More Than Just Hollywood 

Group: Ignacio Vanzini, Lexi Fitzmaurice, Alyssa Smith, Jobert Adan 

Type: Pitch Project Competition 

 

With Energy…

      In the Fall of 2014, I experienced my first taste of the marketing and advertising world through the New World of Branding and Advertising course offered within the M-School. Fresh off of summer break and excited to get back to work, we were given the task to reinvent and rebrand the 238-year-old City of Angels. Known for Hollywood, entertainment and kale shakes, we had to turn Los Angeles into the creative business mecca of the world, where invention and innovation were just as synonymous as the Walk of Fame and Rodeo Drive. For 3 months, our group of 4 threw ourselves at this beast of a project. So, how do you reimagine a place so rooted and opinionated by American culture? It was not easy, but man was it an exciting journey.

 

With Creativity…

      Our group became focused on one idea called, Tech10. We spent maybe 1 month hashing out, creatively thinking and discussing this idea. We believed it was a winning idea, but we eventually had to press the red reset button and had to throw it out because something better was on the horizon.

 

      We conducted original research:

           102: Quantitative responses on a Qualtrics Survey.

            8: 1-on-1 Qualitative Interviews.

            1: In-depth interview with an app startup called Divvie.

 

      We collected everything and reviewed it all for 3 hours on a Monday night. We were surprised at the responses and from all of this data we pulled out one theme, our golden thread. Our focus for the final month of the project before the pitch in front of 90+ industry professionals was going to be, “Closer to Culture.”

 

With Versatility…

      I took on most of the creative and technical work for the project. From building original customized slide decks and reimaging charts on Photoshop to layering video and audio content together, I spent many a sleepless nights working, but I would not be beat. Together, we spent 3 hours every Monday night on this project for 15 weeks and countless hours outside of meeting. After hours of practice, revisions and more practice, the result was a 15-minute long pitch in front of 90+ professionals on December 11th, 2014.