Heads Across the Oceans: Realising a childhood dream

New York. Gotham. The Big Apple. The city that never sleeps. Ever since I watched ‘Friends’ as a child of the 90s, I’ve wanted to live and work in NYC. So when 1000heads announced Heads across the Oceans, a scheme giving Heads the opportunity to work in another of our global offices, I jumped at the chance.

To apply for the role, we had to present to our CEO on why we should be sent across the pond to New York – a great opportunity to flex the marketing muscles! Inspired by my love of ‘Friends’, and in particular an episode about Sting, I based my campaign around the theme of #rosscan.

I put a word of mouth campaign into practice in the office, leaving drinks cans emblazoned with #rosscan on people’s desks, sharing the hashtag on familiar platforms such as WhatsApp, Snapchat and Twitter and new ones such as Plague. In fact, my post on Plague reached as far as North Korea, Alaska and New Zealand!

The campaign went down a treat and a couple of weeks later I was boarding a flight across to the U S of A as our inaugural Head across the ocean. Touching down to temperatures of -16°C was a bit of a shock, as was the US’ tipping etiquette! The views of Tribeca from my 20th floor hotel room were, however, absolutely stunning.

1000heads New York offices are based on Broadway, in the fashionable area of Soho (interestingly, our London offices are in London’s slightly less trendy Soho). The team made me immediately feel at home and went on to show me some of the best Manhattan has to offer during my two weeks there.

Work-wise, I undertook a mixture of my London-based accounts and pitches for the New York office. It was great to see, despite the ocean between us, the same company culture and hunger for great work pervading 1000heads New York and London.

And what about New York? It beat all my expectations – bustling, exhilarating, exhausting; every corner I turned was like entering a movie set. This was so much more than a tourist visit – the opportunity to live and work in the city made it feel like home and I would advocate anybody to jump at the chance to do the same.

Where next? Sydney? Dubai? Berlin? All of the above? Sign me up…