PhilippEnIs

No posts for more than a week ladies and gentlemen. As for today I’m off to the Philippines. This is how the place normally should look like. Getting jealous? Well, you shouldn’t because if you would have followed the news recently; there was a typhoon in Manila this week killing around 30 people and causing a lot of damage. It’s now in Hong Kong (our transfer airport) and there could be there’s another typhoon on its way towards the Philippines again in the coming days. Will I survive? Story continues in 10 days … (normally).

Fuck Metal, Here’s To Jazz!

Goddamn, I’m an idiot. While two days ago I post a message about the 25 year death celebration of Metallica’s bassist Cliff Burton on September 27, 1986 (click here), I completely forgot to post yesterday the death of Jazz legend Miles Davis. Obviously this man has meant already a lot more then Metallica ever will and so I would like to apologize my reckless attention here. And clearly point out that jazz is a lot more orgasmic to me, while metal rarely is. First I thought I could cover this up since Cliff Burton’s death is a nice round number (25) and it would deserve the attention … but then I figured out that makes even less sense since Davis died exactly 20 years ago (yesterday) on September 28, 1991, due a stroke at age 65. I was 3 years old, why didn’t my parents take me there as a late birthday gift?!

This is a man that does not need an introduction. Here’s talent for everybody who loves good jazz – loves the sound of the trumpet – loves the passion for musical escapes and ecstasies – loves everything what the art of music is all about …

I’m As Mad As Hell

Isn’t this great? A man with an opinion. A visionary man with a provocative opinion. And a man that only needs one simple media channel to address his opinion and gets immediate results. In less than 5 minutes this man has caused street rebel as far as the city can reach. Awesome.

This is a perfect example of how advertising used to be done or at least used to wish you could get a result by merely doing this. Times have changed. Better.

25 Years Ago Metallica Lost Some Talent

Yes, I listen once in while also to some metal. While I have a past in certain underground scenes, there’s barely any real “metal’ flying out of my speakers nowadays. But there’s this hand-full amount of bands that you simply cannot ignore when talking about bands that influenced music or rock history. Obviously one of them is Metallica, and people who deny that should be thrown in an old-school hardcore mosh pit wearing a Justin Bieber t-shirt.

I’m posting this since today exactly 25 years ago, on September 27, 1986, Cliff Burton died tragically in a tour accident. Cliff was the bass player of the band and contributed to world classic metal albums like ‘Ride the Lightening’ and ‘Master of Puppets’. While I think the black album is a masterpiece as well, Master of Puppets is without any doubt my favorite Metallica album. Putting this album in its time frame, the progressive sound and song lines these guys created are freaking amazing.

Cliff died when Metallica was in Sweden on their Damage Inc. tour and the bus of the band over-turned in the rural southern part of the country. Circumstances are a bit vague as temperatures were above zero degrees and there was no ice on the road. The driver was being suspected for being drunk or haven fallen asleep while driven but he always kept denying and was never accused responsible for the accident.

Good night Cliff!

Why Planners Never Have An Excuse

So I’m again an intern (didn’t you see my previous post?) and getting myself to learn about that particular moment you have to choose for yourself when to stop searching for information that can lead to new strategies, insights or creative ideas and sending it to my superiors; or digging more and more into the web and almost fainting from staring at a computer screen for too long, I’m not that great to do that.

It made me realize that planners or actually people working in advertising in general never have an excuse to say they have nothing on their hands. It’s our job to capture the voice of a brand and make that relevant to people. So it’s our job to keep searching for that voice and more importantly: to keep searching for how to communicate that voice in a relevant way as people, markets, opinions, … constantly change and can never be caught entirely at a certain moment in time. Whenever we tend to think there’s a spare moment in our (working) day or there hasn’t been a new brief recently, we’re the ones that ought to open the web browser and just start looking. Looking what the competitors are doing, looking for what people are saying about our clients are looking for that new insight you have no idea you were looking for until you found it. You may find this not attractive at all. Never having a spare moment? Oh God, please give me at least half an hour lunch break…! Of course you get that and of course you get to decide that yourself. It’s just that I’ve already learned and observed that there is not an average general day a planner has. One day can be packed with meetings, new briefs, lots of fuck-ups and frustration until next mornings. While there can be other days you wonder what the hell they’re actually paying you for. It are those days that shouldn’t be there. Or at least they shouldn’t feel like that because on those days … you as a planner should know exactly what to do. You can even write a blog post about it ;).

As an intern, I learned that the hard way. Then again, perhaps everybody learned it the hard way? Or perhaps everybody should learn it the hard way? When talking to people in the ad scene what requirements the best planner in the world should have, or which qualifications (college degree, certain schools, straight A’s…) prescribes that, everybody has told me always the same: experience! experience! experience! I hope I’m getting on the right track with that. I do feel that way, since for the moment I’m already having the time of my life at AKQA.