Marhaba – from sunny Jordan
I am writing this as I wait for my flight to go back to London. After an 18-day Easter vacation, I am recharged and ready to roll. This vacation was very much needed after months of rain, cold and lots of grey.
I’m trying to get back into student mode so I figured the best way to ease into the routine is through my blog… even though I use most of this post to talk about my vacation, it is still, nonetheless, blogging, and therefore easing back into student life.
After surprising family and friends (as they weren’t expecting to see me for Easter break) we started planning the two weekends that I have. I spent as much time as I possibly could by the beach, soaking up the sun, and a lot of time with my grandmother, who isn’t getting any younger :/
Anyway, all in all, it was just what I needed after months of winter.
I managed to get quite a strong kick-start to my project for Managing Creativity and Innovation during my time here in Jordan. I will be writing about Orange penetrating the Jordanian market; the first Arabic country to host Orange: an international telecommunications service provider. I will be tackling the market entry, the advertising campaign, and rebranding MobileCom (the local mobile network) into Orange (an international brand). I conducted interviews, gathered research, and visited the creative team that I worked alongside with during the rebranding. It got me reminiscing about the days (and nights) spent in Young & Rubicam. Thinking of concepts; getting shutdown, thinking of more concepts; getting tonnes of changes, then, finally, getting the “ta daaaa” moment where you know this is going to sell; you know this is the winning concept. Of course I tried not to get blindly back in love with advertising, I can’t easily forget the pressures of working in such a fast-paced field, in an Arabic country that lacks much-needed awareness, but nonetheless I still missed it.
March 26 was the first time I EVER miss Corrine’s class L Unfortunately, the only flight I could book back home was Friday morning. But, I have read other MACERs blogs on Nesta?? And plan on doing some reading of my own as well and choose a favourite or two. A lot of them seemed very interesting and I’m looking forward to getting some reading done!
Perhaps this course specifically, (Introduction to Creative Economy) opened my eyes to other opportunities within the advertising field. And that’s what I discussed with some of my friends who are also in the field. I want to get back to advertising, (After spending one year as a magazine editor) but I’m not sure I only want to be a copywriter. I am now at least more open to other options, other opportunities, that involve as much creativity as copywriting.
But then again, I can’t really be picky, can I? In a time like this, in a market like that, I’ll be honest here… I’ll take whatever’s available to me, and work my way up from there!
You know what? I AM getting back into student mode. YAY! I’m already thinking of updating my CV, working on my portfolio, applying to internships, damn damn damn there’s SOOOOOO much to do!
Vacation: over. Real-life: Hello 
