You want Disruption? You’ve got it: a giant cloud of ash sent the world spinning back in time, to an era when foreign travel was long, difficult and mostly over land.

Personally, I was stuck in Buenos Aires. The situation could have been worse, especially as I was stranded at the Alvear Palace, one of the most glamorous hotels in town. On Sunday night, the lobby bar was full of wealthy stragglers from around the world. It really did feel like an episode from an Agatha Christie novel.

After a bit of research, I discovered that pre-aviation travellers from Buenos Aires to France – where I am based – usually took a steamship to Bordeaux. The journey took three weeks. What a luxury it would be to have so much time today! One could read, think – or simply stare out at the ocean. And being so close to the waves, rather than soaring high above them, would remind us that nature is wild and dangerous.

The volcano disruption has served the same purpose. It has brought home the reality that the Global Village is virtual rather than actual. The networks that make the physical world a smaller place depend on technology that – apparently – is almost as sensitive to the caprices of nature as steamships were.

The difference, of course, is that we have the virtual world to rely on. Throughout my extended stay in Buenos Aires, I was constantly in touch with Air France, friends and relatives and news from around the world via the Internet.  Ironically, this made me feel even more frustrated. At least the travellers of the past knew that they were cut off from civilisation, as did their loved ones. Today we can communicate with the entire world in an instant, and yet still feel very far from home.

It is about having a vision, a belief system, an attitude and a worldview that is shared by the entire company. More than a simple guideline, it is a set of values. When a company has a strong culture, everyone in that organization not only supports decisions made by the CEO – but could have made the same decision in his or her place. In our digitalised, open-sourced society the culture is the brand. You cannot fake it.

Some of our clients have the strongest cultures of all. I have to mention Apple, because it’s such a great example. Thanks to the vision of Steve Jobs, Apple has a culture of creativity and innovation. ‘Think different’ was far more than an advertising slogan. It went to the heart of a way of thinking that has transformed the company. By thinking different, Apple shrugged off the notion that it was a mere computer maker and embraced the idea that it was a provider of tools for creative people. The result, of course, was iTunes, the iPod – and later the iPhone. These were radical new departures for Apple, but they were perfectly in tune with its culture.

Apple is well known for the loyalty it engenders among consumers. Needless to say, its employees are equally evangelical. When you go to an Apple store, you can tell the staff love working there. Why? Because a strong culture attracts the best employees. And when the economy crumbles, you want those people by your side.

So how do you build a strong company culture? For one thing, it takes time. You can’t just bolt it on. When you start a company, the culture is already taking root. In fact, very often, company cultures are created by strong leaders. The system may stay in place long after that person has left, but usually it can be traced back to a single inspiring figure.

At TBWA our culture is based on Disruption, which is all about questioning conventions in order to find a new path towards a larger share of the future. But when we organise Disruption exercises (we call them ‘Disruption Days’) for our clients, we do not ask them to change their cultures. In fact, we ask them to look deep within their cultures and identify their key points of difference, a vision and belief-system that sets them apart, makes them likeable or creates a campfire. In this way, we can unlock untapped potential. Companies often tell us that they have ‘found themselves’ after going through the Disruption process. It’s a liberating experience for them.

Take Kraft, who we recently invited to attend a Disruption Day when the company was reviewing the strategy for its Tassimo hot beverage maker. We transformed our Berlin office into an apartment, with a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, a kid’s room. We staged Tassimo‘s reality. The convention we identified was that every hot beverage system had a similar positioning, which could be summed up as “the moment”. In other words, the machines delivered a single cup of coffee that the recipient then savored – alone. Our insight was that Tassimo was more about sharing. It delivers many different beverages, including tea and hot chocolate, so there’s something for everyone. Everybody gets what they want. It has a campfire appeal, with people gathering around it make their favorite drink. This led directly to the brand message: “Together is better.” Now Tassimo is building a culture of togetherness that will have an impact on many aspects of its behavior.

You can’t tell the world a company stands for one thing if its employees know that, internally, that isn’t the case. Employees have blogs now – or friends with blogs. The corporate world has become transparent. As I mentioned at the start: the culture has become the brand.

