Erik & Philippe interview

I'm a bit late on this, but ihaveanidea.org published their interview with Erik and Philippe here. I admire their optimism towards the industry, these guys love what they do. If you want to be a great creative, it can be simple, it is all about hard work and staying yourself, staying unique. Many times this had been said, but it's good to hear it again. I'm off to town now, we're meeting at NABS today to do some work and contact people.

A Day in the Life of Abbey Road

A simple idea makes a great music video. I have yet to visit that place.

David B

The mighty David 'DeathSpin' Buonaduidi welcomed us yesterday in his white Karmahouse for a chat about our book. We heard that they were not particularly looking for teams but always keens on seeing them. I was glad that Dave recognized me from back then when I've met him at the Under the Influence talk organized by Iris.

The meeting was rather positive as Dave was precise and to the point with his opinions on our work. Stuff like Paperchase and TfL he found nice, but not in the best way. He was more keen on our Greenpeace, Ryanair and the direction J2O was heading. We wanted to see Karmarama for some time now and were happy to finally done so. We left our contacts and entered his freelance radar, a good thing we think. Back to work now. Jai is helping his mum, she's a singer, and has a concert today. She does all the time but rarely it is in London. On my end I decided to look into a bunch of strategies and write a list of new ones. We're getting ready to continue our visits to creatives who wave their arms. Who's next?

Brainsnacks

The weekend was great, Pink Floyd music, snow in hamburg, foreign movies, fish, crazy americans and friends. Now catching up with Mad Men and mulling over the notes from todays bookcrit, we saw another creative director. More about this tomorrow.

Dave Trott

Yesterday we went to see Dave Trott, creative director at CST. We knew it would be interesting to talk to him and show him our work – and it t was a brilliant session indeed. Dave certainly knows how to be a brand himself. He compares getting a job to selling a product – of course he's right, we are the most important product we'll ever sell. It's about researching the market (creative directors) and looking into the product (the creative team) and matching those two together. We like the fact that the whole topic was more how to get the job rather than the work. In fact, we spend two hours with Dave, and he didn't even look at our book.

There were lots of nuggets we took away from this meeting, lessons you won't find on his blog. A lot to take in, and a great deal to talk about. Perfect to kick the January blues in the ass and rock on. Thanks Dave.

Trophy heads

One of our readers, Alfred, just pointed out this Superbowl ad.



Making us happy to see that there are other people out there thinking about what's on the other side of a trophy head. Watch Jai the horseman, as we shot it on placement at W+K London. We really should have made it much shorter, right?

All white

London's crumbling under a white cover, no buses, tube stations are closed and lots of snowball fights are taking place on the streets. When I arrived after a 2 hour long journey at the agency it seems half empty. It was fun walking through the snow not trying to slip away and cover myself with the coffee I was carrying. The real tricky part will be getting home. And once this is accomplished there will be time to watch yesterdays superbowl ads. That is if I make it through the public transport chaos. It is quite impressive how vulnerable this city is to such weather.