When i came to Paris, i didn’t really have any reason to be there, except that i wanted to be there. I could hardly speak any french, i did not know anyone in Paris, i had no place to live and i had no work lined up. The only thing i knew, was, i wanted to live in Paris.
Growing up in a small town in Germany, it seemed appealing to live in a busy, metropolitan area. I worked in a fairly big Advertising Agency in Germany, just before i made my decision to move. Never studied Graphic Design, even though i always wanted to, but through an Internship, i got into this agency and when my time was up, they kept me there for a few years.
This is, where i learned, you don’t need to be great at school, you don’t need to study – if you have passion for something and you really, really want to do it, you can do it. You can do anything you like. And sometimes you just have to be at the right time in the right place.
I loved working in the agency. Every day i learned so much! I met some amazing artists and made good friends. We worked until night-time and over weekends to finish projects. We drank a lot of coffee. I enjoyed working in a team of Designers, Illustrators and Copywriters.
Back then, you were still allowed to smoke in offices, so we pretty much all smoked like chimneys in front of our computers – i remember, one of my friends was a non-smoker. I have no idea how he actually tolerated this situation and us in general. Let’s only hope, that he is not the one that suffers with lung cancer now.
I loved when our Creative Director sent us off to nearby cafes to “brainstorm”. We would sit around, drink coffee and throw ideas on the table. There were no limits- you could throw anything in there, and we would eventually come up with a TV-Spot for a dishwashing-liquid or a print idea for a laundry-powder. The only limits were the clients. It was like coming from a colourful paradise, where everything was possible, to a cage with high fences and mouth-guards.
Sometimes we had tastings of potato chips…we weren’t told the flavours, but we had to taste and then think about ideas around the flavour. Other times we sat in comfortable chairs, eating snacks from a plate, whilst watching a guy, a food designer, painting a frying-pan dirty. Like an artist, with a brush and all sorts of colours, he painted a pan dirty. We watched him for hours! Then he made the perfect clean “swish” right in the middle, where the sponge with the famous dishwashing- liquid pretended to clean the pan from the dirt. And if it wasn’t perfect enough, he had to do the whole procedure again and again. I watched the guy and i thought “wow, is this effort really justified for a TV-Ad of a few seconds?” All this time and the money and all those people involved!
It must have been, because they all did it. And it seemed to work.
From brainstorming in a cafe with designers and copywriters, creating a story, several meetings with colleagues and clients, creating storyboards with illustrators, more meetings, changes, more storyboards, more changes, meetings again, then the filming, more meetings, more changes, post-production, meetings, and eventually the 12-second TV-ad was ready to go on air. I might have skipped a few steps, because it is a while ago and maybe they do it differently nowadays…
I clearly remember this one meeting, where our creative crew had to come to meet up with a big client to discuss our ideas for a toilet cleaning product. They escorted us through the office towards a conference room. It was the first time i saw one of those places where they have the cubicles for each person, and it looked pretty depressing to me. I never thought those places were actually real back then-i only knew them from movies.
We sat around this huge table, drinking coffee again, with a massive amount of very serious looking men and women in black and grey suits. And then they started having a discussion about talking toilets. How they should talk and what they should say to present their product. It went back and forth, there was no laughing or jokes, it was all dead serious. This went on for a very long while.
Talking toilets.
I tried my hardest to look serious and engaged as well, but what i really thought was, excuse my french, “what the fuck”…
At some stage, during my time in the agency, i asked myself another question…”is this gonna be it? Is this my life? Working all day in the agency and then talking the rest of the time about projects and clients, like this was the most important thing in the world?” A few weeks later i quit my job. My boss was surprised. How could i let go of such a great opportunity… My parents were a bit shocked. How could i let go of such a secure job…
But i made my decision. I quit, i rented out my apartment in Cologne, i packed my bags and moved to Paris.
These are a few Ads, that i created for a famous german dishwashing-liquid. They never printed them.
I was a vegan back then too and thought “if i work in advertising, i need to do something good with it…” So i made these ones, that were also never printed, obviously….
