A few short hours later my Facebook desktop notification bliped at me I went to my inbox to see that I had recieved a note from Maya Heart, her avatar as Joan from mad men caught me offguard, her note however took me even more by surprise. Below is our correspondence.

Wow! I was shocked, I had done something so little as like and comment on their video on Facebook. This was awesome I thought, and plus I love getting free stuff. So, I replied and then set out to Twitter to tell them how awesome this whole thing was.

No later than an hour later my iphone buzzed to let me know that I had a new follower from twitter. Lately I’ve been getting some strange followers, so I took it with a grain of salt when a fellow named tombed was following me.

A quick profile check showed me that Tom was infact the CEO of AKQA. Now this type of thing has happened to me before with the good folks at popeyes chicken. I dont expect that I’ll be interesting to Tom but the real deal with this is that they are looking out for people that talk about AKQA. They are in tune to whats out there and are monitoring and then taking some action in the social space, and I have to give them props for doing that. I even followed tom back just to see what kind of CEO he was in relation to other CEO’s I follow ( i do follow a couple)

Today I got a call from Emily while I was at work. A package had arrived. I honestly thought it was from somebody else, heck for a second I thought it might have been the books I ordered this morning. ( a dude can hope right?) But no Emily informed me it was from AKQA, in the best of her 3 year old ability and I mentioned it must be my shirt I got from liking their video, something I’m still a bit shocked by.

Below you’ll find a flickr set of my unboxing. A seemingly hand wrapped box from over the pond. Containing a fancy frosted plastic box containing one Nike sportswear t-shirt with embroidered chest logo. the 5 stars representing the 5 awards they won this year “Creative Review magazine: Advertising Agency of the Year, Campaign magazine: Digital Agency of the Year, Revolution magazine: Agency of the Year, British Interactive Multimedia Asc.: Agency of the Year, IAB: Creative Agency of the Year, Cannes Grand Prix” and a small screened AKQA logo on the lower right of the front of the shirt. Included with the shirt was a letter thanking me and letting me know that my shirt was # 20 of 250 total. That was something that was even more unexpected than getting a shirt in the firstplace.

So whats the big deal right? Wrong, to me this was simply put something that I’ll remember forever an experience that will make AKQA and their work, their smarts and their passion shine above the rest of the digital agencies out there. They not only took the time to do this but they did it with great style that makes me feel like they actually understand the interactions between the online social realm and the real world importance of bringing that experience to you life. Was it hard to do? No. But the fact that they thought enough to do this and it in turn made me blog about it and subsequently I’ll tweet about it, leaves such a great impact of how I view their agency that I’m sure to talk about this many times over.

It’s no doubt to me that the folks at AKQA have great passion for what they do, their execution has proven themselves in all the major awards shows. For me i’m not an awards kinda guy, but what I do love is when somebody in my industry gives me props for doing rad work, so to AKQA I say good on you. I look forward to more.

Wednesday was my last day at Maclaren. Almost 2 years bang on to the day I started I’m moving on to different opportunities, challenges and friends. I leave behind my infamous cave of an office and some friends I hope to cross paths with again. My first agency experience after Helios taught me many things and made me grow a bit here and there in directions I didnt think about growing. I met people and clients I bonded with. Worked on brands that were exciting and new for me. And helped to furthere fine tune what I want out of both life and my career.

That pretty much sums it up, neat and tidy like.

Since April I’ve been deep in this thing that for the most part was called “youth portal” my friends knew its effects on me, so did my co-workers and towards the end my girls at home say its effects on my life, personality, energy level.

This project was huge by most standards, and a giant leap foreward for a corporation like GM. Truth be told I though that this concept was dead from the beginning and at around the half way point almost wished that they had chosed the safer route. Who would have thunk that the idea of a building / loft / parking garage habitated with a motley crue of characters would sell through to a company like GM. The ideas generated with regards to the character creation was on the edge of being rediculous. A squid in a suit? Come on how did we sell this stuff? I’m still dumbfounded by it all.

With thisismyride.ca launched I’m in need of a desperate change of pace. I think I’m all but done with cars at this point in time, dedicating the majority of your time to one singular goal has its profound effects on your perception of a brand and its products. To say that cars arent interesting to me would be wrong cause I think cars are neat and I’m all about looking at cars in the hopes of owning a better or different cars. However the notion of building vehicle pages or more cars now has me feelin bummed. It’ll take a while to get over the car hump, I know I’m not goign to suddenly stop working on cars I am after all the Chevy, Cadillac, Hummer guy at work so I dont expect to be picking up any major clients any time soon, tho a kid can dream can’t they.

I honestly cant wait for it to be over. Too much has my time of late been sucked up by this monster, I’ve suffered, my family has suffered and generally I’m in grumpy spirits most of the days. It wasn’t until yesterday that I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I dont think I want another project of this scale for some time, it was honestly almost too much to handle.

I would love to take a break from cars after this but I know my timesheets at work do not reflect this. I’ve got a solid line up of new GM content on the horizon and hopefully the cars get me juiced for those projects. Untill then its the final days along with nice pressure packed presentations to the client for this project. It’ll all be over soon.

nuff said