Marc Stoiber
VP, Executive Creative Director
Grey Worldwide Northwest

VIEW THE PHOTOS

Portfolio Night in Vancouver 2005 was notable for two things: a staggeringly high turnout of high-power creatives, and a surprisingly low turnout of students.

In the end, the students that did turn out won big…each of them had a chance to speak with at least 5 Cds, designers, art directors or copywriters.

To put this in perspective, we had creatives from Rethink (who just won three GOLD One Show pencils) and DDB (who just won Gold, Silver and Bronze One Show Pencils) looking at books, alongside top-flight designers like Gae Wakabayashi and Roy White, just to name a few.

Despite the less-than-stellar student turnout, the event was a party. The Buffalo Club provided an ideal, funky venue. ihaveanidea provided free beer. And the senior creatives provided fun, non-threatening reviews.

Special thanks to the Grey Worldwide volunteers – they organized the evening, did all the logistics, and kept everyone’s beer glass full.

Our mission in Vancouver is clear – we need to take the word to the schools. There’s no shortage of ad / design programs in Vancouver – at schools like Emily Carr, Langara, Kwantlen, SFU and BCIT. But somehow they’re not getting the word about ihaveanidea.org, or great events like Portfolio Night (and it isn’t because we aren’t telling them!)

Look for this to change in time for next year’s Vancouver event.


> Brett McKenzie
Lead Writer
ihaveanidea

**Portfolio Night in Canada/Vancouver: A Torontonian Perspective**

For the past two years, I have participated in the Toronto edition of the wonder that is Portfolio Night in Canada; first as a bright-eyed student, then last year as a full fledged ihaveanidea team member, emcee, and purveyor of fine thongs.



And as Portfolio Night III approached, I was eagerly waiting the excitement and insanity of the Toronto event. Then I received a phone call from our fearless leader, Ignacio Oreamuno.

“Brett, how’d you like to help out with Portfolio Night in Vancouver?”

Suffice to say, my excitement level was substantially raised. We’re all well aware that Vancouver is a city with creative powerhouse agencies. We’ve heard stories about the West coast lifestyle, and last year I even penned an article comparing the Toronto and Vancouver advertising communities. However, being someone who has never traveled further west than Detroit, this was a chance to see firsthand if Vancouver lived up to the hype.

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005, Vancouver

With my lovely traveling companion Julie Pratt, Director of Sales for ihaveanidea’s gold sponsor First Light, I have already visited many of Vancouver’s top advertising and design shops (those stories will be told soon) and we were headed to the Buffalo Club, an expansive bar on Vancouver’s Granville St. Nestled quaintly amongst a selection of porn shops, the Buffalo Club was where Vancouver’s ad elite would come to impart wisdom on the multitude of west coast students.



If only there were a multitude of students in Vancouver.

You see, unlike Toronto's Portfolio Night gala, where over 150 participants vied for the attention of a few dozen creatives last year, the Vancouver event had the senior creatives outnumbering the students nearly two to one. This was not due to a lack of effort on the part of Marc Stoiber, Creative Director of Grey Worldwide Northwest, whose staff tirelessly organized, promoted and hosted the event, but rather due to the fact that although Vancouver ad and design firms have talent in spades, the region doesn’t have the number or caliber of schools found in Toronto.

But as we prepared to begin the night, Marc and I thought, was this really such a bad scenario? A little quick thinking, and without further ado, Marc, Julie and myself took the stage and began the evening. However, rather than follow the rigid structure the Toronto Portfolio Night must follow to maintain order, the roll of drink tickets were brought out and the “rule book” went out the window. Instead of limiting students to only three 15 minute sit=downs with the creatives, we allowed the participants to see as many creatives as they could over the course of the evening.


**Marc**


**Julie**

And what a selection of creative talent to choose from! Alan Russell and his crew at DDB (fresh off of One Show glory), Chris Staples [staples.jpg] and others from Rethink (also bringing home a few more Gold Pencils for their collection), and many of the top talent from such agencies as Grey Northwest, TBWA\Vancouver, Wasserman & Partners and others, as well as design-oriented firms like Kaldor, Subplot and Hangar 18. No air horns, no ref shirts, no pretentiousness. Just plenty of beer, relaxed, unhurried conversations in an intimate setting, and some of the best creative talent in the country (if not the world) helping guide the early careers of a handful of Vancouver hopefuls. As someone stated, “you know, a lot of the Toronto kids would kill for an opportunity like this.”


**Alan Russel**


**Chris Staples**

So what did the creative directors think of the evening? Chris Staples for one was very impressed. Staples, who had attended Portfolio Night in Toronto last year, actually found the average caliber of this year’s Vancouver books to surpass those he saw in Toronto. How could this be, when Toronto has all the better schools and a much larger pool to draw from? “When you don’t have the schools here, you’re self-taught, and have to really want it.” said Staples. “A lot of the people I spoke with were obviously really hungry. It takes a lot of initiative, and even without the schooling, these kids had taught themselves how to put together a pretty good book, and that’s encouraging. The bottom line is that to break into the business in Vancouver, you have to be either crazy or determined. These kids were the latter.”

And to think I was initially excited about Portfolio Night in Toronto.