Robin Stam, Duval Guillaume Brussels

Whoever thinks a blog where other people write for you is easier than writing for a blog yourself, is wrong. Of course other people do the writing. But every week I have to e-mail people, give instructions, remember them of the deadlines (and taking into account that in some countries the reminder mail arrives when everybody's still asleep), writing an introduction, correcting the spelling mistakes (especially the texts of art-directors) and putting everything online. Sometimes it's difficult to reach somebody and for a couple of weeks in a row I could always find somebody who -after some begging- was willing to write an article within one day.

But this week I failed in that. For the first time. So what is my solution? I'm going to write something about me, myself and I again. Which is not too bad, except for the fact that the only time I can do this is now, on a Friday night, while Edwin -a Dutch friend of mine who just came from Berlin- is watching television on my couch.

During my work I had no time at all. Yigit and I had to arrange a photoshoot for Monday. From the time I entered the agency I was crushed by an avalanche of work. Calling the photographer, solving mail problems because the casting pictures didn't arrive, looking at the casting pictures with Yigit when they arrived, calling the creative directors cause they were both out of the agency, choosing locations, choosing the styling, choosing the style of light the photographer has to use. And in between we did a voice over recording in the sound studio for another project.

When I picked up Edwin from the airport I was still on the phone with Yigit. A couple of phonecalls later it was finally weekend. After a day like this, when you're running like a steamtrain on dynamite, it's actually the work that keeps you going. So when I was in the train from Brussels to Antwerp, it was like somebody put me in off-mode. As soon as I sat down in the train my body collapsed and my hands were still shaking as if they don't know what to do when the work is done.

All the briefings we neglected today are still haunting me this weekend. I love my work and I'm totally dedicated to making the best advertising possible. But in my opinion, part of doing your job well is knowing when to stop. So this weekend I'm going party a lot to get some 'mental rest'. Work hard, party harder.

Ratko Cindric & Thomas Kuhn, Saatchi & Saatchi Moskow

Last week Kanak was on the blog, this week it's the turn of the other half of the team that interned at Duval Guillaume: Ratko Cindric. The Croatian Ratko used to work as an operator of a machine that's cutting steel. So it's only logical that he became an art-director ;-). Read about his experiences at his new internship in cold cold Moskow.

Almost two weeks are already gone, time is running and life is fast here. Sometimes you think death is even faster especially when you arrive at the airport and jump in a cab to drive to the flat. 120 km/h in the city is not unusual and when there is a traffic jam an 8 lane street suddenly turns into a 12 lane street. Everyone is driving like crazy. Maybe that’s because you can buy your drivers license here on the black market. We never have seen that much expensive cars -like Maybach’s, S-classes, Hummer’s and Porsche's- in one place. They are parking everywhere, especially on crosswalks or sidewalks in front of restaurants. Moscow is a pretty expensive city which has its own charm.. Our flat is about 35 square meters and costs about $1500 a month. The good thing is that Saatchi pays for it. Food in general is expensive too. Fortunately McDonald’s is cheaper than in Germany! The people here on the street aren’t smiling much and look cold for us, but if you get to know some Russians, you will see that they are usually friendly and cooperative. That is what we experienced from the people here at Saatchi. Everyone here speaks English so we have not that language problem like on the streets or in shops. As for now we are working on four different Briefs and have enough to do. Yesterday everyone sang, “Enjoy the Silence” from Depeche Mode for an online video and we got a task to run zigzag over the red square with a camera. Well now start wondering if that is creative or a typical job for interns? We don’t know either... The agency is pretty small. It just has 68 employees, overall 3-4 creative teams and space for 60 people. Every Friday evening there are free drinks and snacks at Saatchi so we have to leave now and catch a drink!

p.s. When you see horses riding on the sidewalks of Moskow on Friday night it doesn’t necessarily means that you drank or smoked too much.

