Claudia Wölfle, Kay Köster

On the road #4: Delhi

Staring at the pulsating city of Bangkok, from the rooftop of a skyscraper, we said to each other – “Wouldn’t it be totally crazy and awesome to work in Asia?” The year was 2008. We had just moved into our new apartment in Berlin. And then, just three months after we had said those now seemingly prophetic words, we got an offer to go to China. Getting a chance to live and work there was like a dream come true. The opportunity was as fascinating as it was challenging, but it didn’t take long before we said – yes we can! So we left behind the safe haven of our homeland to work in a country whose language we didn’t know at all, and whose culture was something completely new, alien! Six Chinese words – ‘Hello!’, ‘Left / Right’, ‘Straight!’, ‘Stop!’ and ‘Bye-bye!’ were our guide in the 20-million strong megacity.
Being advertising professionals, China was a goldmine of opportunities. We not only shared our international expertise but also exchanged knowledge with the local team to translate challenges faced by international brands into new and effective ways of communication. Leading a team of 30 professionals – 1/3 International and 2/3 Chinese – evolved into a dynamic synergy of East and West. Time just slipped by, our team was very successful and we even represented the agency in Korea and travelled all over Asia – Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Philippines and so on. And after two and a half amazing years in China we took up our biggest challenge so far – India!

We had heard so much about this incredible country – from our friends, colleagues, and yes of course seen glimpses of it in Discovery and Nat Geo. We also had our own perceptions about what India and Indians must be like. But after the China experience, we knew stereotypes are like fragile glass – they break instantly when you experiencing reality. This time, it wasn’t just the culture and people that were going to be new. Even the situation and circumstances were different – to set up a full-service agency from scratch. And again for international clients like BMW, MINI and Lufthansa.

So, we were off to experience India, FIRST HAND!
Were we scared? YES!
Were we excited? HELL YES!
With adrenaline pumping in our creative veins we said… NEW DELHI, HERE WE COME!

So started our journey in the ‘millennium’ city of Gurgaon, one of the fastest growing cities around New Delhi. Here, we built the Indian arm of Liquid Campaign from the ground upwards, operating out of our esteemed client BMW’s office in the beginning, as we waited for our own office to come up at the German Centre. In between, we also had to move to a makeshift office where there was no power backup, no windows and basically no furniture!

Every challenge that came our way we turned it into an opportunity. So, even literally setting up a whole new office became a learning experience, as we scouted the local market for office equipment – from laptops to furniture, and got a firsthand feel of the city of Gurgaon. In fact, our new office bears our personal touch and many visitors, from the president of BMW India to the German Ambassador have commended it for its striking minimalist/industrial decor.

Soon we added more members to team Liquid and we were off to a flying start. We launched the BMW 6 Series Convertible, the BMW X3 and later the iconic MINI in the Indian market. And then came the Indian launch of the BMW 3 Series – the world’s most widely sold premium car. This was a challenge and responsibility on a much larger scale that would define our future as an advertising agency in India. We worked tirelessly with our team to develop a core communication idea for the all-new BMW 3 Series. Thus was born THE ULTIMAT3 launch campaign for the BMW 3 Series – made in India for India. A 360° campaign that encompassed all channels and successfully created the right buzz across all platforms. The best reward for us was the phenomenal feedback we got from the campaign.

So, this is our story so far. Not a day goes by when we don’t encounter something new in India – new places, new food, new people, and new challenges. Its sheer size and diversity make it seem so chaotic to an outsider. And the Indian consumer continues to baffle even the most seasoned marketing and advertising professional. We are glad to be a part of this journey, which continues to shape us professionally and personally. We are glad we had the courage to say “Yes!”

The best part is, this is just the beginning…

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Vadim Chekaev

On the road #3 – Moscow

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We have 25 employees in the office. The office is situated near Park Gorkogo (on Sadovaya Ring), which is now a center of the city.
Daily life in Moscow does certainly have its crushing features that dictate how we work, live and socialize.

The phrase “10 points” referring to Moscow traffic gridlock (10=paralyzed traffic) has become a stock phrase in Muscovites’ conversation.  Navigating Moscow’s streets is quite an experience at the best of time – in winter, it’s downright remarkable. In winter, unlike the rest of Europe, we live on summer time (two hours ahead of standard time), and this extra hour of darkness make what is already a challenging commute even more “entertaining”.

I arrive in the office around 10 am. Few people are around but all are beginning to filter in slowly but surely – having battled the traffic on the highway, or tightly pressed crowds on the metro attempting to squeeze through turnstiles and comparably packed trains… now all waiting for the sun to peep over the horizon…

I grab a coffee and settle down at my desk for the client and internal mails that await me, and for the review of the new business pitch document that the team has worked on and that needs to be couriered before noon today to meet the application deadline.

