Department Zero Blog

As you may have guessed, I am Erik, the 2012 Spring intern at Department Zero! I wanted to check in on the blog and report to the potential summer interns about what they can expect.

So far the experience has been great! From day one, I was assigned real projects, attended client brainstorm meetings, and learned how to run the front desk. I’ve even gotten to go out and view campaigns, take down displays, drive client’s display cars, and watch how the team formulates ideas for clients. Did I mention I have a killer office view of 20^th Street? Or, that we are always playing music?

I came into the internship just hoping to learn new skills and maybe some new ways of thinking. Thus far, this experience has taught me much more than any previous internship. It has taught me how an experiential marketing firm operates; gaining new clients, task managing, brainstorming concepts, etc.  I had never thought about how much detail goes into putting an experiential campaign together. Luckily, I am even creating one myself, as all interns make a mock marketing campaign, to present at the end of the internship. Can’t wait!

Department Zero is on the hunt for the most creative, innovative, hard working and outgoing interns. If you live in Kansas City or Portland, OR, are a college junior or senior and feel passionately about marketing, you MUST read this.

You: 
Have many options to help you to prepare to for the "real world" and a long list of things that would be more fun to do thanshow up to an office for free. Your advisers and parents really want you to be ready to enter the job force, and you don't have to spend your first few years out of school referring to your parents as your "roommates."

We: 
Involve interns in every step of the process at our agency. Apply to learn how we create awesome brand experiences for some of the biggest brands out there. Gain experience building grassroots and experiential marketing programs for clients like Chrysler, TGIFridays, and Scion. 

How to score the best damn internship in the entire advertising and marketing universe: 
Send your resume to  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  and let us know why you want to be part of our intern crew. Tell us about your personal experiences with brands at major events, what you believe grassroots marketing means to consumers, or if you happen to have crazy awesome skills we'd be crazy to overlook. Show us your personality and your passion, and we'll show you one heck of a time.

2012 Summer Deadline:

Summer (June 4 - August 17) Internship Submissions - 5pm, April 6th

If you know anything about me, you know that I *heart* infographics. This piece lays out the scary truth about where all our time goes in the modern day. It is no surprise that millions of us spend hours on Facebook, but it is interesting to see Pinterest's growth. Still considered a new property, Pinterest is almost half of the daily size of Twitter already.

A Cheese Car gets attention. A Yahoo! story titled America's Most Outrageous Food Vehicles published on Friday featured the car along side other promotional vehicles like the Planter's Nutmobile Hershey Kissmobile. The custom promotional vehicle, a Chevy HHR with cheese, was created by Department Zero for the Midwest Dairy Farmers Association, alongside agency partner Sullivan Higdon & Sink and fabrication partner Display Studios.

Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. 

The affluent are just like everyone else, but with more money. Which is to say that they are not one homogenous group, but a collection of different individuals with different interests, needs and wants. If your target audience is the 22% of US households classified as "affluent," understanding how to engage them is key.

We will be accepting resumes for winter interns until Friday, November 11th. If you are looking for some real world experience working with Fortune 500 brands, putting together cutting edge experiential marketing programs, get your resume in today! Deadline is November 11th!

Everyone in the agency game knows that the coolest stuff ever created is probably also the stuff that will never see the light of day. But no matter how many times they are shot down, these zombie concepts rise again, refusing to die.

A recent study from the UK shows that sampling merged with an element of experiential is an incredibly effective way to market products. Who wouldn't be blown away by these stats? 

Facebook makes changes frequently, and without actively pandering for user input. The result is a wave of panicked posts and threats to defect to a competing social service. Getting past our collective discomfort with change, what are the changes really going to mean for users?