RT McMahon

Claussen

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:51:07 -0700

Other pickles are squishy like mother's meatballs. Claussen has cold pickle crunch.

--I will return soon...once I have an Internet connection.--

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From New York to Sacramento

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:30:08 -0700

Last few weeks I've been busy traveling. I'll give you a quick recap of what I've been up to (I hate long blocks of text so I'll keep it as short as possible).

New York
A week long trip I took with the University of Oregon advertising crew to an event called The One Show. The One Show is an advertising competition/exhibition/presentation. It's a professional event but has aspects of it for college students too. It's all about meeting and greeting people in the ad world, visiting advertising agencies and showing off your work/portfolios to people to get advice and maybe an internship or a job. It was really fun and gave me a whole new perspective on the advertising world. I figured out where I want to go in the ad world (a very small agency) and I got to see work and people that both disappointed and inspired me.

N11500620_35094775_884

Me and the Ad Crew at Rachael Howald's little agency

Aside from the ad stuff, I grew up in the NYC area. It's been six years since I've been back and man it was great. Walking around the city was so much fun, and the food was amazingly delicious (you can't find better pizza or European food...except maybe in Europe). Sadly my home town in New Jersey wasn't quite what I remembered it to be like, but seeing some friends and relatives that I haven't talked to in a long time was a blast from the past. It was really cool seeing how everybody grew up, many way differently than expected.

All in all a very fun trip. I love NYC and the area. It was a great visit and I want to go back again, but I'd never want to move back there. Living out in Oregon, it just doesn't compare.

Sacramento
This last weekend some friends and I went to the Sacramento Jazz Festival. I've been there once before and both times were very enjoyable. The weather wasn't as cooperative as it could have been this time, but it didn't damper my mood. Old Town Sacramento was crammed full of people all weekend. There were bands playing all over town: whether on a field, on a boat, in a restaurant, walking down the street or in elaborate ballrooms. Music was to be everywhere and it was fantastic. My favorite music to dance to is swing and lots of the bands played it. My girlfriend Jill and I had some good dancing times. Thankfully Sacramento now has an In N Out Burger in town...yum.

Now
I'm back in Eugene and I've got lots of work to do as I finish up the last couple weeks of my college career. Presentations, papers, exams and campaigns. I did get to see Indiana Jones IV and I loved it. I heard lots of people complain about the movie being too weird, but I think it fits well with the other movies having ghosts, melting faces and magic rocks. Luckily my wide-brimmed fedora came in the mail just in time for the release.

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Time to get back to work.

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Sometimes making an ad just sucks

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:25:57 -0700

Accoutrement? What is that sh*t?

Winnebago Man

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Freeze

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:17:26 -0700

I'm sure most of you know about the NYC Freeze Demonstration.

Today I was part of something very similar. It was for an ad team that is going to do a business pitch in NY in the One Show competition (where I will be all of next week). A group of several dozen people walked out onto campus with hidden bags of Doritos, and at a time where we all congregated at an intersection we all pulled out our bags of Doritos, held them high and froze. We were probably frozen for a good minute and a half.

During the freeze we heard shouts, many of which were like "gross!" and "ew trans fats." The funniest thing of all though is that some young woman ran by us, leaped and stole one of the bags and then ran off with it. It was great!

After the freeze we opened all the bags and started munching away furiously, then in unison we broke apart and went in our own directions. Some of us were stopped by people asking for some Doritos though. Most were foreigners, and it seemed like they had never tried Doritos before. One kid even got super excited and said he wanted to get into advertising, heh.

A few bicyclists had to adjust their routes since we were in their way, but their were no causalities during the event other than the kidnapped bag of chips =/

It was fun.

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The pain of failure

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:27:08 -0700

I tried several times to scan my face in a way that represented how I felt about a certain thing. Now my eyes hurt and I didn't settle on any of the scans.

Go me.

Wewt!

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Night Driving

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:12:59 -0700

Between Oregon and Washington.

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SSIL

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:29:36 -0700

Social Science Instructional Labs

Busiest day here in it's history. --Below-- It's a portion of the lab that has been filled, non-stop, with testers all day.

It's madness.

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Not overwhelming, but content

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:02:47 -0700

My mind and what is swimming around in it right now:

Kobe Beef
                                        No More Heroes

Wolverine Hiking Boots

                                                                                                 Blog
                                                                         Portfolio
    Sex


                            Graduation
                      Hole the a Wall BBQ

Getting a Real Job
Warcraft3.com

                                     New York
~~Haircut~~
                                                                                        Girlfriend
          Travel

                                                          The Conduit

    Unanswered Emails

                                                                            New Jeans

                Next Tuesday
                                              Ruptured Disk

    Election
                                                                                        Getting a New Vehicle

Money

Like I said, not an overwhelming amount. It's enough though.

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Doritos...no wait. Lifesavers!

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:14:18 -0700

So this all started about 2 months ago. I found out about The One Show's college competition and decided to enter. This year's brand, Doritos. I would show you my work that led to these final pieces, but I honestly don't have most of it anymore. I started with several pages of random brain farts about Doritos, anything I could think of...nothing at all like ads...just ideas about Doritos. Lot's of "what ifs". After this I went on to create about 50 thumbnails of ideas I had. Some of these might have resembled ads, including headlines and such, but really they were just more focused ideas put on to paper.

With some help from my peers and adviser Deborah Morrison I selected a few of my thumbnails to work on, which led to a website, a widget and HTML ads. Below is the final result of what I submitted to The One Show interactive competition. It didn't win any awards, but I am proud of it.

This is the Website. Here you can "Make your own Rito"

Here is the widget you could download to put your Rito on your desktop

Widget

These are the HTML ads that would advertise the website. They would be placed on web forums and similar sites that people may check the HTML and share what they find with others.

HTML_3

HTML_1

HTML_2

So that is my Doritos campaign.

After some weeks went by The One Show contacted me and told me that I was not a winner in the competition. My school was prepared to submit a student showcase of work to the competition, so I asked if I could put my Doritos pece within the collection. My adviser said this would be ok, but that she'd much rather that I work ass-backwards and take apart my campaign and put in and entirely different brand since The One Show would be receiving so much Doritos crap already.

This led to my Lifesavers campaign which follows the same course and the Doritos did. Since there was less than a week to do this brand switch I had fellow advertising student Tyler Kirsch help me with some copy so the project could be pounded out in time. Here is the new campaign.

Website

Widget

HTML ads

A few minor tweaks and changes aside from the main overhaul. The Lifesavers campaign was put to video so it will play on a huge screen within the showroom within a loop of other videos from other students. Only 30 selected schools were allowed to submit student collections to the showcase. So while my work might not win any awards, at least it can be seen by thousands of advertising peeps. With any luck an agency might catch some interest. I'll be in NY May 4th - 9th!

So that's that. I'm working on Wolverine hiking boots at the moment. With that campaign I plan to scan all of my rough work to show you all my ad making routine.

Ta ta for now!

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A little something to wake up the dead

nobody@vox.com(RT McMahon) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:33:48 -0700

Lots going on lately, and that translates into a lack of posts. Soon I will be back in action. Soon...

For now, some hilarity for all.

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