Jon Cook is the Global Chief Executive Officer of VML. VML is an advertising agency that started in Kansas City, Missouri by 3 men. Now the agency has offices in fourteen countries and nine in the United States. Cook has been at VML for twenty years and personally saw the development and growth of the advertising industry. Cook talked about his own experiences which helped him advise the audience on valuable lessons that we could learn from. He talked about his work with Wendy’s and how they switched their view on advertising with the Wendy’s sandwiches. Originally, they would just pay for a lot of space for people to view the food, however, they realized they need to have a combination of creativity and marketing combined with the ability …show more content…
This led to his experience with creating a Tennessee tourism video. Usually, it is easy to do the same old campaign with a couple beautiful shots of Tennessee and to harp on Nashville and that history but instead they went into a different more creative and innovated idea. He turned a usually boring idea to an amazing blog post. They worked with a prominent blogging figure and asked her to tour the state with her family and blog about it. They compiled her posts and videos and made a video with Dolly Parton playing her famous song Tennessee Homesick Blues in the background. This made the video reach different audiences while still getting the message across. His talk reenforced a lot of the messages we learned in class and it is cool to see the messages and ideas being used in the industry and being extremely successful. This speaker made me appreciate class and what we are learning because he said to never lose the basics and that those are the most important aspects to the longevity of the company and his career. The talk made me realize that there are so many options and different paths you can take to be successful in the our