furtherandfaster

And so to the airport

Today was a scramble to see a few people before my flight. I headed to Leo Burnetts for a coffee with Raluca, Joanna and Laurentiu.  They are just starting the latest LeoShe project called Cliches based in part on an idea I have been trying to persuade agencies to do for a very long time. They are running focus groups at which they ask people to write ads – the idea is to get at the generic category ideas. Useful for understanding the conventions before you get the creatives to break them. Unfortunately there is a polarisation between the clichés that are being produced and some really original creative ideas – which isn’t the point of the project – the great public aren’t supposed to be creative they are supposed to deliver clichés! So we have a discussion about the types of stimulus – perhaps getting them to draw key frames rather than write scripts. It is great to sit with some of the Burnetts crew again – they are a young department compared with planners in the UK. But in no way inexperienced. It was Elena and Razvan (the planning head) who won a silver in the International category at the last APG awards and currently hold the award for the best use of research on P&Gs Wash and Go.  I come away from meeting energized as I so often do in Romania because of the levels of imagination and enterprise – they work long hours but they are doing great and original work. To get a flavour - here's Razvan (he's the one on the right) appearing in a viral to encourage creatives to get involved in the Communication Olympics - a local award scheme to attract students into the advertising business.   Here are links to Leo's blog and other special projects (click on the glasses) including LeoShe.

And on to another coffee with another friend Alexandra from Sister. And so back to the hotel and the car to the airport.

Last night in Bucharest

Back in Bucharest I went for a candlelit meal with Cristina  - a local powercut meant the food had to be ordered and eaten mostly in darkness. And then I finally caught up with Felix Tartaru – founder of GMP and chair of the IAA. A meeting which started at 11.30pm and continued for an hour – a good time for uninterrupted chat across a wide range of topics.

He gave me a lift back to the hotel and as he did so said Have you heard about our radio station? It turned out I had - it had been a discussion point in the IAA advertising school. Itsy Bitsy is the only radio station in Europe aimed at  children. Which Felix had started as a project with his wife.  He described his frustration at the kind of television his children were watching and his desire to give them something that wouldn’t keep their eyes glued to screens for hours. Radio seemed an ingenious solution. The appalling traffic in most Romanian cities means that parents and children can often be sitting in traffic for hours a day. So grownups opt to have Itsy Bitsy on the radio to keep the children entertained and quiet. A captive audience – brilliant. Listening to music, stories and plays.  They operate in 5 cities now but intend to roll out to the other cities by the end of the year. The goal is to cover the whole of Romania within a couple of years. There are a few surprises though – Coca cola, Pepsi and McDonalds aren’t allowed. This station has strict editorial control over who is allowed to advertise. Money talks but it appears not at Itsy Bitsy. They are just extending to products the first being a fruit juice without additives.  As Felix described it This project is food for our souls – that’s why we do it.

Sunday - trip to the Black Sea

And the achievement of a long ambition. I have been trying to get to the ‘seaside’ which holds a huge hold on Romanians perception of the ideal weekend. But at more than 250 kms distance on the sole road which the entire country uses to get there the effort of getting there and the dire warnings about the odds of sitting in gridlock coming or going have meant I have never managed to make the journey. Enter Teo planning head at GMP and his girlfriend Andrea – who collected me at 9 and we headed for the outskirts of Bucharest and the road for the coast.  The road was quiet and led across a flat and fertile plain. At one point tens of storks flew over the road back from migration.  At another there was common land with 6-7 herds of cows grazing each with their own herdsman. It took me back to my farming days in New Zealand when the farmer for whom I worked had 3000 sheep and 3100 lambs plus perhaps 200 cattle. And ran it on his own till I came to work as a hired help for the year. Extraordinary how much of Romanian life needs people – when the drive for productivity has pushed us into mechanising and automating – this society doesn’t work like that.

Then into a spot of bother – a traffic policeman on his own pulled us over and said we had been speeding. Teo argued his corner. Police should work in twos so there is a witness and the patrol car had Bucharest plates – the city was now over 100km away so this looked very much like a piece of freelance work for collecting spot fines off likely cars to supplement a modest police income. After 20 minutes he let us go without paying anything.  This is a regular occurrence but complaining to some kind of police authority is not prudent or likely to lead to any kind of action – the letter communicating the speeding fine is never likely to materialize.

