Uansett hvor god forberedt man er...kvelden før er og blir kvelden før. Siste finish, ligge på kne foran skisser, henge over skuldrene på hverandre og stirre på skjermer for å spikre de siste detaljene. Diskutere, titte, diskutere litt til. En herlig følelse når man er fornøyd og trygg. Ikke fullt så herlig hvis man føler seg på usikker grunn.
"Kvelden før" i går var en herlig følelse.
Well, thats only 9 months ago. Loads of interesting things has happened with TBWA\OSLO in that period. New people, new clients, new guts & glory. It´s still tough, but it sure helps to have won 5 new clients since the summer. We´re also in the final round in 3 big pitches, so 2011 looks very interesting. It always takes longer than you want to turn around an agency, but now we´re really getting there. Thanks to our hard working, talented staff. More to come. Greetings from -15 C and winter wonderland.
Ha, just went through some old files tonight and stumpled upon this TVC I made at Leo Burnett Oslo over ten years ago. This was the launch of internet banking in Norway, and the tagline is:
The very talented and acclaimed film director Roar Uthaug of Fantefilm has shot TBWA/OSLO´s latest commercials for Builder Merchants XL-BYGG. Macho is still back. And Dave Legeno is still the man. Known from films like Snatch, Batman Begins, Elizabeth: The golden age and Harry Potter, we´re proud that he enjoys to give Macho a face in the name of XL-BYGG.
South African marketing magazine The Journal interviewed John Hunt, and put him on the front cover. Everyone who deals with marketing, client people, agency people, students, should read this, because - as always - John is very wise, cool and inspiring. In fact, I´m very proud to say that he is my big boss.
Next December marks SHOOT's 50th year of publication and in this year-end issue they begin a series of features that will run through 2010 in which noted industry executives and artists reflect on the changes they've seen over the decades, as well as the essential dynamics that have endured. These folks--from different sectors of the business--will also share their vision and aspirations for the future. Our own Lee Clow was chosen as one of the visionaries. Article from Shoot Online Dec 11, 2009: Lee Clow Back around 1970 when Chiat\Day was starting up in Los Angeles, Lee Clow found himself working at N.W. Ayer and didn't enjoy the environment there. "It was too much about what was bad about the Mad Men days—martini lunches and keeping clients happy rather than striving to do something better and creative on their behalf," recalled Clow. "Meanwhile there was a lot of buzz about this shop across town on Olympic Boulevard [in L.A.] called Chiat/Day. Jay Chiat and Guy Day were there, Hy Yablonka was the creative director. It was a place I wanted to work. After bothering them for a year, I finally landed a job and I've been there ever since."
The "there" has changed quite a bit over the years, as reflected in Clow's current roles with Media Arts, TBWA Worldwide, and with TBWA\Media Arts Lab. Yet whatever titles he's carried over the years, Clow has always found himself trying to maintain a key working dynamic. "It was fun being 18 people on Olympic Boulevard," he related. "There was a passion and intensity in trying to figure out how to do new brave stuff. Jay Chiat pushed for breakthrough work. Today, we still aspire to do the same. But when you get as big as we are now, it gets harder to maintain the feel of what we had at Chiat\Day with those core people. That's the feel, though, that I still look to attain today, so that our creative brand groups feel and act like little agencies with the same kind of passion we had for one or two accounts back then."
Clow's creative passion has translated into such iconic work as Apple's historic "1984" Super Bowl spot, and years later the reunion between Apple and TBWA\Chiat\Day which first yielded the lauded "Think different" campaign. That creative spirit now extends all the way through iPods, iPhones and the ongoing "Mac vs. PC" campaign which has become part of mainstream pop culture.
As for how agency creatives and their mandate have changed over the years, Clow observed, "Back in the day it used to be that the high threshold for a creative person was to do TV. Lower down the food chain there was print, and further down there were dealer ads. But today creative people and creative departments have to be part of an all-media thinking creative group. Creative is not just about a TV commercial.
"Today," continued Clow, "creatives have to consider what kind of conversations are going to start up around the idea they're putting out there for a brand no matter what the medium. You don't have control over conversations in social media, blogs, chats, on Facebook and Twitter. But you can do things as a brand, take actions that beget conversation, beget interest, that tap into the power of people wanting to spend time talking about you, your brand, what you do. We have never sought to seed or try to force conversation on the Internet. It's the brand that does that and the conversation is spontaneous. 'How do you like your iPhone?' The brand has to be smart, likeable and trustworthy. Everything a brand does is advertising.
"Ultimately," affirmed Clow, "brands are going to become media, with people choosing to seek out a certain brand and spend time with it. If the brand has done a film, people want to see it. They want to see their product, their store. The Apple Store is probably the best ad Apple has ever done. The store is an audio-video experience with passionate kids at the genius bar, an inviting design, interaction with the products, a theater in back where they teach and where other forms of film are shown that engage, inform, tell stories and sometimes entertain. Apple's packaging tells as much of a story about that brand as a TV spot. The experience of getting an iPhone, opening the box, how reverently that packaging is designed, the words and pictures taking a dimensional form on the package. People want to touch, feel and see a brand. Our task is to help build a brand that's strong enough as a medium so that people will want to interact with that brand's stories."
Yet with all the changes, there remains a constant for good agency creatives. In fact, because of the ever changing landscape and the fact that people are more discriminating, selective and have more control over their media and the brands they spend time with, this constant is arguably even more essential. "I still believe we are all storytellers—words and pictures, art and copy remain our tools," said Clow. "We're telling stories and using media to share those stories. The media forms have broadened dramatically as have the length of films. But it all comes down to creatives being good storytellers, having and crafting a relevant, entertaining story worthy of a person's time. I don't think people dislike advertising. They dislike bad advertising. I don't buy the concept that people don't watch TV commercials anymore. They are just more selective about what they watch and decide what messages they are willing to spend some time with. So it's incumbent that our creativity is notched up or people will blow right past you."
Asked to reflect on the highlights of his career, Clow related, "I've been fortunate to work for great brands. I'm probably the most lucky guy in advertising to have been around a brand like Apple that is so world changing. From day one with Apple, we shared the belief that everything the brand did had to be great. We cared about the packaging, about how the instruction manuals were written. Anything that was an expression of the brand we cared about. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, we said, 'Let's get the magic and the passion back.'"
Apple and TBWA\Chiat\Day reunited in 1997 upon Jobs' return. "Apple was ready to go out of business back then," recollected Clow. "But Steve re-energized the company. They developed new products, liberated the design people. 'Think different' was a challenge to the creative people who cared about the brand as well as a challenge to Apple itself to rethink what it made and did. Two of the proudest moments of my career were the '1984' spot and then years later the 'Think different' campaign. I have a deep feeling for 'Think different' and the "Crazy Ones' commercial. It was a pivotal moment for Apple and it speaks to any creative person, anyone who tries to break the rules, who pushes the boundaries to try to do something that hasn't been done before. Everybody in our agency kind of looks at that commercial as being a mantra for our belief in creativity just as it was a mantra for Apple wanting to be a company dedicated to people who do creative things. It was a mantra for Apple users as well. It is a mantra that defined Apple, its customers and us as an agency."
