to work on makeup brands for the rest of his career. Everyone had expected the worst after that whirlwind of a morning.

In the afternoon, the team worked on rewriting the ideas for the sports drink brand, and I was given the chance to develop my own idea which I was slightly uneasy about since I wasn’t familiar with this at all, though I received a lot of help and guidance.

I didn’t cry

4/11/2022

Jokingly, I said that I would cry if my boss didn’t like my idea, though this was received with genuine concern from the copywriters in the team; perhaps there was an issue with my delivery. I liked to think that I could take criticism quite well, especially because seeing one’s work in others’ perspectives could contribute greatly to its improvement.

I was still nervous as I presented to the rest of the team, however, partially because a part of me knew that this wasn’t something the client would like. The entire direction wasn’t completely done by me; I came up with the initial idea, a copywriter wrote a script and an art director found a reference which didn’t match what I had in mind but I didn’t feel compelled to correct this.

I didn’t cry when my boss gave his feedback. He explained things well; the idea was right, though the execution wouldn’t sell, at least not to this brand specifically. I didn’t mind this at all since I understood, and the other ideas that the team had come up with were a lot better, unsurprisingly. Nevertheless, I was grateful for the experience.

With that done, I had to find some references for the other direction that was focused on using light as a motif.

The main video reference:

Some references I found according to the script:

WEEK 5

Concept board

7/11/2022 – 9/11/2022

I began to realize that the days spent outside the office still had fairly big windows of time inbetween to work on other projects. During another side project photoshoot and an informal interview of a potential new art director, I worked on finding more references from films and music videos that have interesting lighting.

The ideas came with better reception from the clients this time, and though the direction I had found references for weren’t chosen, the team was mostly relieved that there was finally something to develop.

The day after, I was told to create a concept board for the foundation powder product. I had only seen concept boards in passing, though never thought about constructing one myself. This was to explain a billboard that had a giant sample of the product that the public can touch and test out on the close-up face of the model.

As I wasn’t familiar with concept boards or what they’d like the design to look like, my boss and an art director drew out these sketches for me:

I sketched out what I could understand from their designs to create two different versions of the billboard and what the concept board may look like to illustrate its function.

Once it was approved, I created a mockup of the design and made some adjustments to match the brand’s style and using specific fonts.

More graphics

10/11/2022 – 11/11/2022

Observing a project from the very first briefing, a lot of pre-production work was required before it could go into production. There had to be discussions within the team, a meeting within the team, a meeting with the account executive team, a presentation to the client, a meeting with the account executive team to recap the client’s feedback, another discussion between the team, and so on.

As the two art directors were busy working on graphics for another project, I quickly made any graphics the account executive team needed before presenting to the powder foundation client. Everyone went to it rather positively as the first presentation went well, so it took everyone off-guard that the client essentially went back on everything they said last time, writing off the ideas that they had initially approved of and requesting major changes as the rate for the presenters were over their budget.

Everyone felt quite disheartened by this as the comments were unfounded; everything suddenly had to be re-written despite it already being approved. Nevertheless, they soldiered on.

Another upcoming presentation was for the lipstick brand, where I was given the chance to create graphics and work directly onto the presentation.

I actually enjoyed this process as I felt more on top of things, and I liked to think that I was pretty quick with it as well.

During this, there were mentions of wanting me to stay for longer, perhaps until early September next year, which would be a huge opportunity. I was interested, though considering how much time the internship had occupied each day and that it was unpaid, I would be spending a lot on travelling and food costs while closing out other potential experiences.

WEEK 6

Comedy is hard

14/11/2022 – 15/11/2022

The two days were dedicated pretty much to the milk brand project. At this point, every brand wanted two things: to show that their product was the best in the market and to sell to gen z.

Looking at their past commercials, and with my boss having worked with them years ago, the brand wasn’t afraid to be more comedic about their marketing, with ridiculous skits that emphasized being memorable. This made things easier when it came to discussing ideas, looking at references from strange Japanese commercials and game shows that feature ridiculous exaggerations to show how good a product was. The presenter was also my mother’s favorite actress so she was stoked to hear that I could be potentially working with her.

It was more difficult than the team had anticipated however, to come up with funny and original commercials. Comedy, while fun, was far more difficult to write.

Getting a little desperate, and because it was worth a try, my boss asked a co-worker he looked up to for ideas. It was fascinating to see how quickly they came up with one; a murder mystery based around the fact that the word ‘value’ and the phrase ‘killer’ sounded the same in Thai. With just that, the entire script came along easily, and it was painfully funny that the one spontaneous idea was way better than the ones the team spent the whole day coming up with.

This discussion went on into night time where the entire office left and the team had to negotiate thirty more minutes with the security guard before the lights were turned off.

Meetings

16/11/2022

I had been fascinated by the many connections my boss had, be it with recording studios in New York, directors, or other artists, and I found that with the nature of this job, they were constantly meeting new people specialized in different areas. As the lipstick brand wanted a music video to go with their product line, there was a meeting with a music producer about remixing different kiss-themed songs.

