Hey, fishbowlers, I’m on the search for my first perm position after graduating from Miami Ad School, and I’d love to read any thoughts —I’ve got a thick skin, try me.

Www.cesarrodd.com

your book is just so miami ad school-y. while your ideas are your own, i feel like i’ve seen 200 other books just like this one.

books where every spec project needs to be explained with a case study. where the ideas are exciting, but caveats abound. maybe the strategy isn’t hitting. or it’s simply unfeasible. or the brand merely acts as the face of the idea, without any reason to tie it back to the brand.

BK — i wish students would stop doing spec for BK. chances are one of the 5-6 creative agencies on BK’s roster has already pitched the idea you’ve come up with to client. i know the case study says white-collar workers go to BK frequently and you’ll target CVs to the locations specifically, but do white-collar professionals really go to BK for lunch? definitely not in the US, where the midday BK scene is...far from that idealized reality. people go to SweetGreen to be seen as healthy, or that new korean BBQ joint, not the cheap, greasy, unhealthy fast food conglomerate filled with people below their status level. also...stalkers. never a good idea to put private information into such public view. maybe this is a stunt you use to get hired at DAVID/Buzzman/Mullen. maybe.

Hellmann’s — fun idea. really smart. but it has ZERO to do with the brand. literally ANY brand in the supermarket could suddenly announce they want to fight food waste and do this. GOYA beans, Driscoll’s strawberries, you get the idea. find a way to make it unique to mayo. and i’m not sure about this, but shopping behavior could get in the way. like, maybe one guy is a bachelor who only needs eggs, but another is a cash-strapped single mother of 4 doing her weekly, methodical shopping. the guy wouldn’t have the patience to wait for her, would he?

Adidas — cool, but why would a runner do this? it’s adding weight to/subtracting performance from their shoes. serious runners — ones most likely to be affected by ozone exposure, would be the biggest skeptics. you’d need experts and scientists to perform thorough research on how the tech affects the movement of running.

HeartShield — okay, but it’s simply not feasible. does this tech exist? if it does, it’s probably incredibly expensive and amateur teams wouldn’t be able to afford it. if it doesn’t, it’s gonna take years to develop into something that can exist in performance athletic apparel.

...you get the idea. if a recruiter sent me a book like this one, i wouldn’t hire the person. show me you can actually write a good headline, do clever out of home and develop your own insight/strategy, rather than piggybacking off existing real-world strategy. the reality of working in advertising — especially at entry level — is you’ll be doing lots of social copy and headlines. while it’s necessary to show big thinking in addition to writing chops, there IS a middle ground, but your book is at the far end of the spectrum.

there’s a reason WK recruits almost exclusively from VCU and creative circus. their students’ work encompasses big thinking, original strategy, great executions and amazing writing. they don’t rely on a case study to do the heavy lifting.

one final note — please for the love of god remove the case study slides from every single project and properly lay/type things out on the page. can’t see a single thing on mobile without zooming into a pixelated mess. mobile accounts for 30% of my book’s traffic, so it’s not an insignificant #. can’t just be brushed aside.

Sorry for the delay. I had about 2 minutes, got confused by your site on mobile, then had to run.

Burger King: there’s a really interesting idea here, but it’s buried and took a while for me to find it. I like the idea of using resumes on tray liners. I especially like marching them with BK restaurants that are surrounded by relevant industries. Super interesting and novel. However, there are a few things you could solve to make this much stronger.

- I wish you had some really simple lines like “Give us your resume. We’ll use it as a tray liner while professionals eat lunch.” One big thing we look for in jr copywriters is the ability to succinctly convey an idea. I’d love to see you take another crack at that – both with the ads and in the presentation of the idea.

- I was confused about why BK was doing this. I saw the word “fire” thrown in there, but it seemed forced. Maybe this isn’t for millennials, but for busy professionals who want a career change? Another thing I look for in hiring jrs is that they can put themselves in the shoes of an audience other than themselves. Right now it looks like you’re advertising to yourself (a young person who wants to find their first job.)

There’s a great idea in here, and if you dramatically simplify the executions, you’ll make the idea dramatically stronger.


