Laura De La Cruz comes off to me as a very personable vibrant person that easily explains concepts and makes it feel more personal. I had the pleasure of having her review my portfolio for my main review and listening to her speak about the industry were both very insightful. Her insights into the company Crispin Porter Bogusky gave me a new perspective on these agencies and how they navigate around handling multiple clients and really showed off some high profile clients such as Dominos and Kraft. Seeing a portfolio and seeing these well known brands and the exact ads that you’ve seen prior as part of their body of work has this way of making the person seem more credible as its not some small obscure brand but one with global international recognition. They talked extensively about how working at an agency like Crispin Porter Bogusky can leave you with one client that you will be working with and how it can be exhausting or monotonous to just create for a certain client. I feel that if I were in that position working on the same thing over and over the repetitious nature of the assignment would have a larger mental effect on the feel of my work life. I never really considered how agencies might put their designers in teams to focus on a certain client and how this can emulate the way that an inhouse design job might be similar. The job security also hinges on the way that a team is assigned to a certain team and job security can be mostly based upon that one client and if they stay as a client to the agency as a whole. I wouldn’t want to have a portfolio based around one client for my years at one job and have that client leave the agency leaving my team without a job. She also touched on diversity in the work place and how that can effect your life in the work place. Being a minority myself I feel that being in a predominantly white male ad agency can be kind of limiting to cultural ideas and leaves sensitivity to certain groups unchecked. I think that how diverse my workplace is something that that I will consider when I’m applying to different agencies.