And on to the coast crossing the Danube a couple of times as it loops before going into the Black Sea. Constanta is where the road ends – there is no ring road so all traffic to the coast has to enter the town in order to go anywhere. Today was quiet but in peak periods the traffic must be nightmarish.  We turned south for Vama Veche.  This village is a mile short of the Bulgarian border – it became a mecca first for a hippy crowd and then for anyone not wanting a routine package holiday – which the rest of the coast line has been built up to deliver.  Out of season it just looks like a rather run down collection of wooden houses. In season Vama Veche is heaving – anyone can turn up and camp on the beach – and they mostly do.  We were welcomed by several wild dogs – looking thin and hungry – but they seemed friendly enough. And we walked to the Mare Negre – the black in the name comes from the colour of the water when storms stir up the water and discolour it.

 

We had a coffee then drove back up the coast visiting a couple of the resorts: Jupiter and Olympe – these were dated looking hotels built in the 1960s and 1970s and not in the best of shape. Olympe used to be the place where only senior party members were allowed to go. Even in communist times where all are equal there are always some more equal than others – and even Olympus has its place. These hotels couldn’t begin to compete for Mediterranean holidays and by all accounts are so expensive that most Romanians are heading over the border to the Bulgarian resorts where the prices are lower and the service is better. 4 million crossed the border in a single weekend last May.

We came back to Constanta – and here I was pleasantly surprised – it is a substantial port so I thought that was all it was. But down by the harbour was a Royal casino built at the end of the 19^th century.  It was here that the battleship Potemkin came when the crew mutinied. And it was here that the Roman poet Ovid was exiled after scandalising Caesar Augustus with his Ars Amatoria. He died here.  We ate in a seafood restaurant overlooking the sea wall – broiled sturgeon steaks and shark in a whisky sauce (no caviar was on the menu). And then the long drive back to Bucharest which took us until past 10 pm even though the roads were empty.  A wonderful day. Every time I go to Romania I see a little more and there is so much more to see than Bucharest but escaping the gravitational pull is difficult – it typically takes 30-40 minutes to clear the city limits. So I am grateful to my hosts for helping me to escape.

Very strange to be looking at a sea to the East which marks the border between Europe and Asia. The western ocean has long had a deep connection with adventure and (death even) in the Celtic imagination. But it seems no one has an urge to leap into a boat and head for Asia. This sea has its legends too. The Argonauts landed here at Constanta. Odysseus sailed up here. And so did Theseus of Athens. But these are Greek legends. The locals had other things to worry about – mainly the flat country made it easy for invaders to roll forward across it – so going foraging by ship wasn’t as appealing as riding and raiding on land.

Off to Bucharest

Wed 19/03/2008 09:25 19032008001

When I got home after the RLF event,  I had to work most of the night to prepare the files for the Romanian trip and load 2 USB sticks. 90 minutes of sleep I think. Flying to Romania from Heathrow requires me to cross London in early rush hour – not the easiest thing to do with a case. On the plane I read a great piece in the current issue of Wired by Chris Anderson on the power of free content. There were some useful casestudies including the business case for last summer’s giveaway of Prince’s new album with the Mail on Sunday which I tucked away for the IAA school later in the week.

Back in Bucharest

Every time I arrive in Romania something has changed. This time the overpass has been finished – the road has been in turmoil ever since my first visit in July 2006. Now you can roar towards Bucharest and only find the traffic jam when you are relatively close to the centre which I suppose is an improvement.  I missed my first meeting with a mix up on arrival times. I was due to meet Cristina and Afrodite who are involved in the IAA school for dinner to talk about the next module of the curriculum which I have to deliver during the autumn. I had discovered that one of my USB sticks had corrupted so the evening was marred as the IT guy from GMP came to hack the USB stick to try to lift the presentations off it which I needed for the following morning. Part way through the evening Costin Radu came to brief me on the Romania and the internet – quite important seeing as how I was due to run web 2.0 research training within 12 hours All this happened in a Mexican restaurant with a singer who insisted on bellowing Spanish ballads at the top of his voice while trying to make eye contact with the diners which made conversation more than difficult. Surreal – but that’s Romania and it is one of the things which keeps me coming back!

I apologise for the lag on these postings but the life blog app from my mobile isn't working in Bucharest and internet access isn't great so I have had to wait until returning to the UK to upload this next lot of blog posting.

