What a day

Puh, finally it's coming to an end. We had two presentations at JWT today. We were preparing the stuff the last two days and had to do a night shift to get everything. The outcome: We're very tired, but we learned a lot from the meetings we had today. And we feel happy, It's not that kind of happy reward feeling of 'having a brilliant idea and getting it through to the client', but more of a 'we've learnt something' happy. Maybe that's even better?

We need to get our next placement and need to improve our book for that, there is one problem: One thing always happens to us, at every placement we've been. We hardly get time to do our spec work for our book while on placement. It's always stuff for the agency which comes first, but this flow of new briefs never ends, once we get one thing done, we get another brief - a vicious circle. The only solution we found so far: 'Forget sleep, forget social life outside of work and bye bye weekend'. Can any junior team reconstruct this situation? How do you handle this? Any tips? We want to live outside of advertising! At least for a couple of hours a day.

Drowning

Before Christmas we sent out a .pdf with the strategies we worked on for our spec book. We sent them to creative teams we enjoyed meeting. Nobody got back to us though.

Maybe it was the wrong time to catch people's attention attention, seems like everybody was already on holiday or trying to get everything done. Now we sent out another email, asking for help and now - look look - we got replies! Actually no thoughts on our ideas but chances to come in and see people, worth much more in our eyes. We have to do some nightshifts to get agency work done and refine these ideas in the next couple of days.

Last but not least some updates: We saw James Woods of Grand Union two weeks ago, right after coming back from holidays, it's a pretty good digital agency a field we didn't get any experience in yet. Last Tuesday we met Phill Clark from TheLawFirm, nice guy, interesting company. As you might know Nick Bell the Executive Creative Director just left JWT London and it's a bit strange here, without him. We are doing our best to get the work done but it's a shame that we didn't have more time to work with him. We miss you Nick!

Clayness

Doh! Brainstorming about ideas is done best when playing with something at the same time. Use your hands for random things and it stimulates your brain. I tried this yesterday using white clay. The outcome - I call him Monsieur Craquè. Any good ideas? Not really. Do I care? No, claying was a lot of fun. Let's see, Monsieur Craquè seems lonely on my desk...

The russians are coming

And they are already here. I was delighted to see a huge audience this Saturday on Trafalgar Square at London's Russian Winter Festival 2007. It was the first time I attended this event even it is running for the third year now. As a russian born I was very excited about the 'authentic russian food' advertised on the poster (see how I am seduced by advertising?!).

After arriving there in the late afternoon, skipping the traditional folk dances I had to outlive durng my childhood, I was disappointed with the food stands. Yes there was a hint of russian dishes hidden in between 'traditional food' like hot dogs, hamburgers and kebab - never mind, I wasn't there for the food anyway, but to see two of my favorite russian bands playing: Nogu Svelo & Garik Sukachev. The square was crowded of russians & the performance was brilliant even Garik S. was forced to end earlier since there was an argument with the organization who tried to keep the volume as low as possible, a deadly thing us russian were revolting about - we love to do that.

Just a glimpse of the atmosphere on the Red Square, ehm I mean Trafalgar Square

Yes I did gained some weight over christmas

Nogu Svelo's lead singer in action

I wish Garik Sukachev could have played to the end...

Hoover the tree

This is a post for everyone who is still suffering from overdue christmas trees (by the way guys, it's really time to get rid of any christmas décor. It is january the 15th!) My tip: hoover the tree. An easy and simple way to avoid annoying needles on the floor while eight men are trying to restrain the monster and put it in a rubbish bag.
If you never ever had a christmas tree, well than you may consider to get one this year just to get a taste of the pleasure how it feels to hoover a tree.

First day at JWT...

...has been quite so far, we are waiting to get briefed. We are very excited about being in such a big known agency. Major backlash: all blogspot websites don't work here, it seems like they are blocked. Why? Are the people reading too much blogs? Typepad works though. Well maybe it's only for the placement IP's? I should ask IT sometime. At lunch we met Jamie & Chris who are on a creative placement with RMG connect, the integrated part of JWT. They graduated together with me from the ad course at Bucks university in 2006. Everyone is very nice so far and the atmosphere is relaxed. We cannot wait to get our hands on the four briefs we were promised today, after the long holiday break we're full of energy and don't understand the term 'January Blues'.

2007 update

Hello & happy new year to everyone!
Just a short notice what we're up to. Kristin is in Paris and probably relaxing after a french new years eve party. I'm currently in Hamburg. We'll be both back and reunited in the next couple of days to start this great year of exciting ideas in London. Await news & more next week.