Stefan Leendertse, Duval Guillaume Antwerp

This week we have a fresh Cannes-winner as a guest blogger: Stefan Leendertse. Stefan is Dutch, but constantly seems to switch back and forth to Belgium and now he's working at Duval Guillaume Antwerp. Last week he won a prestigious silver Lion in Cannes with his DM-work for Scottex.

When Robin asked me to write some about my week it was almost the end of it. Now it’s Monday night and my time-sheet-fobia is starting to surface again. It’s the disease also known as the what-the-fuck-did-I-do-on-which-day-syndrome that seems to have quite a number of patients in the creative business.

Anyway, let’s try to start with Monday.
Monday turned out to be the big day for us (me and my creative partner in crime Carsten). On Sunday we had already received a message from Dirk, our CD and press&poster jury-member in Cannes that we had 2 shortlists in the direct jury. Because we didn’t expect to get any news about it till Tuesday we were relaxed sitting in a briefing when a colleague came in to tell us we had just won a silver Lion! This was the moment I had always dreamed off but in my dream I was always sitting on la plage in Cannes. Running into the la Méditerranée after hearing it and then ordering a bottle of le Champagne. But unfortunately I wasn’t there to order it in my terrible French (and trying to explain in even worse French why my credit card doesn’t have enough credit to pay it). Instead I was still sitting in our Antwerp office. And even in Belgium 10AM on a Monday morning is a bit to early for booze.

Tuesday started early with a presentation so we kept the getting drunk part for that night. Holland had to play the EC2008 soccer match against Romania. So we had a great opportunity to celebrate in public and misbehave in a crowd of Dutch hooligans misbehaving even more. Place of crime: De Lawine (The Avalanche), a Dutch après-ski bar in Antwerp. Nope, there’s not a single mountain in Belgium and not even something looking a hill in Holland so it is just meant to drink après-anything but skiing. So we did, and we even took two Belgian colleagues that behaved like two true Dutch swines. We were very proud :-p One was arrested, the other one is still missing.

Wednesday I even showed up at work at a reasonable time. Luckily Carsten kept the Onno Kraft van Ermel (Holland’s last rock&roll creative that passed away last year) – spirit alive arriving past 11:30h. We spend the rest of the day working on a TV campaign for Center Parcs. But wait, didn’t you guys go to Cannes to pick up your award?, I can hear you think. Sorry people, juicy stories of Carsten fist-fucking a jet-set MILF with a silver lion in his hand can not be found on this blog. The Duval-Guillaume rule is that those who win a prize in 2007 go to Cannes in 2008. And since we only started working for DG last year we have to wait till 2009. So the rest of this text will just be boring stories about me and Carsten, sitting and working in an almost empty office.

Thursday
In the morning Carsten drank a black coffee. I had an ice tea. Then we worked on a new client I cannot tell you anything about. On Friday I put some new staples in my blue stapler. For lunch I had a Ciabatta Italiano…

Hey, I warned you this was going to get boring. At least for you. For us it was the best week of our working lives. Because after winning your first lion even the Uitbreidingsstraat in Antwerp Berchem looks like the Croisette!

Lisa Port, KNSK Hamburg

The writer of this week's article may be on the verge of winning a Cannes Lion. It's possible, because art-director Lisa Port already won loads of awards with an outdoor campaign made for Hansapark. Before working at KNSK, Lisa worked at Duval Guillaume New York. She tells us all about her not-so-average, but painfully regognizable week.

Thanks Robin, for asking me to write something for your blog.

So this was my week as a Junior Art Director at KNSK in Hamburg. Three describing words for my week would be: hard, full pressure and still in love with my job.

It’s monday morning. I am stepping into my office and I see my teampartner deadly sad on the phone. Her former schoolfriend commited suicide. One big hug and a short conversation about him and then we need to continue to finish our final document from last weeks brief. I stayed for lunch time in and got a phonecall from my mum, telling me that my lovely grand aunt died in the consequences of a stroke. Ellen, my teampartner, stepped back in our office, finding me deadly sad on the phone. One hour I am sitting still and trying to accept what happened. – 3 pm Pitchbrief. Our heads full of one big question:„Why?“. Finally the content of the brief won and made the way down to our brains. The brief and all the information is really big, but as
well interesting and a welcome variety to our daily-business.

Of course it is one of the hardest things, to find space in your head for new ideas, when you are in private troubles. But on the other hand: It’s a good method to forget private stuff easier, when you make thought of a completely different topic. And when you make deep thoughts.

So the next two and a half days I put more and more information into my brain. All the background information about the hopeful-future-client. The Account-Girl for this project is doing a great job. Without asking we get a lot of information, books, reports, whatever we need. And suddenly there it was. – A brand new wonderful idea. A shiny peak of hope. It’s big, brilliant and bright. Everything is perfectly made up in my mind how it will look, the sound, the people.

How the press is writing about it, how people will love and hate it. Everything is in my head and I try to explain it, and after all the perfectly detailed description. My teampartner, still devastated, just goes: hmmmpppfffff.

Still in love with the idea we continue continue continue until the last minute. It’s 2:59 pm Thursday afternoon. Ellen sends the document to the printer. 3.00 pm presentation of the ideas. One idea survived in the 2 ½ hour meeting. Thanks God. Unfortunately, the shiny peak died. – hmmmpppfffff.

This is one thing which always will be the most exiting thing in my job. Will I crack the brief? Will I find some new idea, or a lot, or nothing? There is no brief where I didn’t feel the pressure to not fail. Finally of course you are always finding a solution, but will you reach the creative level you want to be? This job will never get boring, because you have to prove yourself always from new. Just for yourself. And if you cannot reach the level you have to try harder next week.

So my resume from this week: Try harder!