Big Game Hunting: A week of ÜberCreativity

Our Worldwide Executive Creative Director Jason Romeyko sums up a week of ÜberCreativity, inspiration and motivational speeches at Serviceplan Group’s headquarters – the House of Communication in Munich.

Against all odds and the challenges posed by mounting a ÜberCreative Summit in real life in Munich, after a year and a half of virtual meetings during the Covid-19 lockdown, myself and our Global CCO Alexander Schill introduced a full programme of ÜberCreativity at our House of Communication in Munich, our first IRL since Zurich in 2020, when the world was on the cusp of a pandemic unprecedented in our lifetime.

What is ÜberCreativity?

ÜberCreativity is a higher form of innovation and a key asset to overcome the natural limitations of marketing as we know it. ÜberCreativity happens when different communicative disciplines combine their specific strengths to lift a creative idea up to a level nobody had ever expected to be reachable. 

The magic of ÜberCreativity lives in each of our Houses of Communication where creative & content, media & data and experience & technology collaborate and interplay. 

What is the ÜberCreative Summit?

Leaders and upcoming talent from Serviceplan Group’s Houses of Communication around the globe attended the summit in Munich, with representatives from; Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Japan, the Middle East, UK and USA in attendance in person, and China and Moscow represented via robot. On the first day we had some hi-tech visitors in the form of robots moving through the conference rooms, connecting us with ECDs in the Shanghai and Moscow agencies. 

As the host city was Munich, the original headquarters of Serviceplan when it started back in 1970 as a 2-man show, Matthias Harbeck introduced our German agencies, who presented some of their most exciting new work. And who were also in charge of creating this brilliant design for the summit – thanks again, Matthäus Frost! I love it!

What do I mean by ‘Big Game Hunting’?

I came up with the theme of ‘Big Game Hunting’ for the ÜberCreative Summit, not because I’m a fan of stalking wild animals as trophies, far from it, although Alex Schill and I liked the analogy of winning big clients and creating big, global campaigns.

When I talk about ‘Big Game Hunting’, I am taking metaphors and applying them to the mission of the Houses of Communication globally.

We hunt elusive clients. Only things we make visible will change the world. We don’t work for free. We create work that is a world first. And we create this ÜberCreative work with a goal of winning awards that rank us in the top tier of WARC.

What is the role of Creatives at the House of Communication?

To kick off the first day of the summit, Alex and I introduced the concept of ‘Big Game Hunting’ to our guests before we enjoyed a virtual talk by our CEO Florian Haller, recorded in New York where we was visiting our US partners Pereira O’Dell.

Florian Haller talked about what a central role creatives have within the Serviceplan Group, saying: “Creativity is from my point of view at the centre of an agency group. Creativity is the core. We have in our agency group through the ‘House of Communication’ model, the ability to create different silos and different disciplines. What we call ‘ÜberCreativity’. It’s a creative question to integrate ideas. I’m proud to be head of an agency group that’s so strong on tech and data. Tech, data and algorithm are tools we use to address our real job of connecting to human beings. We need to create more international cases that cross boundaries. In other words ‘Big Game Hunting’.”

Inspiration from our US partner

Pereira O’Dell co-founder PJ Pereira flew in especially from New York to Munich to join day 2 and 3 of the summit, where his presentation was a high point and gave insights into some of Pereira O’Dell’s world-changing new work, including a campaign for the Ad Council to encourage US citizens to get vaccinated against Covid-19, which featured 5 former US presidents and even the Pope – PJ actually wrote copy for the Pope, which he says was a career highlight!

Who were the most motivational speakers?

Friday’s sessions kicked off with a talk on ‘What’s blocking You’ and ended with a motivational speech about inclusion by Saatchi & Saatchi’s Worldwide CCO and D&AD President and my long-term friend  Kate Stanners.

Kate is a true beacon of creativity, a trailblazing female leader and a perfect example of our mantra that ÜberCreativity is inclusion. My feeling is that if we’re all homogenous we won’t get innovation. We need diversity. So Kate Stanners was an ideal guest speaker who has demonstrated with her stellar career that women can embody the pillars of ÜberCreativity on an equal footing with men. As a trailblazer for women creatives, she has proven that diversity in creativity is essential. Kate talked about the fact that she didn’t have a plan, but that left her open to opportunity. She has always ‘lived in the now’, not looking backward or forward.   

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The ÜberCreative Summit in Munich took place in conjunction with Creative Week, which consisted of several days of talks by thought influencers and creative geniuses from within the Serviceplan Group, and kicked off on Monday with our SPARKS Creative Experience program for young talents on a junior to mid-level. Presentations during Creative Week included; ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ (creating ideas that work in a mobile age) with Serviceplan Berlin MD Myles Lord;

How to get PR buzz for your creative idea’ with Lee Sharrock & Birgit Koch, PR & Communications, Serviceplan Group; ‘Passiontainment: How live content is transforming digital entertainment’ with Alex Turtschan, Director Digital Accelerator Mediaplus; or ‘The Interface is NOT the brand’ with Christian Waitzinger, Chief Experience Officer, Plan.Net, amongst others. You can get some deeper insights via our Instagram Stories highlight where we featured a selection of our inspiring talks.

What a great week with inspiring people and people who were inspired!