Olive beats Culture Jamming.

While thinking out and writing some stuff for a post about culture jamming I came across something that made me stop writing for today. On Dan's blog I stumbled across his "i digg this"-list that linked me here. And to make a long way short this link (glory, glory internet, everything seems to be linked) lead me to the blog of Olive Riley. "Okay, so what?!" you may think. The point is that she is 107 years old. And I bet she has got a lot of interesting things to tell. About today, the last century and the century before the last century. That's slightly more exciting than culture jamming to me right now. Perhaps I'll post that tomorrow. As long as Olive won't draw off my attention. By the way she loves shandy. Brilliant. I love shandy as well (though in Hamburg we call it Alsterwasser). Anyway let's raise a glass of shandy for Olive and listen to her introduction and what might follow:

"Good Morning everyone. My name is Olive Riley. I live in Australia near Sydney. I was born in Broken Hill on Oct. 20th 1899.Broken Hill is a mining town, far away in the centre of Australia. My Friend, Mike, has arranged this blog for me. He is doing the typing and I am telling the stories."

Things of Minor Interest: fivetonine magazine.

There's always some free stuff, mags and sometimes gummi bears laying around at our post boxes. Today I took the free magazine fivetonine with me. Designated for a quick read while going home with the underground, I thought. Well, it was a quick read indeed. It took me 7 minutes to go through. Altogether a mixture of mindless blah, topics from yesterday and some pseudo high-fashion-photography. The only two pages worth a read were an article about various styles of moustaches and a thingy-page featuring a new BE@ARBRICK by the lovely folks at Medicom Toys. The brave makers of fivetonine in turn describe their output and mission as follows:

"We at fivetonine, the lifestyle magazine of WirtschaftsWoche, Germany's leading business weekly, take a holistic approach to life. We are aware that professionals who act as trailblazers and decision makers in the world of business want top level information and entertainment in their private sphere, too. We are insiders in the world of executives, this high-earning group of opinion leaders, we know all about their tastes, their needs and their discerning standards."

Name development extraordinaire by the way. Hey, why not flip "ninetofive" to "fivetonine" because we're the free time magazine for trailblazing business professionals. Brilliant. Hello, insiders in the world of executives (obviously not my world) thanks for filling my day with 7 minutes of shallowbrained non-entertainment. You're really cool (a word your editors obviously like to use). Honestly.

To Google or not to Google.

Last year Nina and me did this outdoor campaign for our client Google or to be more precise for their video service Google Video. It even has made its way into flickr thanks to some nice people from Italy. Quite unexpected people started to forget about Brandenburger Tor and began to take pictures of their family members standing beind the frame. Berlin 0, Google 1. After our little discussion about showing ideas and talking about it I thought about starting to put more and more ideas and work on my blog. This is the first one. What do you think?

Belated Snapshot Thursday.

Thanks to my beloved clients there was not much time to write something smart over the last week. I am breaking my own "let's get some system into this blog"-rule which is sad. TBWA probably would argue that breaking the rules is the perfect way under the flag of disruption. And I am okay with that. Anyway, do you creativspace (perhaps our pendant zu plannersphere?) people have got the same problem? Stuff in your had you would like to blog about but no time to figure it out and type it into your Mac? Hopefully I'll have some time over the weekend to write down all the stuff that waits to be written for weeks. But for now let's start with "Snapshot Thursday" and let's begin with something beautiful and gorgeous: Kerstin. She used to be our graphic designer. Now she's a grown up junior art director. Somehow I still feel responsible for her. Probably that's why I buy her chocolate cake every day. But maybe it's just because I love her and want her back.

Last week Sven, our creative director, went to Capetown to shoot two commercials for one of our clients. OTTO is Germany's biggest catalogue company and one of the biggest online retailers. And obviously they've got some sense of humour.

Here you can see the director Jan with our model and actor(ess) Mike.

This is Sven. Wringing out the hair he doesn't has.

Ah, the joy of working in advertising. Sunny beaches somewhere in South Africa, turquoise coloured water and...erm...beautiful models. And not to forget: the teams that wrote the commercials sitting in the agency working on new stuff.

At Kolle Rebbe we have someone that officially could be called "Office Manager" or something like that. Her name is Mercedes, she is from Portugal and for us she is not an "Office Manager" but our "Agency Mum". Why? Because she does what mums use to do. Shepherd her "Agency Kids". So when Mum's not in the agency the kitchen looks like that:

Messy...no...disgusting, isn't it?

I had one day off to go to Berlin.

There I found my favourite street of Amsterdam in a shop window in Mitte.

The desk of my doctor. I had doctor's week which means I managed to stuff all the appointments of the year into one week. This is the desk of Doc Steinmeier, my general practitioner. Hopefully he won't mind that I played with the artificial knee joint while waiting for him.

