Today felt like forever, but not necessarily in a bad way. The day started early with two media visits on deck for the morning and afternoon. I was excited to get into the more intense side of the media visits for this trip, but was nervous I would possibly burn out before the start of the second one.
Our first media visit was at an integrated marketing firm named Battenhall. This is a newer agency that focuses on digital work for large clients such as Waze and Estee Lauder. The group we met with took us through all parts of their enterprise from their CEO Drew Benvie spending 30 minutes with us one on one and explaining how and why Battenhall came to existence. This talk set up the rest of the visit that included us speaking with specialists in each area of the operation; digital, data, influencer work, public relations and social media work.
The vibe of this office was really chill and fun and I thought that one of Drew’s ideas about how to take care of his employees was really interesting and would be a great addition to the United States workplace. He talked at length about the idea of giving his employees 20% of each work day to work on whatever they want. This includes pursuing new medias, learning coding, taking classes, literally anything that they want so that they can broaden their skills and get away from their work for a little bit each day.
After this media visit, our group broke off to go to lunch in the area as a break between the two visits for the day. I went to Pret a Manger, for possibly the millionth time so far this trip, and had a quick lunch and some coffee to refuel.
Quickly we moved onto our next destination, Burson, Cohn and Wolfe (BCW). This is a newly merged public relations and advertising agency that megared Burson Marsteller and Cohn and Wolfe into one of the largest pr firms in the world with over 4,000 employees worldwide. This was a much more traditional office setting, but not in a way that was stuffy or condescending. Our group spent a good amount of time working on a creative brief for a British butter brand and it was really fun to go through this with media professionals and get their take on our ideas.
After we finished up, I went back to the hotel room and took a pretty great nap. After waking up a group of us went to dinner down the street and had amazing pizza.
The highlight of the evening though was stopping by a cute gelato shop. At the shop, the man who worked there told me about the fact he was going to The States next year for a wedding. While there he is also planning on going to surprise a friend of his for her birthday. When describing how they met, it seemed like something straight out of a cliche romance movie in the best way. Eleven years ago, he bumped into her in the airport and spilled coffee on her white shirt. He felt very badly and bought her a new shirt, while doing this the two talked and ended up exchanging emails. They’ve been good friends ever since and that was the only time they had ever met. I was stressed out though when he said that he was planning this with the girl’s boyfriend since it seemed like he was interested in her; like I said, straight out of a cliche romance movie.
Now I’m thinking it is time to get to bed so that I can actually remember my last day in London tomorrow.