That’s why TBWA aspires to being more than an advertising agency. I like to think that through our work we contribute to our clients’ company cultures. That’s why our relationship with them usually remains strong for so many years: we have played a role in the creation of their culture and our very own. In that way, we help to provide them and ourselves with a sustainable future.

By Ulrich Proeschel, Brand Director TBWA Europe and mad-blog.com initiator.

If you have an questions or suggestions, simply send me an eMail.

Read more about this groundbreaking project from TBWA’s New York office, and see the :60 trailer after the jump.

“It was a pretty incredible opportunity,” says Jonze. “They (ABSOLUT) didn’t give me any requirements to make a movie that had anything to do with vodka. They just wanted me to make something that was important to me, and let my imagination take me wherever I wanted. And it wasn’t like working with some huge corporation where I had to meet with committees of people. It was just a small group, and it seemed like creativity and making something that affected them emotionally was the only thing that really mattered to them. I got to make my first love story. It’s about the relationship between two robots living in Los Angeles”.

I’m Here will also screen at the Berlin Film Festival in February, followed by a global release in March on www.imheremovie.com. View the teaser trailer at the official film site www.imheremovie.com.

“Since its inception, ABSOLUT VODKA has been driven by creativity, and together with Spike Jonze we set a new standard for creative collaborations,” says Anna Malmhake, Vice President Global Marketing at The Absolut Company. “Spike Jonze is one of the most important influencers of modern popular culture, and this 30-minute film subtly and artfully expresses our enduring commitment to collaborations and creativity.”

I’m Here, a 30-minute short film by Spike Jonze. Featuring Andrew Garfield and Sienna Guillory in the lead roles. The soundtrack includes original music by Sam Spiegel and original songs by L.A.-based art musician Aska Matsumiya and other emerging musicians.

Follow the I’m Here blog.

Check out the trailer below and look out for the film coming to a screen near you in March.

Amigos,

I watched the Golden Globes last night. I don’t usually watch the Golden Globes but I happen to love comedian/writer Ricky Gervais and he was hosting.

Yet is wasn’t Ricky or George Clooney or even the ever-prolific and brilliant Meryl Streep or for that matter the ever-prolific and brilliant Martin Scorsese who appeared as a flash of inspiration.

It was Robert Downey, Jr.

First off, he had by far the most genuine and funny acceptance speech of the night. Yup, in a show flooded with tears, thank yous, and seemingly endless shout-outs to various and sundry agents, studio muckety-mucks and hangers-on, ol’ RD,j bounded up on the stage and admitted that he “didn’t have anybody to thank.” And that everyone involved in the production needed him!

Of course, this was simply a rhetorical device. He used the negative to be extremely positive. See his disruptive speech here:

But it wasn’t simply RD,j’s sense of irony or spontaneous energy at the Globes that I find so inspiring. It’s deeper than that.

What really inspires me is his talent, his dedication to craft, his overall creative exuberance and excellence. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he had a few rocky years in there. In fact, from 1996-2001, Robert was mired in a black hole of substance abuse, suicidal tendencies and general shit-bag behavior. Yet to his credit, he sought the help he needed and is now enjoying one of the best comebacks in Hollywood history.

Now I won’t dive too deep into his career here. You can go to wikipedia Or imdb to find out more.

I will list some of his most inspired performances that you might want to download and check out:

Sherlock Holmes

Ironman

Tropic Thunder

“Family Guy” (Patrick Pewterschmidt episode from 2005)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

“Ally McBeal” (episodes from 2001)

Natural Born Killers

Chaplin

Saturday Night Live (He was a cast member 1985-1986)

Less Than Zero

Thanks for reading.

~Rob

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Rob Schwartz.

So if you love dogs the way we love dogs, become a fan, post a picture, tell all your friends and family and download the flyers and stick them up all over.

Learn more about this international holiday for dogs.