If you want to fly you have to commit

I've been trying to sort out my flights to Romania for a fortnights time. And would quite like to fly with British Airways because they fly direct, and prices are reasonable. But they have this pilots' strike hanging over them. I tried getting some sense out of them over the phone and they just wouldn't commit - it was horrible - completely undermining of any trust they might have built up. They didn't know when a strike might happen. They couldn't guarantee to find alternative flights and so on and so forth. It was intriguing to ring a 3rd party who was terribly reassuring that based on track record industrial action would take a few days allowing them to put their passengers onto aircraft from other airlines. It was just ironic that the brand concerned was completely disempowered in a way that the intermediary wasn't. Wonder how much business they're losing.

McGregor and Boorman: the buddy road movie starts again

The first episode of the next Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman epic kicked off tonight as they set off for a 15 thousand mile ride from John O'Groats to Cape Town.  Compulsive viewing. I don't know who writes the storyline but these boys are so watchable because they manage to create crises out of very litle while maintaining an air of being resolutely normal - as if one of them being one of the most recognisable and bankable Hollywood stars wasn't a factor. So on the one hand we had crisis number 1 Ewan's wife fancies joining them on the trip on a MOTORCYCLE - she's never ridden one before. Testing their friendship to the limit of course. Then Ewan breaks his leg on Shepherd's Bush roundabout so has to miss out on a last skiing holiday (nobody seemed to think it odd that going skiing just before a huge journey with a load of sponsorship money at stake is probably a lot dodgier than riding your motorbike through Shepherd's Bush.  They  got their visas for Libya with hours to spare but the Americans can't get in. Then Charlie doesn't make it on the plane because he says bomb to the security people at the airport.  On the normal side they managed to drop in on Ewan's parents in Crieff - obviously not as far from Glencoe as I had thought - this trip was swaying from side to side of Scotland and just took you with it waiting for the next thrill or spill.

This is great content creation - because that's exactly what it is - loads of namechecks for the sponsors providing the bikes and the clothing with great storylines to keep you engaged.  Much more interesting than advertising. Why don't more agencies create content like this? Because the business model is plain wrong - we just wouldn't get paid enough money for making it. 

Festival tendencies

Every year I go to the Greenbelt arts festival.  And there's always an interesting tango with work even while the festival is on. One year I had to take a call related to Chrysler in Detroit at the point when a fair trade march was processing rather noisily round the site. There was the time I had to do a planning session in the car on the way home for a workshop I was due to run later in the autumn for the Goodwood estate. This year my thoughts were about a piece of work for a supermarket hardly helped by the T shirt stall with a rather familiar logo and the name Fiasco emblazoned on the front. Nothing like being in different places to get a perspective on work.

A highlight of the weekend was seeing Coldcut in action. I rather like the idea of  VJing so seeing quite how elaborate they could get with video and audio samples was a revelation.

Also on the billing Bily Brag and Soweto Kinch - who were great. And I missed Aqualung and John Tavener and passed on Chas and Dave.

There was a circus production to a drum and bass accompaninment called Advertigo which was supposed to be having a pop at the advertising business. I get mystified by most attacks on advertising which seem to be wide of the mark about what we actually do. The assumption seems to be that we ad people set out to deceive and are rather proud of doing so. Also that advertising is shallow and disposable. All of which bounces off us because we take it (very) far too seriously - are remarkably free from cynicism about what advertising actually does. And we suffer from short term memory loss because the evident disposability of advertising work (can you remember what were you working on 6 months ago?) passes us by.  Well I foiled the attack with ease and just enjoyed all the acrobatics and high wire activity. Ignoring the screens with dodgy puns on well known logos.

Spoils from Romania

The treasures I returned with are suitably eccentric.  First the megaphone - essential for attending Romanian football matches and making as much noise as possible - bought for a ludicrous price from a man at the roadside junction on the way out to Otopeni.   Lastly in the supermarket at the airport I managed to find peach tea - a treasure since you can't find it anywhere in the UK. I first got a taste for it in Canada where the summers are also hot. 

Mugshot of Jamie Oliver

Tue 24/07/2007 12:39 24072007(010) I hadn't believed it but here's some mugs on sale in Bucharest airport courtesy of the geezer himself: Jamie Oliver who is big in Romania at the moment. I had at least 2 school dinners conversations while I was in Romania. Laurence LB?? no comment

My first Romanian house?

Not really - this was in a brief trip down to the Peasant's museum where Diana Ceasu, Mihnea and Alex did a brief podcast interview for their blog. I have yet to cross the threshold into a Romanian home so for now an 18th century lodge for a prosperous landowner will have to do.