11 am, already time for real-time update on Moscow gridlock again, to decide on how to make it on time to the progress meeting on the major campaign with the key client. “10 points”, according to Yandex (a leading Russian internet search portal that provides daily, real-time updates on Moscow gridlock), the city does not move. The heavy snow has come. It comes every year, and every year it’s a surprise.  Is it not better to abandon driving and hop on the metro to get anywhere on time?

12:00, a disaster check – the courier delivered the pitch document just a couple of minutes before the deadline, hurrah!

1 pm at the client now. Not too late for the meeting. The clients are happy with the layout but still not happy with the copy.  No time for lunch. But a coffee at the client’s was good. I am heading back to the office now. “10 points” on the Moscow roads, it isn’t getting any better.

However much the roads are widened, however many new interchanges are built, the speed of traffic drops from year to year, but the speed of business does not, on the contrary, it’s getting faster and faster. A new brief just came in from the network, not allowing enough lead time for it!

3:30 pm.  I am still on the way to the office. It’s getting dark already – and still so much to get done.

Review with creatives afterwards on the key campaign and with planning on the urgent new business opportunity. And afterwards, there is a new job candidate waiting to share his experiences and work examples.

I am leaving the office late.  Traffic density index is down to 7 now – hurrah! Tomorrow is another day.

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Jan-Philipp Jahn

On the road #2: Dubai

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“We welcome you on board this Boeing 777 on our way from Hamburg to Dubai. The languages spoken by our cabin crew today are Arabic, English, French, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Korean, Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino, Hindi, Malyalam, Farsi and Sinhala…” Even the EMIRATES flight to Dubai gives you a foretaste of what the city has to offer – superlatives and a melting pot of cultures.

I have lived in Dubai for two years, and it took me nearly six months to get used to the rhythm of the city, its climate and its culture, not to mention my new workplace.

Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), not the capital – that’s Abu Dhabi – nor is it an independent state with lots of oil, as I originally assumed. Also, Dubai does not consist entirely of sheikhs, desert and camels. Not entirely – though they do exist, of course. Out of all the United Arab Emirates, Dubai is the emirate of superlatives: the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world; the Burj Al Arab, the most luxurious hotel in the world; and the artificial islands forming the Palm Jumeirah off the coast – these are only a few of the city’s remarkable construction projects.
But if you think Dubai’s going to stop there, you couldn’t be more wrong. Dubai never tires of planning ever more ambitious projects, such as the Mohamed bin Rashid City, Taj Arabia and the Dubai Modern Art Museum for 2013.

Dubai’s economy has seen formidable growth for decades as a result of its liberal economic policy. Its inhabitants are not taxed directly – only alcoholic drinks are taxed, at 30%. There is no income tax, and, with a few exceptions, no VAT. About 80% of the total population are expats, who come from all continents to work in Dubai. There are also more and more of us Germans.

At Plan.Net Middle East we have 25 employees from 14 nations. Our biggest clients are BMW, MINI, RR, Continental Tyres and the insurance company Takaful Emarat. Our agency is located in Dubai Media City, the regional hub of media corporations such as Leo Burnett and Y&R, as well as the big television companies NBC, BBC, FOX, etc. Dubai Media City is a free trade zone, meaning that we do not need a local sponsor to act as a sleeping partner for the company.

The summer in Dubai is certainly one of the greatest differences. It poses real challenges for me, as a northern European. In general you can divide the year into two halves. The first is warm, the second is hot. Temperatures of 40° – 45° are not uncommon in summer, which means that your clothes are wet with sweat the minute you step outside. Just imagine: the day begins, the sun is shining, I leave my tower block with my nice apartment on the 20th floor, step out of the door, and the first thing that happens is: a wall of heat. My shirt, my whole suit, is sticking to my body. Beads of sweat on my brow. Very neat and tidy! And have I mentioned the 80% humidity? Quick, into the taxi.
It doesn’t even cool down in the evenings, and the day’s activities are based on moving from air conditioning to air conditioning. They do a lot to make life in summer more attractive: for instance, the Dubai World Trade Centre is converted into Dubai Sports World. Running, football, basketball, tennis – everything is offered for free, and anyone can take part. And there is always the option of travelling to one of the neighbouring countries, such as Oman, Sri Lanka, India or Lebanon.

Another thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the culture. The Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, and the public holidays Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha etc. are actively celebrated in the agency. At these times daily life practically comes to a standstill. In the agency the working day is reduced to six hours, and the lunch delivery service stops. If you want to order a coffee at Starbucks you have to knock on the closed security blind, which is then pulled up barely a metre (so as not to let out the smell of coffee), and slip underneath.  We drink water in darkened rooms, and we don’t eat anything in the agency, out of consideration for our Muslim colleagues. It’s a good opportunity to lose a few pounds, but in the end everyone is glad when it’s over.