And make sure to spread the word. All supporting material is available only one click away.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Another Golden Drum: oh yeah, that means a whole week with a hangover and meeting new people who’s names won’t remember after the party. I love coming here – it’s like a week of holiday somebody else is paying for. It’s almost normal this year, only less crowded. The patio at the Hotel Bernardin is almost empty. Last year finding a place to have a drink there was almost a miracle.

Yes, it’s crisis time. But more important than the lack of money is the incredible shortage of good ideas. If you look closely at the works presented you’ll find that most of the inspiration comes from YouTube, and the rest from other ads. And that’s very sad for a profession that has “Creative” as a job title. All the shortlists are very short this year – and not only because the number of admissions was smaller.

What the hell has happened? I don’t know, I’m not the part of an advertising agency, but when I look around, I have the feeling that CREATIVITY with a big “C” is moving from the West to the East. And yet somehow Central and Eastern Europe are getting overlooked in this process. Maybe it’s because we have never learned to use the freedom to create? But we can still admire great art, paintings, poetry and so on created in the region – so why is no good advertising being produced? Please, will somebody explain to me this phenomenon, before I decide to change my profession? I’m so bored!

Agata Malkowska Szozda is a regular guest at the Golden Drum Festival. Agata is a reporter for Media & Marketing magazine from Poland.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Agata Małkowska Szozda.

The number of businesses going bust in this region increased by 11%.

The entries submitted to Cannes were down by 19,9 % this year.

I hate to be positive, but this is quite a string of exceedingly good news, isn´t it?!

What these numbers tell us, when we read them again after the initial shock, is that creativity is needed more than ever.

I find that very good news, because creativity is what we do.

Solving problems in an unexpected, clever way is our job.

Adding value to brands through our talent for communication.

The second thing these numbers teach us is, that quirky, exchangeable, not-brand-driven scam ads, only produced to impress award shows, are becoming as irrelevant as they were to brands and clients all the time anyway.

We´ll soon meet to look for this years Drums.

And I hope we will be able to give them to some fine and excellent thinking.

I hope we will see more than just another set of ads. I hope we´d rather see brilliant expressions of strong and valid ideas. Made to engage with our audiences out there.

Written and art directed to infect human beings with passion, wit and with a promise for a real contribution to their lives.

Because that is what we are there for.

As bold as it may sound, we can help to save the world from this crisis.

Because we are creatives. And creatives know more about love than war. And it´s always love that ends the crisis, as much as hostility causes it.

Let love rule.

Stefan Schmidt will share his experience heading the Golden Drum  Film, Press, Outdoor and Radio Jury exclusively with the readers of mad-blog.com. Stefan is Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\Germany  in Berlin.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Stefan Schmidt.

On the website they say: “There’s only one thing worse than not having any gloves when you need them – having just one.” With Glove Love they match up single gloves that have lost their original partners to create new and unique pairs. It’s part of our anti-waste initiative called ‘All Consuming’, which promotes the art of wasting nothing and using up everything.

I think it’s rather a lovely example of inspiration, creativity, technology, sustainability and connecting individuals through a shared passion.

Check out how you can do the Glove Thing.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

This is the 200th post on mad-blog.com. Congratulations and a big hand to all those who have contributed so far. Over 20,000 absolute unique visitors from 134 countries joined us, spending an average of 2:59 minutes on the blog. Over 4,550 people have subscribed to our rss feed. Thanks for all the interest and support.

This is the perfect opportunity to share the most read stories celebrating Media Arts and Disruption. Enjoy and pass them on:

(1) The audience is always right. (by Michael Zorn)

(2) Some brands don‘t like change. Change doesn’t much care. (by Michael Zorn)

(3) Cannes Lions 2009: Who will be the big winners? (by Rob Schwartz)

(4) Disruption is liberation. (by Sven H. Becker)

(5) Let‘s do things we think we cannot do. (by John Hunt)

(6) Change: What business can learn from politics 2.0. (by Frank Striefler)

(7) The age of media arts. (by Lee Clow)

(8) The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar Campaign. (by Gavin Heron)

(9) Act like lovers do. (by Stefan Schmidt)

(10) adidas Originals: Connection with the original tribe. (by Moritz Kiechle)

(11) Images travel but disruptive ideas thrive. (by Perry Valkenburg)

(12)  The beauty of big. (by Jean-Marie Dru)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

What is your personal view of disruption?