Kanak Mehra, DDB Budapest

Coming from India, went to Miami Ad School Hamburg, and after spending some time in Duval Guillaume Brussels Kanak Mehra decided to go to Hungary for his second quarter away. Could his first week in Budapest be the start of a literary bestseller? Read it and find out for yourself.

He was still digesting tandoori chicken when a loud thud woke him up. The captain’s voice announced they had safely landed in Budapest. Baggage claimed, money changed, the exit wasn’t that hard to find. “God this feels like watching Saving Private Ryan”, he said to himself, driving from the airport to his new apartment. The cabbie found the humour in the comment funny, although not many are ticklish around him.

He was devouring tandoori chicken in New Delhi, twenty four hours ago. Meeting friends, spending time with family. Being in Budapest felt somewhat lonely. Like he really was single. He was and still is. He missed his mom. The apartment was just like in the pictures. Huge. The next morning was ponderous. As Sundays have the knack of being. Trains of thought left on a never ending journey on tracks he had laid out over the twenty seven years of his existence. Still, the cappuccino tasted good. Monday came as if somebody had changed the channel.

A very warm welcome awaited on the first day of work. It would be one of many first days, he realized. He said his name so many times to so many people, that it started to sound funny in his head. It was by accident that he stumbled upon a particular passage while researching guns, it hit him like facing an already firing, firing squad. It made him realize that nobody was perfect, that we were all human. And we do regrettable things, but further realized that regret is nothing but realizing the difference between right and wrong.

The British in WWI established a ‘secret’ War Propaganda Bureau. It employed some of the most prolific writers of the time; Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, William Archer, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbolt, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Parker, G. M. Trevelyan and H. G. Wells. These great writers wrote pamphlets and books promoting the government’s view of the war prompting thousands of men to join the British Army. Large numbers of these men were killed, including Conan Doyle’s son, Kingsley Conan Doyle. Rudyard Kipling also lost his only son as a result of this propaganda. His response was:

Common Form (1918)
If any question why we died.
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

He had plans to have a kid. He’d call him Jethro. Jethro’s father would be a writer, not quite the same league as Kipling, but a writer none the less. A writer that is a part of propaganda as well, writing pamphlets about how it is the ‘shit’ to spend thousands on plastic, when a hundred will feed a family for a month, including sending the little one to school. Sometimes he wonders, what difference would he make to the world. Yes, he would have worked on Amnesty International, lit a candle on HYPERLINK "http://www.lightamillioncandles.com" www.lightamillioncandles.com, supported animal rights movements, have his share of free postcards, worked day in and night out to find a message that will make the world stop global warming, quit smoking, feed all of Africa and half of Asia, free Guantanamo Bay prisoners and maybe eat once a day. That’s a selfless contribution right there.

Unless he has the keys to the cellblocks, he can’t do a thing and by the way no one is going to quit smoking either. He can’t change the world, but he can sell to it. And sell he bloody will. Make it a friggin’ artform. Go to school, study it, make it matter of life and death. Write until the ground shifts from under his CD’s feet. Fight over pencils at twenty seven. search for the internet a.k.a inspiration, lose complete touch with reality, look at billboards instead of the Taj Mahal. In other words, prove Oscar Wilde absolutely right, while totally losing sight of the message he wants to convey. Communication it seemed was not his cup of tea. Today might now have been his day. Tomorrow the sun would rise again, and if he is lucky shine a bit too.

Maybe when Jethro grows up, he will realize, his father wasn’t lying, he was only selling.

Rhea Hanges, McGarry Bowen New York

Art director Rhea Hanges is a real award collector. During her study at the Miami Ad School in Florida she won a total of five Addy awards and got a nomination for the Young Guns and the D&AD. After her graduation she started at McGarry Bowen in the Big Apple. Rhea is a creative that not only thinks different but truly does things different. That's why her article about her week isn't an article, but -how typical for Rhea- an illustration. For a high resolution version, click on the illustration to go to Flickr and click on 'all sizes'.