The definition of an international creative team: Alex Goulart and Joao Medeiros. They were both born in Rio, Brazil and grew up in the U.K. But they've worked in Belgium, Signapore and now in the U.S. where they head up the creative department of Duval Guillaume New York. Now if their career doesn't sound exciting enough already, wait till you read about the week of these two advertising mobsters.

It’s a thug’s life here in the city. The office is on 4th street, in an area called NoHo (North of Houston Street) which is the site of the violence you see in the movie ‘Gangs of New York.’

So for the last six months, since we came over from sunny Antwerp, Belgium, we’ve been trying to adjust.

Let’s see, a week in creativity…

On Monday, Joao was shot seven times in the leg after trying it on with Pappy’s girl. But not to be outdone, J managed to push the bullets around under his skin to make it say “Te amo”.

Pappy’s girl loved it.

On Tuesday, we both helped out with the drive-by in T-Dog’s hood. But to make sure we made a few extra G’s we got a disaster tourism company (you know, the kind that organize walks around Ground Zero) involved before the hit. They trailed our car with three minivans full of tourists, taking pictures. After we paid off the actors we hired to stand in the street and get hit by the rubber bullets, we still had enough money for ribs and mud pie at Hooters – and that was just the tips.

Wednesday was sick. Pappy came over really early, burst into J’s Chelsea dig, pulled him out of bed and dragged him down the stairs. He was raging – something like “Where’s the love now Juan?!” Joao explained, “It’s ‘Juan’ in Spanish, ‘John’ in English and ‘Joao’ in Portuguese, the pronunciation is a bit different.” This didn’t help. The Papster dug his thumbs down onto the bullets embedded in J’s leg and started trying to rearrange the letters (who knows what he was trying to spell). Quick thinking, Joao reached out and thrust his fingers into an electrical socket on the landing – the shock raced through his body and fried our Mexican friend like chicken. He just fell back against the wall like a sack of potatoes. It was unbelievable. Somehow, Joao must have been insulated from the electrical current cause he was completely fine. I just asked him earlier, he said he’s okay, there’s just a little scab from the original bullet wound, but nothing to write home about.

That night we collapsed into bed, exhausted.

Thursday was quiet. It was raining, so we decided to stay in and write a set of commercial messages for our Japanese client, Kagome. They make blended fruit and vegetable juices. Did you know, that in combination, fruits and vegetables work wonders for your brain?

And tomorrow – well, I wouldn’t like to call it. Let’s wait and see. Could be more commercial messages (see ‘em all at: commercialmessages.blogspot.com) or a little more of the thug’s life.

Either way, it beats the daily commute.

P.S.

TE AMO Anagrams

MATEO
TOMEA
AMETO
MA TOE
A TOME
A MOTE

Nope. I don’t think we’ll ever figure out what Pappy wanted to tell us, bless his soul.