Yesterday, I interviewed for a job in the midwest. And when I say interviewed, I mean interviewed; 11 people in a full day marathon. Exhausted, I got on the plane back to New York and asked myself, “Was I really willing to go through all that to live in the corn belt! Am I really considering leaving New York—the Mecca of advertising? The grand poobah of commerce.” That is when I had my Galileo moment; New York is no longer the center of the advertising universe—the Internet is. First of all, because you have to capitalize it, just like New York, and secondly, because it is the center of every decision made regarding everything that is important to our business now and in the future. You can be in Indiana, Iowa, Illinois or Idaho and be next to the beating heart of our business. In fact, interviewing with a client instead of an agency owned by some holding company based in New York was rather refreshing because they don’t have profitability issues with the Internet. The social networking campaign I created for the movie "The Good Heart" was what my interviewers were most intrigued by. Once we started talking about what I could do for them through the Internet, my experience creating million-dollar commercials and global print campaign faded into the background. Does that mean my experience went unnoticed? I don’t think so. Ultimately, they will still be doing mostly posters, publications and traditional advertising, but if they hire me it will be because I was the guy who’s eyes lit up when I talked about my social networking campaign. I was the guy with traditional experience that was taking classes in flash and spoke to them about the possibilities of Acrobat 9. Not because I am the guy from New York.