Bathroom scales

Tue 24/07/2007 09:35 24072007(001) The bathroom at Sister. Note the bathroom scales in the foreground. Alex Tinjala the founder likes to strike dramatic poses and thunder 'Because I'm a woman!' when questioned about the fabulous decor in Sister's offices. This has to be a first. I've NEVER been to an agency which kept bathroom scales in the loos. Until now. All going to show it doesn't take much to be different from everyone else.

Storks on telegraph poles - now THAT is simply surprising

Driving in Transylvania this was enough for me to ask to stop the car. Storks on their nests all the way down the high street of a village.  Storks are bigger than herons - it was remarkable to see them sitting so calmly above the houses largely ignored and ignoring everything below them. 

It reminded me of the current campaign running on the London Underground crosstrack posters to encourage people to visit London. Which features the line Simply surprising. With images which simply aren't. Mountains seaside there's nothing surprising about them. But this? This was surprising. And not a breath of it in the tourist brochures because here storks are so part of the landscape no one thinks to make a feature of them. Apparently they get bears rummaging through the dustbins as well...

Lake Balea with Teo and Andrea

T eo from GMP and his girlfriend took me on what seemed to be a typical Romanian day trip. In our case a 500 mile round trip to the Lake Balea on a pass over the Transylvanian Alps. We must have been over 2000 metres in altitude.  Teo was mildly appalled that so many had opted to day trip up the mountains. Lake Balea is a haven for snowboarders in winter and is suppose to be hard to get to. The place was heaving with daytrippers. All the way up the mountain road were carloads of families lighting fires to have a barbecues right by the road - a forestry ranger's nightmare. Apparently its not allowed but there's never anyone around to enforce it. What I really took from the day was how family oriented so much of Romanian life is. No one was by themselves. Or even in twos. Every house in the villages we passed through - had a bench on which people were sitting and talking. Towards evening individual cows were being led back into the courtyards by their owners. And by being in the mountains we had endured temperatures in the middle 20s - nothing compared with the city.  The photo shows how beautiful this part of Romania is - we walked to the far side of the lake away from the worst of the crowds.

Storechecking with Costin

Quite a lot of Wednesday was spent collecting local material - I'm wary of jumping off the plane with a load of case studies that just don't relate to Romania. So Costin provided local case studies which had won Effies or were otherwise wellknown in Romania. In the afternoon we went out storechecking - again demonstrating how you can use simple techniques to find out what is going on in a market place. It was very hot 40+ and we must have been round a dozen stores at least before my eye started to read the common features and I felt I was starting to read the stores. Note that we stayed right away from Carrefour and the latest retail temples. These are bringing a whole new experience of shopping but for most Romanians the cornershop complete with counter and a person to serve you - that's the norm.

Off to Romania -unplugged

I had to finish a piece of research this morning and running low on time to pack for the trip to Romania through everything in a bag and left within minutes without checking. Big mistake. I had taken the wrong power lead - leaving my laptop with at most 2 hours of juice. This dogged me for the week I was in Romania because Sony love selling you laptops - but they're rubbish at selling you the addons for when you forget things. It wasn't until the day before I left that I found that GMP had a VAIO and I borrowed their power chord for the last day.

Tesco Prague. The site where the Velvet Revolution started

Sun 15/07/2007 13:32 15072007

There is a certain irony that the place where demonstrators faced down baton charges triggering a national but bloodless revolt is now marked by the presence of the ubiquitous Tesco. But there you have it the triumph of the market. I looked for the commemorative plaque but could only see shopping trolleys.

Romania going going - and with the correct flag now..

Booked my flights rather late for Romania last night - off in a week for a week. Very exciting - now all I have to do is prepare ..  Right well Costin has now corrected me - I just picked the lefthand flag with the pic on because it said Romania - which is the sort of detail which is useful on the web. Actually the flag on the left is the old Romanian flag which takes us right back to Communist times. Ahh so. The proper and correct Romanian flag is much more discrete and you'll see it on the right hand side. Thanks for the hint :-) Oops I'm a liability me!

Wrapping up the train

Catching the train from Manchester Picadilly - the train was wrapped up in Monkey graphics - our household is regularly doused with the music and the graphics of Gorillaz - so I couldn't resist grabbing the artwork on the mobile's camera. I wonder what Monkey is about..  I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition with Stoke on Trent - typographical nightmare - and why put Pendolino (the type of Italian train - only WE call it a tilting train) next to the name given to this particular lomotive/carriage combo plus the coat of arms of Stoke on Trent - which by the way is a city not a train? And of course the railway company is called Virgin and has a tag line all to itself (Love every second... of what?). Monkey seems to be linked to the Manchester International Festival. What makes a festival international I wonder? And this is a first class carriage. I understand that bit. All these design elements crashing together with no connection to one another. Fabulous.

