Brandon Thornton: Wieden & Kennedy

Brandon Thornton from Wieden & Kennedy came and spoke to several of us about his job at Wieden & Kennedy and the steps he took in order to get there. Brandon graduated from Virginia Tech in 2006 as a marketing major and didn’t really enjoy his time here. He got a job for UPS and absolutely hated it. He eventually quit once he got accepted into the VCU Brandcenter. After making it through the two-year program, he attained an internship with Wieden & Kennedy and has been working there ever since mainly on the Nike account. His background story was very encouraging to me because I almost feel as if I was in the same boat as he was in. He finally found something he was good at and passionate about and now he’s doing that as a career. Throughout his presentation last night, he constantly hit home the point of “creating your own voice”. I liked this because we have to attempt to do this in our blogs that we have to do for class. Brandon was able to use the gifts and strengths that he has and he is now doing something he absolutely loves. I may not want to work at Wieden &Kennedy but I want my lifestyle to be similar of Brandon’s in that I will be doing something in my career which really emphasizes my strengths and at the same time, is something I love doing. His entire presentation was extremely interesting and hopeful for me as I am about to enter the real world in a few months. I’m excited to hear what else he has to say in class today.__________________________ When Brandon came to speak to our class he showed us how a creative brief was done by his company. It was really incredible the amount of time and effort it looked like was put into the brief. It was great being able to see something tangible for us to relate to in order for us to put together our creative brief on Uniqlo. I was very motivated after his presentation in class because it made something that seemed so far-fetched more of a reality for us to do and I was encouraged -- that through not only Brandon, but our other speakers-- I am able to understand a whole new language through taking this class. These speakers have dropped a lot of terminology on us and if I wasn't taking this class, I would have no clue what an SMP was or a key insight was so that is also very helpful in our project that we have due in a couple of weeks. Brandon was definitely my favorite speaker so far because he was the most relatable to me. Yes, because he was closest to our age but also because of the environment in which he works and what he does (mainly within the sports industry). I learned so much from Brandon during both his night and day presentations.