This report from Our Own Correspondent, Beanie, Currently on secondment from Wieden + Kennedy London to the Mothership in Portland.

So far I have spent my time working on EA Games, and Target. (Target is a chain of stores that’s a mixture of Woolworths, Ikea, and BHS. Basically it’s a posh Wallmart). We’ve had a big presentation on each so far. One in San Francisco for EA, and the other in Minneapolis for Target. Both meetings seemed to go really well. EA bought some work, and apparently the Target client used the phrase ‘Home Run!’ with great frequency in their meeting.

(American for ‘I quite like that’).

2 big things have happened in the Wieden & Kennedy Portland calendar since I¹ve been here:

I arrived just in time for ‘March Madness’, when everyone congregates in the atrium at various points during the day to watch one of the college basketball playoffs on 2 giant screens. More people bet on this than any other sporting event in the US, and this year there were more big upsets than usual, hence the name ‘March Madness’.

I¹ve also been lucky enough to be here for Founders’ Day. This company has been around for 24 years now, and certainly knows how to celebrate its birthday. This year’s theme was starting anew, so everyone helped NYC artists Faile paint a giant mural, and then repaint over it and then, you guessed it, paint it all again. The Roots played an epic set live the same evening, which was an unexpected surprise for everyone.

Other than that, the differences are quite blurry. Things are busy, people are friendly, and everyone¹s working really hard here. In fact, it’s a lot like the London office in that respect, but with more people, more dogs, less tea, and no marmite.