For the second consecutive year, Detroit will be among cities worldwide hosting Portfolio Night, a networking event that connects young advertising copy writers, art directors and designers with creative directors from ad agencies.

This year’s Portfolio Night, which provides a forum for creative directors to review participants’ work portfolios and offer advice, is expected to be bigger than its predecessor, said Rob Strasberg, co-CEO and chief creative officer for Southfield-based Doner, the event’s local sponsor.

Strasberg said more than 150 people are expected to register for the May 21 event at The Rust Belt Market in Ferndale. Last year, 110 attended; most attendees were students from across the Midwest.

“Portfolio Night was incredibly well-received last year — there was a great creative energy in the room, and students got great access and feedback from the professionals,” he said. “So we are hoping to build on that this year.”

The event, now in its 12th year, is organized by the Art Directors Club of New York. Besides Detroit, the 23 other participating cities include Athens, Beijing, Budapest, Chicago, Dubai, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Toronto.

In addition to helping students improve their portfolios and land jobs, Strasberg said, the goal of Detroit’s Portfolio Night is to promote the area’s ad agencies.

“I believe the event was brought to Detroit because ad agencies here are doing some of the most impactful work in the country and in the world, and that’s getting noticed,” he said.

Doner is the 110th largest ad agency in the U.S, based on reported revenue of $91.2 million in 2013, according to the most recent figures from Advertising Age, a sister publication to Crain's Detroit Business. Doner clients include Choice Hotels International Inc., Cox Communications, the Detroit Zoo and The UPS Store.

Other metro Detroit advertising agencies participating in Portfolio Night are Commonwealth, a Detroit-based subsidiary of McCann Worldgroup; Farmington Hills-based Duffey Petrosky; Farmington Hills-based Embark Digital; Chicago-based Leo Burnett Worldwide; Detroit-based Lowe Campbell Ewald; Southfield-based The Mars Agency; and Dearborn-based Team Detroit.

The event’s global sponsors are New York City-based Shutterstock Inc., San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. and New York-based Squarespace Inc. The North American sponsor is Richmond, Va.-based VCU Brandcenter, a graduate portfolio school.

For more information on Portfolio Night or to register for the Detroit event, visit the website.

Bridget Vis: (313) 446-0315, [email protected]