What's #agencylife?

To us college students the advertising industry is a whimsical world, full of conceiving amazing ads and endless alcohol. There is in fact alcohol, but in my time here I’ve experienced the so called #agencylife and boy has it changed my perspective. Everything I have experienced, observed, and lived at INK has brought me to fall in love with this industry, to aspire to pursue a career as an advertiser. A lot has changed and it’s due to the #agencylife at INK.

So what’s #agencylife? Most of the time when I come across the hashtag on Instagram it’s paired with images of the fun, exciting things: happy hours, lunches, office dogs, the list goes on. It’s fun at work and work that’s fun, provoking, challenging but enjoyable all at the same time. Yes, it’s all fun that’s seen in the thousands of photos on social media but it’s also so much more than that. From the eyes of the intern it’s a whole lot of things, some things are obvious and others not so much.

First off, it’s exactly what it says. It’s life to those that work in advertising. It doesn’t just start or stop when you’re coming into or leaving the office. If you truly love what you do, it becomes who you are. Let me tell you, everyone I work alongside is passionate and dedicated to their work.

It’s not leaving work at work. It’s thinking of your best ideas while in the shower or on your long drive into work (which should take 20 minutes but let’s be real, we live in Southern California). When you live the agency life, work isn’t work. It can’t just be turned off and put on the back burner over the weekend. The thinking, tasks, ideation, organization, and management that is dealt with never ceases. It takes a special kind of dedicated, creative, insane person to wrangle brands whether it’s as a copy writer or brand manager.

It’s getting just a tad bit flustered when a client request comes in that destroys everything you just spent the past three days working on, then taking that frustration and creating work that’s 10x better than any idea you had come up with before. It’s picking up your phone at 2AM on a Saturday to put out a client fire. Because… your client isn’t just your client. Your client is your child, your best friend, your everything, because your client is depending on you and trusts you.

#agencylife is so many things… but most important to me and from what I have seen from those around me, it’s learning every single day. I never stop learning and never stop craving new information. The #agencylife has fueled my passion for advertising. I’m experiencing it motivating those around me and experiencing it evolving everyday.

Gotta go! Someone just put donuts on the kitchen table #agencylife.

Yours truly,

Kristina, a.k.a “The Intern”