Tracking and stuff

Went in for a creds meeting to a new agency today. Met yet another planner - the planning head who had been reading the site for the last 4 years. That's 3 different countries in the last fortnight now in which I've met people who are long time users of Planning Above and Beyond which is kind of humbling- I don't know why y'all keep coming back but I'm grateful that you do.

Afterwards I tracked down Fiona Blades ex planning head of Claydon Heeley who was just down the road in a caff.  She's just in the process of developing a new tracking methodology for integrated campaigns called TROI. Can't talk about it yet because it's pre launch but watch this space.  One of the privileges of doing this kind of work is being able to get together with all sorts of interesting people to bounce ideas around.  And you don't need office space to do it in.

all about the seating

The agency is built around an atrium. I'm not going to bore you with that old debate about where the planners sit. Actually they seemed to be sitting together. What I found much more interesting was that the creatives had been dispersed around the building along with account handling. Which gave a very different vibe. The presentation rooms are the angular looking spaces on the ground floor of the atrium. It was actually a very quiet space. They've put acoustic tiles in to keep the noise levels down. Cool office. Well it is now they've put in the air con also.

English the language of branding: it's official

I wouldn't have dared to be so chauvinistic. But after a day of branding work involving a research methodology which is going out of its way not to be anglocentric - this was a surprise comment at the end of the day. When I work abroad I am embarassed by the fact that I have the privilege of working in English so don't have the problem of falling concentration levels mid afternoon when you've been working and thinking in another language and it's SO tiring. So was rather taken aback when Tom Theys the head of planning made the comment that the great benefit of doing brand work in English was that the vocabulary was so much more extensive that it was possible to have much greater precision using English.  I wasn't entirely sure. I'd come a cropper earlier in the day with my truism about publicity being something that stops working when you take it down but advertising keeps on working. Which doesn't make sense if you use the same word: publicite for publicity AND advertising.   

Duval Guillaume

Turned up here at 9 in the morning. Guy on reception was mystified until I gave the name of the client whose workshop I was due to run. Ahh he said "you're the Hollywood guy".  Well not exactly but it made my brand screenplay workshop seem damm sexy all of a sudden.   Before we began the meeting the account director made sure we saw the agency showreel - the English version specially for my benefit. You may not know the name Duval Guillaume but if you love ads I bet you know their work from Cannes reels and virals.  It's was one of those embarassing showreels which has such a quantity of category redefining work that it leaves you grinning like an idiot. Not a lot of point in saying how good it was. They knew how good. A real pleasure. And better to tell you here than to sound like a crawler by telling them!! Honestly I think the only reason London advertising has a reputation is that we had a helluva headstart.   

Metropole Hotel Brussels

Dominique at Duval Guillaume had cannily recommended that I stay at the Metropole. It's a 5 star hotel which raised the eyebrows of the client the next morning when I admitted it but it was actually a good deal cheaper than the 3 star hotel I had booked in Amsterdam the week before. It's a terribly grand hotel - in the style of la belle epoque what ever that means.  It seemed to do a special line in portraits of conferences involving lots of men with large moustaches.  But when I got around to examining one at close quarters I discovered that they didn't all have big mustaches. The one I looked at had a woman by the name of Mme Curie, and then I got to really looking and spotted no less than Rutherford and Einstein himself gathering for a conference in 1911. How cool is that to be staying in a hotel that Einstein stayed in? Why didn't they say so instead of burying him in mustaches?  I found that Caruso had stayed in a suite on the same corridor - which for 80 euros a night was a bargain as far as I was concerned.  I celebrated with a Belgian beer (manadatory) and went to bed.

We try harder.....

  caught the Eurostar to Brussels - seemed a lot more straightforward than catching a plane to the middle of nowhere. It was only when I was being offered my third glass of wine I was suddenly reminded of a workshop I'd run a couple of years ago when Eurostar emerged as an example brand for an exercise on integration. I'd forgotten that Eurostar is driven by not one but two major competitors - a) ferries which take forever to cross the Channel but can turn travel into an experience and b) cheap flights which can dump you on the tarmac for around 50 Euros. No wonder they try to service every customer to death. I was impressed. They're in the headlines again because the creditors are getting impatient - they're running out of banks to reschedule the debt.  I thought they were great - and wd recommend them.

