Back to AR

Stubble Jai concepting away while evil Wal planning his daily piano assault. We're back to Agency Republic for a few days to work on some stuff.

Comments

We’re following Scamps example and switching to comment moderation. Now whenever a comment is left it will end up in our inbox waiting for approval. Restrictive? Maybe, but it’s our blog and we don’t like the way some people are abusing the comment function. Your opinions are always welcome as long as they stay constructive and don’t insult anyone.

Cheers.

Portfolioing

Bookwork rules our daily schedules nowadays and it's big fun. Even more after our first bookcrit this year with WCRS on Friday. We saw Oli and Alex, a team who helped us a great deal. We have a few new pieces and they seemed to liked them and wanted more, so we give them more.

This week starts off with seeing Rory at The Talent Business and an integrated agency about potential freelance work tomorrow. We're charged.

Erik & Philippe

You know ihaveanidea.org right? They brought us things like Portfolio night and lots of great articles. Continuing the awesomeness they are going to get Erik Vervroegen (former ECD of TBWA/Paris) and Philippe Meunier (co-founder of Sid Lee) in front of a camera for ihaveanidea's first video interview.

O' course they are smart boys and girls and have thought of lots of clever and interesting questions in order to squeeze some advertising wisdom out of those two stars. However they are still giving everyone a chance to quiz these masters – especially as most of the readers of ihaveanidea are North Americans, we shall see what London's creative crowd is curious about. Send your questions to Brett (brett@ihaveanidea.org subject: Erik & Philippe) or leave a comment before Monday the 26th of January. State your name and location if you wanna be credited in the video.

Here are some of my favourite print ads done under Erik V.

Smile Yasar

There's war in Gaza. And I think there's not much we can do about it. But if there's one thing we could change and make the life of one person better in this difficult time – with a single comment, should we not try? Have a go and http://makeyasersmile.blogspot.com

Creative Sensei

It seems like young creatives cannot afford to be picky about their first job nowadays. Yet we shall all have ideas where we'd like to work – and there are a lot of ways how to make that choice. I imagine many a creative is attracted by the glamorous name and the reputation of an ad shop and chooses the place they apply to by the name above the door. So were we. When we started out, we admired the coolest ones, always checking Campaign's new business charts, the award annuals and of course the recent work.

After some placements you realize that there's much more to it. Now there is one main criteria we're looking for in order judge whether a place is for us or not: a creative (director, or team) we can learn from. I think that's the critical point when you start out in this business, to find someone who can act as a mentor and help you moulding your potential and make you a better advertiser. A creative whose opinion you can absolutely trust and seek out if needed. Not someone who solves your problems, but rather helps to find the solution yourself. Finding such a person is not as easy as it seems and once you find that mentor, showing them enthusiasm and hunger is the real challenge.

When we look at an agency, we do not care about the name above the door. It is a only an indicator for where the great people are. We care more about the one person that can teach us to reach the next level – a creative sensei. Scamp and Dave Trott are great examples for this breed of advertiser. We're interested in your thoughts. Do you know more creatives like that? Or have you found your sensei already?

Back to business

After the the cold winter hibernation we warmed up and put together our plan of action for the next weeks. We're excited. The first part is to bring the ideas we gathered over the holiday season to life and on paper. We can't wait to share them with people.