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Interviews with international
Creative Stars
›› Interview Daniel Kleinman
Pricken: Mr. Kleinman, advertising has an insatiable appetite for new and exciting picture worlds. From where do you get the ideas and inspiration that allow you to continually develop new visual worlds?
Kleinman: I keep an open mind and pay attention to varied visual sources, these could be magazines, film, painting, museums, galleries, photography, theatre and of course lots of TV. I also drink.
Pricken: A lot of top creatives were prolific daydreamers as children, which is why they often had problems at home or school. What role did daydreams play during your childhood?
Kleinman: I was thought of as a bit of a daydreamer at school partly because I found school and most of the teachers boring. Education is most important throughout ones whole life and the ability to teach in a stimulating way encouraging students to want to learn more is a gift. Not many of my teachers had it, luckily for me my parents did. I probably did daydream a lot and not being good at, or interested in, sport at all spent all my spare time drawing fantasy scientific worlds with my best friend who due to illness, not inclination, was forced to explore the internal rather than external world.
Pricken: How has the way you use your imagination and the way you daydream changed since you were a child?
Kleinman: I now charge people for it.
Pricken: Many creatives describe the process of getting ideas as a game involving inner pictures and ideas. Picture elements are often combined, scenes changed and new material added. If you were to think now about how you personally develop ideas, how would you describe the process you go through?
Kleinman: I either have an immediate vision of how I want something to be or it comes together slowly over a period of time. It can help not to think of the problem you are trying to solve and let your subconscious work on it. Memory is made up of many different parts and each time these disparate parts come together to form a memory the memory is subtly different although you are not aware that it is. Creative thinking can work in a similar way, leave it, then each time you come back to it it is a bit further on. I also think it important to be open minded about the input of those around you. Probably the most important practical part of the process is drawing out thumbnail sketches.
Pricken: Are you able to consciously control, summon up and influence your inner fantasy worlds and pictures? By imagining a scene and then playing it out with different variations in your imagination, for example, in order to see which one would work best? If the answer is yes, could you describe exactly how you do this?
Kleinman: I like to draw out options and if practical leave as many open as possible leaving decisions for the editing process. Even if one were able to play out scenes in ones head the practicality of filming will mean they are different. One can of course have a sense of the best way of doing things which I think comes more from experience than imagining every different possibility.
Pricken: Can you reveal any kind of method or trick that you’ve used to turn mental pictures into creative ideas or to improve your imaginative powers?
Kleinman: I advise everybody whatever they do to take up life drawing which hones ones ability to look, imagine and be decisive.
›› Interview Johan_Kramer
KesselsKramer is an international advertising and communications agency founded in 1996 by creatives Erik Kessels and Johan Kramer. At this moment, around 30 people work at KesselsKramer. Half of them are Dutch, the other half has roots in China, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Scotland, England, Sweden and the United States. The agency produces campaigns for both national and international clients like Diesel, 55 DSL, Novib and Ben. Apart from advertising, a lot of other stuff is created. Music videos, books, documentaries and even postage stamps find their way out of the church. Johan Kramer devotes a lot of his time directing many of the commercials made by KesselsKramer.
Mario: The renowned advertising journal, „Lürzer‘s Archive“, regularly features the most creative advertising campaigns on the international scene. Mr. Kessels is undisputed leader in the ranking of most creative art directors and Mr. Kramer occupies the number one position in the list of creative directors. How did the two of you meet?
Johan: Funny enough, we met during a dog show in England. Since we are both big cocker spaniel lovers, we met each other at a stand over there and kept talking the whole night about advertising and dogs. A good combination. Then we started working together and tried to put a dog in every ad. For three years, it worked. Then we had to do a campaign for an English bank and the CEO hated dogs. So we gave it up. From the moment Erik Kessels and me worked together we were an agency in itself. Both of us are really very „self-made“ and fanatic. For the first two years, we worked for other agencies, but soon we discovered we were so stubborn it was better to have our own firm. So we moved back to Amsterdam and started KesselsKramer.
Mario: After years of working together, is there any kind of recognisable pattern to the way you generate ideas in tandem?
Johan: The reason why we work so well together is that we don’t need each other. We can work both very well on our own and do lots of stuff apart from each other. When a job comes in, we think about it for a few days on our own and then we share our ideas in ten minutes and most of the times, we’ve cracked the job then. Those ten minutes contain a lot of energy and always create something better than the ideas we have apart from each other. The funny thing is that we think very much in the same way. Sometimes we do reviews apart from each other with other creative teams here and they often say afterwards that we’ve given exactly the same comments. The final reason why we work so well together is our huge respect for each other and the ability to be really vulnerable towards each other.
