Why I love what I do: A trip to W + K

On Tuesday I took the class over to the Tokyo branch office of Wieden and Kennedy one of the largest independent advertising agencies in the world.
I feel in love with Wieden + Kennedy about a couple years ago when I was writing a piece about Target and was researching some of the international advertising. Some of their better-known clients have been Nike, Google, Play station and Old Spice. I fell in love with them again this year when I watched the documentary Art and Copy (which everyone should see regardless if you are in Advertising or not) and again with the new Google search campaign.

What makes Wieden + Kennedy unique is that they are not just an advertising agency (in fact, one might say that they reject that title) they are more of creative entertainment inventors. W +K Tokyo created their own recording label called W + K Tokyo Lab seven years ago and it is still going amazingly strong. On Tuesday, when visiting their offices many of their creative’s stopped by to show us some of their work samples for Nike and PS3 as well as answer any questions we had on graphic designing, advertising, art, music and just how to survive in Japan.
The great thing about W+K is the variety of people who work in their Tokyo branch. Everyone comes from a different background, speaks different languages and yet still somehow finds away to communicate amazing ideas to one another.
Please check out their blog at http://www.wktokyo.jp/blog/

From fish in shoes, to 360 degrees of gamer faces, to graphically appealing music videos W+ K Tokyo does all that and a bag of wasabi beans.
I think the most appealing moment for me though was realizing how an optional agenda piece that I created and wanted to see turned into a must-do event that I think the whole class enjoyed.



This isn’t an advertising trip, it’s a visual culture in contact class combining both advertising and art—I believe W+K Tokyo’s presentation was one of the best things so far the really highlighted both.
I whispered to Frauke at the end of the presentation ‘ Thank You’.