Menno Kluin, Saatchi & Saatchi New York

Fellow Dutchman Menno Kluin is one of the first graduates of the Miami Ad School Europe. And he's by far the most successful one. Since his graduation he works as an art-director at Saatchi & Saatchi New York where he won a total of 9 (!) Cannes Lions. Last year he was the most awarded art director in Creativity Magazine. Despite being really busy, Menno still made time to write about his week.

Here it is.
And it will be like my week.
Written stressed, rushed and maybe sometimes confusing.
Monday to Friday "reply all" E-mails, meetings, conference calls, presentations and lunches.
Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to forget how to be creative.
When was the last time I actually did an idea?

This week is really about getting things done. Writing more mails than humanly possible. Running up from the 18th floor to the 15th floor. (where the Saatchi studio is. Whoever thought of that should be shot) Yes there is an elevator, but it's just too slow. Comping boards for spots. Comping roughs for presentations, finding money, finding photographers, finding illustrators, finding directors and hopefully finding some time for Guitar Hero (see picture).

This week was also about pitching beer, glamourizing hair, a candy that turns your mouth blue and a portable yogurt. In a weird way the glamourizing hair was the most fun. Although the other ones seem sexier its always nice to do something on such a hardcore selling packed goods product that has been around for ages.

This week is even more chaotic than usual because Paul Schulman, our creative manager who controls the lifes of 40 teams, is on holiday and Gerry Graf is still not here yet. Tony Granger our previous CCO quit some time ago to become the worldwide creative director at Y&R. Chaos is supposed to be good for creativity, but not if creativity consists of so much management. But when Gerry gets here I am sure things will calm down again.

But I shouldn't forget to actually write about creativity. And the fact that Gerry Graf is coming made me think about the following: the next couple of months is going to be interesting because my specific type of creativity will change. Gerry is a completely different CD than Tony (big visual) and therefore it seems logical that I will have to change my style as well. At least let's hope so because his work on Combos, Skittles and Snickers is great. Would love to have a spot like that on my reel.

This week was as well about realising for the first time ever how much sugar is in things. Maybe common knowledge to the rest of the world but it still came as shock to me. Ketchup has about 60 cubes. 1 Liter coke about 50. (if my calculations are correct...)

That was it.
My week.

Niklas Frings-Rupp, Miami Ad School Hamburg

Niklas is the co-founder and headmaster of Miami Ad School Europe in Hamburg. Before that he was account director at Springer & Jacoby and Jung von Matt. Thanks to his excellent coaching at the Miami Ad School he's the only 'suit' (account director) ever admitted to the Art Directors Club in Germany.

Actually there are 2 things I liked especially about this week.

First: I really feel honoured being the first writing for Robin’s blog. I was so impressed that he continued writing in his MAS blog for the two years. And I am even more impressed that he continues this tradition with a new one now that he starts his new job at DG.

And second (this is more interesting for people that know me) – I do lose all my penalty points at the Flensburg archive.

The Flensburg archive? What’s that supposed to be? Well, people who drive fast or even race on the Autobahn do know: In most areas of Germany you can’t really speed. There are limitations all over. Unfortunately, we Germans do have to pay a fine when driving too fast and you also get one, two or three points at Flensburg – depending on how fast you were. But these points don’t equal the points at the Formula 1: you shouldn’t feel happy when you get them. You might see yourself as a great fast driver, but the German government doesn’t.

When you collect 18 points you do lose your driving licence for a long time. You might even have to redo your license completely with all the tests.

So what’s the way out? You have to be „clean“ and collect no points at all for two years. Then and only then the guys at Flensburg delete all points that you gathered in the past.

And this week – exactly on the 21st of January – all my 14 points are gone. (14!!! For two years I was very close on the edge of losing my license) 14 points. On the 21th. All gone!!! I have 0 points again!! Virgin again!

Since this is my absolute week's highlight I thought to take the opportunity to celebrate and drive to Berlin judging the „Lead Awards“ - one of Germany’s most important award shows. On the other hand being „not guilty“ is a nice feeling as well – and on the way to Berlin there are lots of speeding radars and many chances to get rid of the driving license again.

So I took the train to Berlin, arrived very relaxed and saw a bunch of nice work – including some work of recent students of ours and feel relieved and happy to be able to still speed, uhm, drive around. Oh, btw: at the Lead Awards you have to give points to the shortlisted works – it’s a good feeling to give and not only to receive.

What a nice week.

Robin Stam, Duval Guillaume Brussels

Yigit and I standing in our new agency

There are only two interesting organisations in Brussels: the European Parliament and advertising agency Duval Guillaume. And considering I'm not interested in politics, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why I'm working in the city that I hate most.

Okay, enough about Brussels. I know I've seen only the worst places of Brussels during my internship last year. But I've seen enough. When I signed the contract for Duval Guillaume, I knew I had to live somewhere else. And the city is: Antwerp. Why Antwerp? For a lot of reasons: people speak Dutch, it's close to Holland, there's a lot of activities of the agency there is a vivid atmosphere there.

On my first days in my new apartment I knew that I had made the right decision. This city is as alive as can be. It has a great shopping area with beautiful buildings. The nightlife is good as well. There are really good clubs here with famous underground DJ's from all over the world on the agenda.

But before this post starts to look like a promotion for the city of Antwerp, I'll tell something about the negative things. One thing I cannot stand is bureaucracy. And unfortunately, Antwerp is full of it. If I want to buy a train subscription I have to fill in so much forms that they can track down my entire life story. In order to get a credit card or internet at home you have to declare your address at the local government. But there they are behind with all their work and they're obviously too lazy to make a printout of my new address. So tomorrow I have to wait in line to get a ticket that allows me to come back next month!

In the meanwhile, work at Duval Guillaume started from day 1. We have to do a lot already, but that is actually a good thing. It keeps people like me and my teammate Yigit sharp. We haven't had one boring day in Duval and even though half of the employees have been replaced, everybody is still as nice as when I left the agency a year ago.

It's a noisy and chaotic agency. But the level of creativity and the amount of production is very high. It's not hard to figure out why Duval is one of the best agencies in Europe and why there are three big shelves full of awards in every size and shape that you can imagine. And they actually managed to sell my anti-spam campaign (see my other blog robinstam.blogspot.com) to one of their clients. It's even hanging in the bathrooms of all the big agencies in Belgium.

People who know me very well, know that I always go for my gut feeling. It led me to Stockholm last year, where I've made half of my Miami Ad School portfolio. And it also led me to Brussels. Correction: it led me to one of this particular agency in Brussels. There's no doubt in my mind that I made the right decision and as soon as we are used to our new situation, I'm sure that Yigit and I are going to explode.

As you can read in the the description of my blog, I'm passing over this blog to somebody else every week. I'm going to keep it a surprise who the new writer of next week will be, but I can promise that it will be worth reading.