Mario: What do you consider to be the three most important factors in creating the ideal breeding-ground for creativity within a team?
Johan: 1. respect 2. compassion 3. humor
Mario: And what do you consider to be the three things that most paralyse and block creativity in meetings?
Johan: 1. fear 2. insecurity 3. too much experience (which leads to cynicism).
Mario: Recent studies have identified stress as the number one enemy of creativity. What do your creatives do to preserve their creativity among the hustle and bustle of the advertising agency?
Johan: We’ve changed our working place into a wooden fort that looks like a children’s playground. We do everything to make our creatives feel at home and make them very much appreciated. In the end, all creatives are children who are very insecure and need constant confirmation that they are doing the right thing. Furthermore, they are in close contact with all our clients, so they understand their pressure as well. So, in the end the client is not an unknown enemy, but another human being, hopefully seen as a nice friend.
Mario: In your experience, what kind of role do wit and humor play in creative meetings? Does an element of fun in meetings produce better results?
Johan: Sure. We are in the business of imagination, so let’s be crazy. It’s important to take things not too seriously, only then you start seeing opportunities for doing things differently.
Mario: How would you describe a typical creative meeting at your agency?
Johan: It’s organised chaos. In our meeting rooms we have wooden picnic tables. They are there for a reason. If you sit on them longer than half an hour, you have a painfull ass. So, we force ourselves to cut the bullshit and talk about the issues that matter. Again, we try to create a situation where insecurity and fear don’t exist. Keep it relaxed, with lots of respect for everyone involved.
Mario: Johan, can you describe what that moment feels like when you get an inspired idea? And how are you able to tell, at a moment like this, that the idea you have had is such a fantastic one?
Johan: It’s a process that never stops. You digest as much information as possible about a project and then you start thinking. A good idea is like an accident of two things you normally wouldn’t combine. But the real important thing is to be insecure. The moment you are sure you’ve come up with a great idea, it’s probably shit. That’s where a lot of senior people in this business go wrong. They become arrogant because they did a few nice campaigns. If you really want to do well, you have to keep worrying and never settle for something easy.
Mario: Many people hold the view that the outcome of a creative advertising campaign is entirely down to the advertising agency itself. What role, in your opinion, does the client play here?
Johan: It’s very easy to make a very creative advertising campaign. It‘s much harder to make a very creative advertising campaign that is really effective. For this, you need an inspiring client. If your client has nothing to say, it‘s hard to make something inspiring as well. So, the client is essential in all our campaigns.
Mario: Would you be prepared to invite the client’s personnel to a creative meeting in order to develop ideas in common, or would this be going too far? What do you think the result of a joint brainstorming session of this kind would be?
Johan: To be honest, I never ever experienced a useful brainstorming session. I think it’s typically something for big companies, where people have not much to do. It always ends up in politics with the strongest people pushing their ideas. It’s much better to think in small groups and then have a bigger meeting to discuss the ideas. Groups never came up with big ideas. It’s always the individual.
Mario: Have you ever stopped to wonder whether you could have been successful as a like-minded duo (KesselsKramer) in similar fashion in any other fields, such as architecture, film or art?
Johan: We don’t wonder about it, we try. We hate to think in boxes. Advertising is much too limited. We rather talk about communication. Apart from that, we love to do other things and get involved in all kinds of projects. Sometimes it’s really good to be autodidact, because if you don’t know much about it, you can think more freely. We have done fashion and architecture projects in the past and we loved it. We also experiment with our own brand, called „do“. It’s a foundation, based next to the church we work in, that does lots of different projects like creating new furniture, music, consumer goods, etc.
Mario: What are the ideas you’ve always wanted to realise but haven’t yet had the opportunity to?
Johan: A feature film. But keep watching the schedule of your local cinema.
›› Interview Will Wright
Will Wright is one of the greatest game designers of all time. Despite the tragic death of his father when he was young, he managed to motivate himself to make great games. His first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, published by Broderbund for the Commodore 64, was a helicopter action game. He also worked on an unreleased game called Probots for the Commodore, which he would like to remake if he could find a copy of it (he lost all of them). Raid on Bungeling Bay gave him the idea for SimCity, when he was having more fun building the levels than flying around in them. This led him and Jeff Braun to found Maxis, one of the greatest development studios in gaming history.