Our life at the agency is not much different from that in Germany. The meeting culture may be somewhat more relaxed, but the pressure on brands to succeed is just as high in this region as at home. Many of our clients see Dubai as an emerging market, and as a ticket to the Asian and North African markets.
Many big European brands have Dubai as their headquarters for the region.

If you believe the theories regarding the future of economics and politics, and if I can trust my own gut feeling, Dubai can look forward to an interesting future. Its economic development, stimulation and construction run in parallel with its cultural evolution.  This is making itself felt in drastic increases in the cost of living, including the explosion in rent prices.  Hello tomorrow.

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Tommy Schmidt

Our culture: An insider’s view

For decades, a group of smart agency rebels repeatedly managed to win customers and accounts from the so-called “big players”. In the meantime they became so good that now they too are one of the big players themselves. Does this mean that they have lost their raison d’être? No. In fact quite the opposite is true; this is where things really start to happen, just as in the past with the Rolling Stones, the green movement and Apple. When breaking into the big time, it is important to identify which of the attitudes that paved the way into the elite are still useful, and which should be sacrificed lest they prove a hindrance in the future. The charm still needs to be there, even if the sense of sympathy that David enjoyed in his battle against Goliath, is not. It is important that a sense of community still exists, even if more than a thousand people from multiple continents can hardly gather around a campfire every week. Corporate objectives need to be embedded and embraced in equal measure by colleagues from Munich to Zurich and from Milan to Dubai. And it is important to remain completely and unequivocally independent.

The culture at the “Haus der Kommunikation” is like a blanket of cloud, spreading out across all physical boundaries and binding us all together. It contains experiences and success stories, values and goals, ideas and agreements. The cloud is never bigger than those who act in the name and on behalf of the agency, as they too are entrusted to act completely independently. We are strong when strong people identify with us as an agency, when they see an element of themselves reflected in us. Conversely, the cloud is never smaller than the individual, otherwise a colleague from our Hello Kitty brand could end up selling mobile phones or yoga courses while strategic fields lie fallow. The essence of the “Haus der Kommunikation” does not restrict, it is neither its ceiling nor its walls. It is the life that surrounds and permeates through all things. Our culture is therefore not a set of rigid guidelines that have been codified in a handbook, app or PowerPoint presentation. Our culture is the very spirit between the words.

We breathe this cloud, it nourishes us and we in return feed it with our experiences. No nonsense, no fancy talk; our cloud is full of nutritional susbstance. For example, our values:

Sustainability of relationships with customers, partners and staff.

This requires a further value: fairness.

Openness is a significant issue, as how otherwise can one use every trick in the book to break rules in the name of progress?

Multiculturalism may as well be dead if one subscribes to the infantile stereotype of Muslims in headscarves crying out “Allahu Akbar” at the sight of a miniskirt as evidence of the irreconcilability of different ethnic groups with their cultural distinctiveness. Our agency, however, is so naturally and inconspicuously multicultural that every now and then we find ourselves having to consciously publicise this fact. Even in Munich, the ability to speak German is no longer an essential requirement for an applicant. A Sikh’s turban could be seen at the last agency party. A Japanese colleague sits at her desk in a manga bear cub costume without attracting even so much as a raised eyebrow. A Muslim and a Jew debate whether the cafeteria is serving halal, kosher or both for lunch.
Creativity is a value that spreads far beyond the mere designing of brand communication.

Everyone should feel encouraged to share their ideas. The idea then brings both the respect and the courage to submit it for discussion.
Learning from each other, providing mutual support and respecting other areas can be summarised in a single word: synergy.
Our visions  as a driving force for innovation and as a permanent invitation to our customers to share our ethos as we move forward together.
We stand together as a group, large and strong. But we are never a bully. We see every one of our relationships as a pairing of equal partners.
A strong culture that is internalised by all proves its resilience by surviving internal conflicts, such as when financial goals and agency values collide. We are proud of keeping our composure when such a conflict demands that we show unwavering cultural discipline. Not always, not in every scenario, but we always strive to remain true and loyal to ourselves.
Ah yes, loyalty: so where are those rebels from yesteryear? The year was 1970: Germany is a divided nation, confessed homosexuals are made prisoners, not foreign ministers, PCs and the Internet still lie many years in the future – and Serviceplan was founded. The founders have left a lasting legacy in the form of the agency’s cultural successes that invigorate our cloud with the tools to build a promising future.

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