So Apparently Quitting Your Job To Pursue A Creative Dream Is Hard

This insight brought to you by Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, those two South African ad people who left their careers for a year to go travel.

(And presumably find themselves and/or the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre.)

Travel and accommodation are not cheap things, and it seems that having the adventure of a lifetime can also mean cleaning toilets and doing rather un-creative jobs.

It’s easy to pile on at this point. If you were jealous before of their travelling and beautiful photos and how easy it seemed to be for them, now is your chance to feel a bit smug. Certainly when I read the first article on them I felt more than a tinge of green.

But actually this revelation makes me like their story far better. All too often on AdWeek and the like, you read these “quirky” stories about advertising people, especially young would-be advertising people, doing something to get attention. You know the kind.

“Let’s take your award on a trip to New York!”

“Let’s go around Cannes being quirky and documenting the experience!”

“Let’s send armed mercenaries to deliver my portfolio to the ECD!”

It’s all very well and good. Some of those projects are something worth doing, worth a read.

(Particularly the mercenaries one, if you haven’t already read it. It’s like, super quirky.)

My issue comes when you realise that the underlying assumption of so many of these creative efforts is “have plenty of money”.

There’s nothing wrong with wealth. It’s just not a shortcut to creativity.

So I’m glad when I hear an honest answer from these two – that creative projects and adventures are great, but they aren’t easy. And they shouldn’t be easy.

Money helps, but it doesn’t teach you how to work without that monetary help. Doing that cool thing you like with money – that’s easy. Doing that cool thing you like for money – well, that takes a bit more work.

You can find their post, and blog, here.

I Want To Go On Holiday And It’s Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam’s Fault

Another cracker from W+K Amsterdam. A new spot for Booking.com, filled with energy, inspiration and aspiration.

Certainly makes me want to run off on holiday. Which is bloody annoying because I don’t have either the time or the money. So thanks for that guys.

Regardless, it’s an ad that gets you pumped up and ready to roll. It gets you excited about the possibilities of the summer in a way that’s totally different – though still very effective – to that great “Dear Summer” spot from Corona I was talking about a few weeks ago. One wields nostalgia and peace. The other plays upon excitement and spontaneity.

It’s simple, fun, and off the cuff. Not everything needs to be layered with meaning.

In fact most ads could do with a hell of a lot less.

And it all comes together beautifully. Plus the drum improv soundtrack is on point, energetic, jazzy – reminiscent of the you-have-to-watch-this movie Whiplash, which is very of the moment.

I can’t imagine where they might have gotten the idea to use that kind of music.

The fantastic Adland criticises the tagline (“Wing everything. Except your accommodation”) but I have to disagree.

When you’re young especially, the times where you wing it and take things a day at a time – those are often the best of times. Going on a random train journey. Flying off at a moment’s notice. Meeting new friends, trying new things – marching to the beat of your own drum.

And when you have a website you can use to find a good deal on a hostel at a moment’s notice – it makes for a great collaborator for your own improvisation.

That’s what this ad is tapping into and I’m feeling it. Let’s go wing it.

And check out the ad below:

Why is Amsterdam the Centre of World Advertising Right Now?

Of course that’s begging the question to an extent. But if you ask around you’ll find that most people see Amsterdam as the place to be for great advertising, and the place to go if you’re an ambitious AE or creative. More to the point, the number of international accounts with global brands being snagged by agencies based in Amsterdam is huge.

So why Amsterdam? There are a lot of reasons really. Even more so than London, the city is diverse, culturally and linguistically, and has a reputation, rightly or wrongly, for toleration and cultural liberalism, the heart of the ad industry. Everyone speaks English.

It’s also a beautiful city, and one with a lot more to offer than meets the eye (the food is great too). But all of these traits can be attributed to other great cities, from London to New York. So why is Amsterdam on top right now?

The answer lies in a comment made to me by an agency CEO who has been working there for a number of years. “Agencies around here are friendly, they’re neighbours, they get along, they don’t worry about accounts being lost amongst them, or partners moving from place to place. They know that an account here or there is not the end of the world." The goal is the work, not the politics behind it.

Perhaps this attitude is only maintained because of the growth in the AMS ad world. Perhaps only optimism prevents infighting. But that’s not what I see there.

Creativity often comes from adversity, but it rarely springs out of politicking and rivalry. The great UK ad agencies are not the ones fighting aggressively over accounts, but the ones confident, pitching for what they want rather than for the table scraps.

Amsterdam has learned the lesson from the London ad world, the lesson that London itself has not. Advertising is not improved by politics. Advertising is best when formed in a culture of multiculturalism and curiosity.

Let’s be serious. M&C Saatchi is a dying firm. So is Leo Burnett. Why? Because they have become bureaucracies, more fixated on infighting and bitter turf wars inside and outside of the agency.

The best agencies are those that have realised that success means not caring about wins or losses. That, despite the pretentiousness of this statement, the journey is more important than the end result. Because the journey is what makes the end result a result.

Amsterdam agencies have realised this. They’ve realised that advertising is not the same as business. It has to be engaging inside and out. And that fighting just isn’t as good as cooperation in growing ideas.

SNCF and Giving People What They Want

SNCF (the French rail network) has some of the best advertising out there, at least in the sphere of direct (e)mail. I say that for a simple reason. SNCF doesn’t assault you with information. It doesn’t offer you irrelevant goodies to make you resent it less for its constant emails.

What it does is make you want to travel around France. Admittedly this shouldn’t be too difficult a sell for most people. But SNCF sells it in a pure, and effective way.

Every few days you get an email which tells you about places you can visit. And it tells you how much it costs to visit them. And that’s about it. There are pretty pictures, though not too many of them. There are blurbs, and seasonal offers, and special deals. But for the most part SNCF’s DM really boils down to a simple and compelling proposition.

Here are some places you will probably want to go to. SNCF can take you there, and do it for cheaper than you might think.

In a time of airline competition and squeezed budgets, it’s a refreshingly straightforward, no bullshit sales pitch. I’m sold.