Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Excellence in Residency @ SOJC

November 18, 2009 - 7:00 PM

This week, we had a guest speaker in my Journalism 340: Principles of Advertising class. The guest speaker was on campus for a series called "Excellence in Residency", where the School of Journalism and Communications brought in professionals to talk to students about careers in journalism and advertising.

For my advertising class, we listened to Simon Mainwaring talk about his time at Weiden and Kennedy as a creative for Nike, as well as his work on the Toyota Pruis "Harmony" campaign. Below is a video Mainwaring showed us about the making of the "Harmony" commercial:

Mainwaring talked all about his life in the advertising field. My biggest take away from his presentation was to never take no for an answer. When he first wanted to get into advertising school, he was told it would be impossible for him to start this year because the deadline for the portfolio was due in less than a week. Mainwaring looked at the lady and said "No. I want to do advertising now." He was referred to the professor of the introduction to advertising class, and persuaded the professor to let him complete a terms worth of work in one weekend in order to catch up to his peers. The professor allowed him to do it, and Mainwaring successfully starting his advertising education soon after. Since then, he has gone on to help create great campaigns for some of the biggest companies worldwide including Nike, Motorola, and Toyota.

Listening to Mainwaring speak was so inspiring. I was in awe of him the entire time, thinking about how glamorous his life was and how unaware of it he seemed to be. Working on Nike advertisements would be a dream come true, and that is only a small part of his story.

I am glad I was able to participate in part of the Excellence in Residency program put on by the SOJC. Although I wish I would have taken the opportunity to attend more events throughout the week, the hour long lecture with Simon Mainwaring was so beneficial to me. I learned so much about what goes into developing an ad campaign, and how creatives, copywriters, directors, and all members of the team work together to create great commercials.

For more information on the Excellence in Residency series, please check out the School of Journalism and Communication blog.

Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Excellence in Residency @ SOJC

YEAR: 2010

MAJOR: Business Administration (concentration in Sports Business) and Journalism: Communications minor

HOMETOWN: Salem, Oregon

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