Mario: Will, your industry has an insatiable appetite for new and exciting picture worlds. From where do you get the ideas and inspiration that allow you to continually develop new visual worlds for games?
Will: Most of the ideas I have stem from my reading. I read a lot of non-fiction in particular (science, design, psychology) and enjoy trying to take the concepts from these books into a more playful, gaming realm. I see it almost as a form of Trojan Horse for educational software.
Mario: If you want to develop a spectacular new landscape, for example, to what extent do you take your cue from reality and to what extent do you simply go with your imagination? How do you go about developing unusual new picture concepts? Do you mix the real with the imaginary during this process?
Will: That is a rather tricky balance to strike. On one hand, our games are known for their settings in contemporary reality. On the other hand, we try to use humor to encourage playful exchanges within these worlds. In the final balance the mixture of fantasy and reality is driven primarily by gameplay concerns. If a game is not fun, then everything else about it becomes quite irrelevant.
Mario: When you’re looking for ideas do you allow yourself to be inspired by the images around you? Do you flick enthusiastically through magazines or watch films or are you someone who falls back on their own inner pictures and allows themselves to be led by their own imagination?
Will: Because my inspiration tends to come from reality I usually need to abstract it in my mind as a first step. What is the essential model I have in my head for the way a city (or a person or whatever) works? Then I work from that abstraction in my mind to envision the dynamics of what I would like to be able to do with it in a game. In a way, I first decide what the nouns are (city, person, house, ant); from those I then choose the verbs (growth, construction, happiness). I work towards gameplay from this point.
Mario: A lot of top creatives were prolific daydreamers as children, which is why they often had problems at home or school. What role did daydreams play during your childhood?
Will: I spent much of my childhood building models (tanks, ships, planes) and then using them for creative play (dioramas, blowing them up while filming, playing wargames, etc.). From this my interests sort of evolved into robotic projects. When I bought my first computer (for controlling my robots) I quickly discovered that it was in fact the ultimate modeling system.
Mario: When you’re working on ideas for a game, do you adapt your ideas in your mind’s eye? Do you play around with your ideas or do you know right from the start what the end results will look like?
Will: I usually have no idea where the final result will end up. I usually start with a subject and work from there. Most of my creative development process centers on picking the current direction I want to head rather than the destination. I do a huge amount of creative iteration (which is why my games take so long to make). But I usually have a god sense of the feelings and strategies I want the players to be concerned with even before I know exactly what the game will be.
Mario: Can you reveal any kind of method or trick that you’ve used to turn mental pictures into creative ideas or to improve your imaginative powers?
Will: A vivid imagination is essential for game development work. The hard part is that as we start to build more emergent systems (complex game worlds) it becomes much harder to imagine how all the details will actually unfold and feel to play. It's at this point that the value of fast prototyping becomes very apparent. We spend a surprising amount of time and effort now building small, simple prototypes of most elements in a new game (I'm working on a new game now, and we have about 40 individual prototypes of aspects of this game). I find these to be an invaluable "prosthetic" for the imagination and crucial to good design.
›› Interview K.C. Tsang
KC Tsang has received over 150 international and local creative awards. In 1994, his television campaign for Optical 88 won the Best of the Best Award and three spikes in the Asian Creative Awards. In the 1995 4As Award Presentation, he won five Gold and six Silver Awards. KC has spent thirteen years serving a wide variety of accounts including American Express, Park‘N Shop, Cheung Kong Property, Hennessy V.S.O.P., Cafe de Coral, Hutchison Paging, Whirlpool and Philips, Unilever, SE Beecham, Carlsberg, Bank of East Asia and City Chain. Prior to joining BBDO HK, KC spent one year at TVB and ten years at Ogilvy & Mather and one year at Bozell Worldwide.
Pricken: Mr. Tsang, you are Executive Creative Director of BBDO Hong Kong and one of the top creatives in the country. Of all your tasks and responsibilities in the agency, which do you most enjoy?
K.C. Tsang: I enjoy writing ads although I do not have many opportunities to do it now. I like the process of brainstorming with those idiots who are even more stupid and crazy than I. The jokes are surely enjoyable. Even more enjoyable are the spirit of exploration, experiment and comrade. And then I enjoy seeing the rough concept gradually materialised, going on air and eventually bringing shocks to the audience, newspaper and our competitors.I also enjoy pulling a group of people together, helping them to realise their potential. I believe that there is only a limited room for growth if a person is working in isolation. I think a good atmosphere is beneficial for everyone to grow. Good people should stay together to stimulate each other. I like good ideas coming up here and there. You know, I enjoy recruiting new staff, because it is really important to form the right mix of the team. And it is also important for controlling the quality of our works. I don‘t like to dictate or «control» the day-to-day works. Rather than that, I choose my staff very carefully. Recruiting a quality staff is like picking up the quality stock. I am good at the former but unfortunately not the latter.
