How I got into Advertising

Hi, my name is Victor!

I started working the day I turned 16! My first job was as a dishwasher at a local restaurant in McAllen, TX. I knew work wasn’t meant to be fun, but dishwashing was just so awful. Luckily, it did give me a lot of time to self-reflect on what I would be doing if I wasn’t at work.

and then BAM… “I should try to find a way to earn money off my skills with a camera and a computer.”

After working that evening to closing time. I went back home, knocked out, woke up for school, and started my first portfolio website. The whole site was just videos I had filmed in my backyard and then began my search for clients.

I had no one when I started out, but once I started doing some free gigs here and there, momentum just happened!

Right at this time, the DSLR game had just ramped up. Sony, Canon, and Pansonic were releasing cameras every year with a spec upgrade so significant, that I’d feel behind in times if I couldn’t shoot 4K, 10-bit color, and log profiles in a small DSLR body so I got to experience different camera bodies, UIs, lenses at a really young age. And I also got to experience how important money is to a production by doing small business videos and some large-scale events.

Because of how my life was currently going, I thought I would get a lot from studying Advertising at UT Austin. Sadly I never learned anything about production in the advertising industry, but I did get to learn about Advertising. I was the only person I knew in my classes who wanted to definitely do something with video production. At this time, I only did content creation for small tech companies during my summers.

I currently work for DDB San Francisco and DDB North America as an Associate Video Editor where I get to work with talented art directors, copywriters, producers, etc to pitch to many brands and work on many brands!