Here you can see Toby having a think on the floor of our office...

...and his copywritress Claudia. They are wonderful, nice, clever, gorgeous and a bunch of other brilliant adjectives. Unfortunately both will leave the agency and return to Springer & Jacoby where they have worked before. I will miss them. Nina as well. But hey, they are just five blocks away what makes it less downbeat.

On my way to the metro I passed by one of those buildings essentially made of glass and couldn't resist to start taking pictures of the offices inside. All were illuminated so everyone was able to take a glimpse from outside. What kind of person might sit in this office?

Nina made me go shopping with her. Why? Probably because she needed someone to carry all her stuff while she tried on trousers, shirts and jackets. Or to get some admiring "woweewows".

And finally last week this lovely bloke made his final call to his client. Alex left advertising to become Mr. Contemporary Art Gallery Owner Superstar. In Berlin. Looking forward to visit him and his gallery.

Free ride on the bandwagon?

The friendly blokes at bandwagon not only offer a interesting and great service for all the people who love music and like to keep it but also a free account to everyone who somehow blogs and has a huge amount of iTunes stuff to backup. Just visit their blog and follow the instructions. Great idea though I can't imagine how this will work. But let's see.

Snapshot Thursday.

Every now and then I think about bringing some structure into this blog. With some sort of big idea that all posts allude to. While going through my 48 bookmarked blogs this somehow seems to be some kind of a movement among most of the blogging creatives...should we call it the "creativesphere" (hello, Mr. Huntington)? Niazipan has "an idea a day" and David & Phoebe have "what if they did" while Kristin & Waldemar and FIUYMI use it as some sort of diary of their daily creative lifes. Simon Veksner does it a bit different, he gives advice to young creatives like me. Haven't seen this on another creative blog so far. Anyway it seems like blogs about planning seem to be far more unstructured or open. You'll find posts about quite everything. Is it because as a planner you reach out and absorb every little inspiration that comes along the way and throw it out to somehow form an imaginative over-all-picture? And is it because as a creative you are driven by finding the big idea, the one that's brilliant? Or you are somehow forced to put an idea in everything you do? Hard to say. Nonetheless it's brilliant to find so many creative blogs. And I guess as in our daily agency life it was inspired by blogging planners like Russell, beeker and Richard. I think it's interesting to have this agency thing applied to blogging. The herd follows the shepherd.

I'm digressing a bit. The point is that I want to bring some unstructured structure into this blog. Don't want to apply a big overall idea here because all I could think of would be "one idea" or "what if" and that's what Niazipan and David&Phoebe are doing very well. No need for another one. Perhaps some ideas will pop up sometime. Let's see. Stop digressing, man. Okay. So I will start or reanimate some regulars. This will be the first. Let's call it Snapshot Thursday. Random pictures. A nice starter. The next will be to reanimate my friend Mr. Lee. Because I like him. Because he says things I don't want to hear. A nice side dish. Perhaps I will post some work I've done as well. But maybe I will hand this over to flickr and only post a link. Let's see if it will be a dessert. And the main course? Don't know. That's the unstructure in my structure. It will contain everything. Inspiration, stuff I did for APSotW and whatever crosses my way. Perhaps that's my big idea. To have none. Does this make sense? Let's see.

For now let's start with Snapshot Thursday.

So you are working in an advertising agency. You've seen everything. Logos, headlines, ads from Chile, clients, meeting rooms with a wide range of sparkling beverages and sandwiches, directors from Scandinavia, beautiful beaches with myriads of nearly undressed models. What's the thing that gets you off your desk, leaving layouts and headlines behind and rush to the window?


A production company shooting a boring TV sequel for RTL? Yes, sometimes...


Another great part of being a creative is the opportunity to leave the agency at 12:30 pm for three hours to visit an exhibition in order to "get inspired" while planners are blogging or researching and client service people are on the phone and have to stay in their offices. Whereas "get inspired" most often does't happen while in an exhibition but while on the way to the exhibition. Anyway Toby and me visited the Thomas Hoepker Retrospective at the Museum of Arts and Commerce in Hamburg. Great exhibition, great photographer. Here you can see some random snaps (sorry for the strange perspectives but I had to be undercover because it wasn't allowed to take pictures).

This one was my favourite. Not only because of the picture but for it's description. "Muhammad Ali scared by a bee." Great. When you rhyme, rhyme the rhyme well.

The second part of random snaps:


After numerous "Look, that's great!" and some heavy staring we had to take a break. Coffee and apple pie (Toby). Nice. Coffee and beef steak (me). Brilliant.

Afterwards we had a quick look at an exhibition of young fashion designers from Hamburg. I especially liked the flowery chairs though I never would have them in my living room. Would you?