Harley: I like the idea of connecting the historic feeling of freedom to a new group who’s trying to experience the same thing. But just looking at the print, it comes across almost like these women are refugees, or victims of some sort. Not what you’re trying to convey. The print ads also have far too much copy. Id try to convey the idea in an 8 word headline, then have a one line payoff under it. There’s an interesting idea in here, it’s just buried. Try to find more clear ways of conveying it. Is it having an image of a woman wearing a hijab and it just says “helmet liner.” Or a shot of a Muslim woman riding with a line like “and people said they couldn’t drive cars.”

Adidas: I can’t read the case study on mobile, but a pollution meter is really interesting. I’d suggest pairing it with adidas’ recycled shoe line, parley.

School shooting: extremely provocative. But I’m not sure exactly what message you’re trying to convey beyond a generic “shootings are bad” message. I saw a very quick message at the end about “army style guns”, is that it? You are doing something incredibly, incredibly offensive here (and that’s okay), but make sure you have the reasoning to back it up. Or else you just made a game about shooting kids to prove that shooting kids is bad. What are you trying to change my mind about? And why is a video game the best way to do it?

Where is the work?

Okay, I figured it out. I thought you’d written a long poem about yourself and then just had a link to your short stories. Please just post clear links to your work. If you’re getting drop offs, this may be why.

👆 Man, I wish I had people this nice giving me feedback this extensive and in-depth. You guys are awesome.

For the book:
1) I don't read explanations. No one does. And Harley without the explanation doesn't make any sense for instance.
2) remove the slides with explanation if you finish it with the video. If you want to quickly communicate the idea - just write it in 3 sentences above the project.
3) your homepage is extremely unclear especially on mobile. As a general rule of design don't make links and copy the same color.
4) project by project:
Harley - unclear, cluttered, but it's not bad in terms of art direction..
Ozone - ok. I can see it being a thing in Shanghai for instance.
School shooting arcade - I've seen thousands of ideas like that and I can't say it solves anything. Everyone already knows it's a terrible thing, so solving for awareness is not helpful.
Food waste app - kinda interesting! I'm not sure I like the locker idea, I can see getting very scammed by this. But a shopping buddy? Maybe.. I dunno.
Halls - very hard to read on mobile and not worth it. It's just ok. And I don't want to be that person to say that and not explain anything: What's the insight here? It's small but it's as cool as an iceberg? That's not true, nor is it interesting. It needs human insights to work. Lies and exaggerations in ads are never a good thing. It would be infinitely funnier if it was a tiny iceberg in your mouth for instance. Probably someone already did it though.
Athletico - interesting insight, clever execution, I like it. 👍
Army - I don't like the subject matter so I won't comment.

Hope this was helpful. Cheers.

My 2 cents...

1: The navigation sucks, there are so many clean and simple templates on squarespace/cargo that there's really no excuse to make things more complicated than they have to be.

2: Have someone proofread the site. I get that you're not a native English speaker, but it's not really a good look to have weird phrasings/grammar errors if you want to sell yourself as a writer.

3: Break out the images/copy from the 1 sheeters and recreate them in html/css so things scale properly and your site is viewable on mobile.

4: Take out the mentions of work in progress/ more to come. You have one shot to impress and telling me there's work you're not showing me is just annoying.

About the work:
BK-Using the tray liners is cool. Not sure why this is a BK idea the way it is? Any fast food chain could do this, figure out a way to make it more BK.

The actual ads feel like an afterthought/filler. Either lose them or make them better

HD: If you need a wall of text to explain print, it's not good print

Adidas: Cool tech demo, but what problem are you actually solving? I go running, the shoe collects data. Then what?

Gun control game: This is a catch 22. Either the game is good and fun to play, so the message in the end will be ignored. Or the game sucks, so nobody will play through to the end and see the message.

Food sharing: OK idea, seems like it would be better for a supermarket to do it since they actually own the space for the lockers.

Halls: Don't really get it. Visually seems to be saying something different than the line.

Heart shield: This is science fiction. If you want me to believe this is doable, you have to give some actual details. How is the shirt powered? How does it call an ambulance? Also it's very confusing who it's actually for, fans or players? And why would a Sunday league player wear an Atletico jersey if it's for players?

Army: if you won a student pencil, keep it in. If you didn't, you're just showing me you can do another execution in an existing campaign, which is pretty much pointless

Any update? How’s it going?

Click on any of the sentences, each one is a campaign. Not the best interface for phone but it works on a laptop! Thanks

Thanks! Not really getting any drop-offs, but will consider it. It’d be nice to have real feedback about the content though.

Oh.. and there was Burger King. I didn't find it lol, so I won't comment.