Professionally, I wanted to see what was different and similar and gain experience of a new place - I've worked in London and Sydney, so it seemed the next logical step.
Media environment It's the same - but different. The scale is exponentially bigger - some of the larger advertisers regularly spend more than $1bn a year each on media. There are the same challenges, the same uncertainties and the same desire to become digitised.
Social scene The industry is very social over here. And people in general are far more willing to talk to strangers than they would be in the UK, especially if you have an English accent. Americans can drink and the measures are much bigger here, but there's less focus on binge drinking. However, drinking at lunchtime is frowned upon, possibly due to concerns over misallocating budgets of that scale.
Digital New York is ahead and behind - some internet behaviours seem advanced, so web and TV are used well together. But the mobile infrastructure is a mess because there are two standards (CDMA and GSM), so networks don't play well together.
Main differences Everything. One of the weirdest things is how different it can seem when you first arrive - you assume it will be just like the UK. Things that initially struck me included the extent of brand variants on the shelves of the chemist.
What New York can learn from the UK See lunchtime drinking in the social scene, left.
One thing we can learn from New York Although I believe it is taken too far here, the science of marketing is more developed. They are more insistent on understanding how marketing is a business investment and how to show that investment is returning. This is crucial, but shouldn't lead to decision by model.
Faris Yakob is a senior strategist at Naked New York. He moved to New York from Naked London in January this year
Feature
Naked's Faris Yakob on life in New York City
I thought it might be like living on a film set or in an episode of Friends. I had also heard that the ratio of single females to males was favourable.