Here is the rest in a very random view.


Back at the agency I prepared an old LP cover as a birthday present for Basti. Long time ago we shared a flat and because he was a longtime friend of mine I decided to send him a very special present. This cover of a horrible piece of music by Johnny Sax (gues which instrument he's playing) used to be a poster in our hallway. Very 70ties.

And, a brilliant suprise, Nina came back from a photo shoot and decided to not take some days off (as she told me). I love her for not going on holidays because I hate it when she is not at the office.

Bob is a nice guy who helps us to present a mailing we did for Bisley.

An ashtray at the entrance of our metro station. Reminds me to quit smoking.

Mette is the british bulldog from the lovely guys and dolls at Markenfilm. She's adorable and fat and lazy and snores. Sorry for the last three, Mette.


A sign I found on Steinstraße. Who would sell his golden teeth?

This one's form last year but I forgot to post it. On my way back from the LIAA ceremony to my hotel I had to park the statues and the annual because they were a bit heavy. Unfortunately I put them next to an ad board for a gym. Anything left to say?

Everytime you pass a mirrow you have to look at it. Or take a photo.

Bum. That's Snapshot Thursday for this week.

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

So by chance you stumbled over this blog. And you are bored instantly. When you now think about leaving this blog use the holy and linked Christ on the right and join the king of the culinary sausage club in his fight against american bacon. Vote. Jesus would do. Unfortunately you love this blog and don't want to leave to vote? Brilliant. For those of you lovely people I handcrafted the voting-badge into this blog, see below. By the way...after I got to know my 27 seconds visitor from Paris there is another person I really would like to get a "Hello!" from. It's my 23 hours 43 minutes and 17 seconds visitor from London. Dear Mr. Heavy Flatrater, I really appreciate your visit. It made me proud, it made me smile, it made me wonder "I wish I had that much time" and it made me think about statcounter having some system errors. But anyway I want to know who you are and I think it's my task to remind you to close your Mozilla 5.0 and shut down your system when leaving your Mac. For ecological reasons. To save some energy. And for wowee-ish reasons. To not make me think someone really spent 24 hours on my blog.

But now, let's get on with some heavy sausage voting. Marcus lives in Bavaria and therefore will be pretty disappointed if his voting results stay below 60%. So stand up for your Wiener. Or your Debrecziner. Or your Frankfurter. And maybe even for your Cabanossi.

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Dear Mr. Canon ixus-i7 Digital Camera Developer.

This post may be a bit geeky but two weeks or so ago I got a new camera. Because some quick handed braveheart stole my old one as you may have read. Anyway, let's start with the good things. The camera is great. Small. Brilliant pictures. Easy menu and stuff. I love my little Canon ixus just as much as I loved the Canon ixus that this Mr. Thieving blablabla stole. But...and that's the part where you jump in, my beloved Canon Digital Camera Engineer...why the hell do I need this unhandy, ugly camera station to download the pictures from the camera? When development is all about making things easier and more comfortable then why did you came up with the brilliant idea of "Hey, you know what? Let's replace one single, handy USB-cable with one single, handy USB-cable AND this...thing!" Could you please explain?
And while thinking about it perhaps learn from the nice guys at SanDisk. I never heard of them before you (Canon) only put a 16 megabyte MMC card into my lovely camera's box but they seem to have nice ideas. Like this one: a SD card plus USB. It looks like this: And, hello Canon, do you know why it's a brilliant ideas? Because it frees me from carrying this camera-station-socket-thing that came with my camera all day. Don't get me wrong. I love your cameras. They are great products. But you can't use the one word equity (uh, hello Mr. Saatchi) of "PLAY" while your products tie the consumer to things like camera stations. Sometimes one simple cable can be the solution. By the way: Hello friendly people at SanDisk. You build fantastic, easy-to-use products. But maybe you could overthink the slogan "Save your world in ours". Only a guess.
After rereading this post I know it looks and sounds absolutely geeky but sorry I can't help.

Snowee, snow.

Today I woke up and everywhere was snow. It's great because snow doesn't visit Hamburg that often. In fact it wasn't great for my shoes because as a Converse All Star you probably never will be excited about snow. Neverever. So after some steps I decided to replace them by some winter-ever-ready Adidas Night Jogger. Brilliant. But anyway here are some pictures:

Snow is everywhere. At home.

At the way to the agency.

At the agency.

We're sorrounded by empty offices. Probably people that didn't make the brilliant decision to replace Chucks with a pair of proper Night Jogger .

Some handsome hands. Burnt yesterday by a mean microwave dish. Frostbitten today by some uninvited snow. If you feel sorry for this needy pair of art director's hands, feel free to visit the blog of their owner here and leave a comment of deep sympathy. Don't expect too much, Nina just started. Be kind.