JD Michaels. There’s so much to say about the presentation that he gave all of us, both professors and students, on Tuesday night’s Meet the Pros. He was everything that I would not expect from a speaker. He wasn’t stale, boring or milquetoast, quite the opposite: he was a very lively, energetic and funny person who brought laughter and interest out of the audience. Behind the funny persona he demonstrated in front of us all, there spoke in front of us a man truly passionate about his work and jumped through a lot of hurdles to get to where he is today.
He was an only child of a single parent household in the Midwest and was the quintessential definition of a nerd – reading comic books and so on and so forth. But what he did have that grabbed my attention and what I imagined grabbed everyone else’s – he had the desire to learn new things and that’s what propelled him to go up in the world from dealing with “cancerous photochemicals” to becoming the Director of Diversity and Creative Engineering.
JD Michaels is the guy to go when it comes to some of BBDO’s zanier and memorable advertising commericials and had a hand to bringing those ideas to life, like the commericial for the glow in the dark cat hat. The one that struck home to me was not that an advertising giant like BBDO would work with Autism Speaks but how JD Michaels made use of a low budget. With a Sony television, the packaging that came with it, Kinect technology, a good young actress and few other low-cost items, he had a hand in the proccess of showing what it’s like for someone with autism. It was successful.
JD Michaels’ definition of advertising resonated well in me. I may be alone but studying for the past four years and have done my fair share of freelancing has made me very cynical. Before the Meet the Pros, I would say that advertising was a means of making people feel awfully insecure about themselves and needing to buy something or become a part of some movement to validate themselves. Of course, BBDO’s reminded me that our major, what we’re all striving to become – whether we’re in web, graphic, packaging, illustration or video editing – is so much more than selling something. It’s telling a story that would share emotion from one person to the next.
Also I liked what he said about how people he interviewed focused too much on what they can do, as opposed to telling him about who they are. I recall the interview that I had more than a month ago with Meigan and Manu. I didn’t just tell them about the skills I have or the experience that I attained previously but about myself. I told them that I’m not just looking for an internship just to attain a notch on my belt. It’s more than that: it’s going beyond what my parents have done, to do what I love for a career to be closer to achieving the American Dream. This is a step towards my future.