Many people outside the agency associate disruption purely with advertising, which is a very one-dimensional way of looking at it. Of course we produce disruptive advertising at TBWA, but that is only one facet of what we do. Disruption is a much broader philosophy that has far bigger implications for brands and their behaviour, not all of which is visible from the outside.

Do you still think of yourself as working in advertising?

I don’t even think I work at an advertising agency! That’s what we were about 25 years ago. Today our job is to help companies take their brands in exciting new directions.

Can you give me some examples?

The classic example is Pedigree, which we transformed from a brand that made dog food into a brand that loves dogs. That insight produced some great creative work – but more importantly it changed the behaviour of the entire company: employees were given permission to bring their dogs into work, and so on. More recently, our work with Nivea has enabled the company to look beyond traditional concepts of beauty. Most beauty brands have a very superficial, external view of beauty. But Nivea presents beauty as a state of mind. Not to forget that both companies outperform their category.

It must be quite a challenge, meeting a company and saying: “We’re going to change the way you think.”

Well, of course we work in partnership with them. We don’t just come up with an idea and force it on them. Disruption is a step-by-step process. We work together to unlock the ideas that were lying dormant within their brands. Disruption is about identifying the self-imposed restrictions that can stifle creativity. We call these restrictions “conventions“. The “disruptive idea“ is one that overturns these conventions and allows a company to adopt a unique standpoint, which we call the “vision“. From that, they discover a new truth about their brand, referred to as the “brand belief“. This is a fundamental statement about the brief and should guide all aspects of communication all “brand behavior“.

Clients find this process liberating – it’s as if they’ve discovered something that they were instinctively aware of all along, but were unable to formulate and put into action. We free those ideas and then polish and shape them.

Not all clients are comfortable with the idea of change.

True, and I would never say that disruption is for everyone. A client that wants to carry on doing the same thing year after year without testing new possibilities – and the increased success that those might bring – is probably not the client for us.

The same goes for clients who don’t want to look beyond conventional advertising?

Classic media – TV, print and radio – still have their place, but they are playing a reduced role within the bigger picture. Audiences now receive messages from many different places, so part of our job is to steer clients towards solutions that they might never have considered before. We refer to as Media Arts.

TBWA still makes traditional ads, though?

Traditional advertising is only one of many Media Arts skills. In the past, advertising was all about interrupting or begging for the audience’s attention. But that’s not what we do at all. Our job is to engage audiences in new and unexpected ways, through a wide variety of media. Actually we consider everything between brand and its audience media, just remember what we did for Labello during the New Years Celebrations earlier this year at Times Square New York and the Berlin Brandburg Gate and how we turned the these parties into the celebrations of kissing.

It’s almost as though you’re saying that brands must be more respectful of audiences.

I feel there’s a new seriousness within the industry. Today’s communications professionals should not be interested in artificial, short-term solutions. They should solve problems for clients in a durable way. That’s why we use disruption to form the brand belief and media arts to change brand behaviour rather than just to inspire witty ads. The end result is ultimately more sophisticated and, inevitably, a richer and more rewarding experience for consumers.

You come from a planning background. What difference does that make now you’re running an agency?

I can’t speak for others, but I believe my job is to take clients degree by degree out of their comfort zone. And as a planner rather than an account man I may find it easier to do that. I’m less concerned with diplomacy. I don’t mind pushing clients towards a path that they might resist a little at first when it’s in the interest of the brand.

And what about the agency employees?

Well, my goal is simply to hold everyone at the agency to account and ensure that we apply the philosophy of disruption to everything we do. That’s not a constraint. Disruption is not a series of rules, but a way of looking at the world differently. Once you accept that, it’s very liberating: anything becomes possible. Disruption gives everybody the chance to make a contribution to our client’s success.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Dr. Sven H. Becker.