Pricken: Could you imagine finding a fulfilling outlet for your creativity in some other field, such as art, science or architecture?
K.C. Tsang: When I was a secondary student, I dream of being a scientist. When I started selecting university subject, I wish I could be a good doctor. When I graduated from the university, I used to think of becoming a film director. But now, I become more pragmatic and realistic. I know no matter how hard I learn, I am just not talented enough to be a great scientist or doctor or film director. So I give up. I‘d rather prefer advertising. It is easier.
Pricken: Do you think teamwork plays a different role in your advertising agency to the role it plays in agencies in Europe or America?
K.C. Tsang: This is an interesting question. When you first mention «teamwork», its meaning in a narrower sense pops into my mind. What I mean is that I immediately think of the «creative team». Of course, teamwork in this sense is extremely important for advertising. Advertising is not art. We have time pressure. Teamwork is a good approach to deal with it. I think this is the same throughout the entire world. However, when you elevate the term of «teamwork» to a higher level or broaden its meaning to include the co-operation between different departments, I think we have a different kind of «teamwork» from the West. The whole process of doing advertising in the West takes a much longer period than in Hong Kong. The strategy has to go through a thorough research before it is briefed to the creative. The creative concept has to go through a thorough research before it is produced. The process goes on and on forever. In every stage, a lot of people are involved. Moreover, I can imagine that clients and agencies are much more bureaucratic than their peers in Hong Kong. So the number of people involved just keep multiplying. In this case, you really need «teamwork».
Pricken: What do you do to motivate your teams and make sure they enjoy optimum creative freedom?
K.C. Tsang: People say that creative guys are hard to manage. I think this thinking is wrong. Creative guys are easy to manage but hard to control. «Manage» does not equal to «control». For creative guys, you just need to give them a mission. They will go for it. They are already self motivated. The best way to manage them is to free them, not to control them. In BBDO HK, we emphasize the ideology and the value system amongst the creative staff, even the staff of the other departments. And we get rid of the bureaucracy, the rules and procedures. Then, we can see the agency flies. This thinking is the backbone of our agency‘s operation. Who set this? Besides the tradition of BBDO worldwide, creative department has been striking our best to keep the leadership. Keeping the creative leadership is the best way to let ourselves enjoy the optimal creative freedom.
Pricken: Do you think there is a difference between the way creatives think in Hong Kong and China and the way they think in Europe or America?
K.C. Tsang: I think we all have something in common. For example, we all do comparison ads, demonstration ads, humorous ads, emotional ads etc. And we all know what love is. We all treasure peace. We all care about our next generation. But it is not what we have in common to make our ads excellent. In many occasions, it is what we think different from each other that make the ads great. Surely, we think differently from the West. We even think differently amongst Chinese.
Pricken: What would you have to show or say in an advertising campaign to break a taboo in Hong Kong?
K.C. Tsang: There are too many taboos in Hong Kong. That‘s why doing advertising is still easy. Just persuade your clients to break the taboos and surely the product will become magnetic. Hong Kong has become a post-modern city where the distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, fake and real, high class and low class are so blurred. In this kind of society, being able to make noise (in whatever way) is already half way to success. Breaking taboos is just one of the way to make huge noise. Showing sex is definitely a taboo.
Pricken: Are there any ideas you have been carrying around with you for a long time that you have not been able to realise up to now?
K.C. Tsang: I have been very lucky because almost all of our ideas have a change to get exposed in recent years. For those who were conceived long time ago but still remained unexecuted, I have forgot. After all, I think the ideas are not strong enough to stand the test of time. In fact, I think advertising idea is only valid for a short time. For those classic examples cited in textbook, seminar or training, they carry a misperception that they still work nowadays because they are so good. I think their valid dates have passed. If you air them, they are bound to fail. We mistake that they still work only because of the «framing effect» of the textbook, seminar or training itself. It seems that I have been preaching too much. OK, I confess. I don‘t want to expose the ideas. I still want to sell them one day. If I tell you, will you pay me royalty fee? I‘ll ask for a huge amount.
Pricken: Thank you very much for the interview!
© by Mario Pricken, 2006