The day was filled with different meetings. There was a meeting with the graphic designer for the key visuals for the sports drink brand and they looked…interesting. I wasn’t sure if I was being too harsh in my mind or if I had experienced enough of the client to know that they wouldn’t like these very much. Nevertheless, I took note of how the works are presented in terms of structure (Introduction to different ideas, going through them one by one, and an overview at the end.)

Additionally, the team also had to decide on which storyboard artist they’d like to have work on the storyboards for them. They had specific names in mind for each direction. I learned that they had to have an eye for these things too, to see which artist and their style would suit which theme best, and which to avoid.

Too cartoony

17/11/2022 – 18/11/2022

The sports drink client didn’t like any of the key visuals presented to them, and I wasn’t sure if it was good that I was right.

I was tasked with sketching out a storyboard for the milk brand commercial, which I did knowing not to be too detailed or refined and prioritize getting it done in time, which overall took me one night.

The day after, I received feedback from the art director and made adjustments according to his comments as well as found some reference photos for specific angles and mood. What was quite frustrating with finding references was that I’d have a vision in my head of what the reference would look like and what images I had definitely seen before, though they were suddenly impossible to find when I needed them. The main criticism I received for this was that the composition was too ‘cartoony’, which wasn’t all too surprising when I was told to use shots from animated films like Cloudy with a Change of Meatballs as a reference.

Another extra task I was given was to help check the translation for the lipstick brand that would be presented to their global team as I was fluent. A lot of the english was quite clunky and some phrases were difficult to understand, so I made sure to fix them and helped to adjust some wording to be clearer where appropriate. I was technically interning for art direction but being able to dabble in copywriting had also been helpful in developing my skills in script writing and communicating with clients.

WEEK 7

Scrapping everything

21/11/2022 – 22/11/2022

We were back to fixing (read also: rewriting) the ideas that the powder foundation brand had rejected, now trying to comply to exactly what they wanted, which was a great emphasis on the word ‘hybrid’, as the product was a powder and foundation hybrid. It was a fun break from the typical TV commercial projects, looking at other innovative ways brands have advertised their products, from online trends to public installations.

I spent some time looking at fun and engaging ad campaigns online, compiling the few that I found to be suitable to the brand. Additionally, I worked on making some graphics for other ideas that the copywriters came up with.

In the evening, it was time to present ideas for the milk brand to the clients. There was one direction in particular that the whole team liked and really wanted to do as it would be a fun new look for the celebrity presenter and was something the team had never done before. The client suddenly requested that everyone left the call so they could discuss in private, and things weren’t looking good.

Eventually, our hopes died when none of the ideas were chosen, and the client decided to redo their strategy before briefing the team again. All the work the team had done were scrapped just like that, which was very brutal but there was nothing anyone could do.

As we had to wait for the client to redo their strategy, the team worked on the presentation for the powder brand that was going to be presented to the client in two days.

(Day 39 – 40)

23/11/2022 – 24/11/2022

After a rehearsal for presenting to the global team of the lipstick brand, two of the creative team went over to the office to present to the international client. Though I didn’t get to witness this in person and only saw video clips, it was interesting to see how it was a lot more playful than I thought as it was to present different ways to market the makeup line.

At home, I was tasked with working on more graphics for another presentation for the powder foundation brand. I felt that I understood the prompts better and had seen enough of the team’s presentation to know what they were looking for and followed this accordingly.

(Day 41 – 43)

25/11/2022 – 29/11/2022

• MNY ‘nude’ idea discussion
• finding visuals that might work for the concept, incorporating music, knowing what kind of music to request
• getting occasional brain fogs, not understanding instructions completely/instructions given in a hurry
• the team is very careful about not scolding me lol
• editing on a google slide shared by the entire team, I have reservations on what I can edit in a page and as a result fail to make something they want

The process towards launching an ad campaign was a lot less linear than I thought. It wasn’t simply moving from development to presentation to production, but revisions after finding out the budget or brand plan, or extra add-ons in the marketing that the client wanted. In this case, the lipstick brand wanted to add extra emphasis on their new nude colours that were going to be introduced to the Thai market with a music video.

The discussion around this included finding visuals that might work for the concept, incorporating music, as well as getting down on paper what kind of music was to be requested from sound mixers and production houses.

Though I was getting used to the workflow of creating graphics for presentation, I found myself getting occasional brain fogs especially nearer the end of the day as I was struggling to completely understand instructions given to me, or the instructions were given to me in a hurry as things were in a rush to be finished.

This led to some careful choice words after I was done, though I appreciated that the team was very careful about not scolding me and giving me constructive feedback on what to improve for next time.

One of my reservations about this was that the presentation was edited on a Google Slide file that was used by everyone in the team, including accounting executives, so I was hesitant on how much I could move around and edit by myself, though I would try to keep in mind next time that it should be fine as long as I kept all the initial information on the page.