Day 8 exit Bucharest

I was due to catch the Tarom flight back to Heathrow at 10am. To try to get back in time for school pickup. And hopefully to catch up with a childhood friend who works in Cambodia who I hoped to have a coffee with before he flew to Chicago because of one of those happenstances of international travel. I regarded my departure from Romania as a bit of a final exam. How well had I understood how to work the system.

8am arrive at the airport in plenty of time to check in
8.45 I've been in 3 queues but am no nearer to checking in - they only have 2 people on the desk - apparently this is quite normal. Then they open up another 5 more so we scatter like chickens in all directions. But now the new counters have no boarding cards to hand out. More chaos. Eventually I stand in front of a counter. I am informed that I am 3 kg overweight and must pay a fine - (mark me down minus one) what I was supposed to do was shout and scream then move some of the books from my suitcase into my backpack and then they would let me through - I just hadn't the energy - I thought regretfully that I would rather have left the books for the plannes and bought new ones back in the UK- this would have been a fair exchange.

9.15 I join a new queue to pay my fine. The man behind he counter disappears without explanation. It turns out he has no change. Of course what they're trying to do is get euros out of me and I'm opting to pay in local currency which destroys the point. At this point I am getting really hacked off. Using this Byzantine system they have managed to extract precisly 30 euros worth - an amount I could easily have spent in duty free - if they had a system which processed people through fast enough to be able to get to duty free.

9.20 - passport control - I decide to test my wings - I walk through the diplomatic channel - and don't get a second look (plus 1 point - I think I'm getting the hang of this). Go through the security I choose the VIP channel and again get away with it (plus 1 point) Better still somebody else behind me tries the same stunt and is sent packing! So that's how its done. Ignore the rules and try to prove you're the exception if they try to apply them to you.  So I'm ahead on points.

As I walk into duty free they announce my flight but not to board - simply that AGAIN Heathrow is beset by ... weather so there is a 2 hour delay. Which blows my Heathrow meeting but means that I can shop around duty free - I sucumb again to the sting of using the wrong note for one a 10th of its value (-1 point). My score is 2 all but I think I was entitled to another point for working the hall and finding an electrical point to steal some electricity while I was waiting for Heathrow to cope with its weather.

On the plane on side was sitting a Romanian who works in the gas business in Kazakhstan. On my right was a woman who trained as a doctor - she was a specialist. Somehow she'd also found the time to take an MBA through the Open University. Now she is the general manager for a German Pharma company travelling regularly overseas. And had a 3 month baby as well. The baby wasn't putting on weight so while she was out of the country she had organised home checks every 12 hours by all the medic friends she had. We talked about the implications of 2007 and joining the EC. Somehow the talk got onto property and the ease with which foreigners can raise finance to buy property in Romania. It turns out that in Romania still they aren't allowed to take out mortgages secured against a property. What you can do is to borrow against a second property which you already own.  It turned out that she already owned 3 flats in old Bucharest which she had financed entirely through loans from friends and family. I was in awe.  That resourcefulness again.  Somehow I think it's going to turn out all right.  We land in Heathrow 90 minutes late. I'm scooting for home trying to get back as close to school pickup as I can (which I miss by half an hour)

As I collect the various members of my family they all greet me differently. I am struck particularly by my 8 year old daughter. Who rushes over and hugs me for 30 seconds - she's smelling me recalling the smell - I'd never really thought of how important smells are for memory and anchoring a person. Family celebrations ensue through the evening - very nice to be back home.

Day 7 Bucharest

Walking to work Ithis morning I heard a street violinist. I had to pause and take a couple of photos. What a way to work… The second training day for this particular course was focussed on how planning adds value to customer experience. This is an interesting group to work with (agency and clients). They don’t have a planner so for them to get any value from the course they will have to work out who should be doing the planning thinking and how much they can get done.

By end of day Alexandra left with the client and account team for a post prod meeting. Leaving me to catch a lift with the others back to the agency to straighten out invoices.  Delia did the honours driving us in a Dahaitsu Matiz. This area of the city is banned to cars so she had been very resourceful to have got this far. Our carload attracted more than its fair share of looks. People didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get out of the way. And the driving technique seemed to involve driving straight at the pedestrian until they paid attention and moved. The better looking the pedestrian the more likely he was to get the full on treatment. Round the corner we found a man in a wheel chair. Fortunately Delia decided to leave him where he was. I asked her how she got into this no car area. 'I smiled' she replied – and we kangaroo hopped our way past the swing barrier and the guard at the gate. Smiling to get past insuperable obstacles seems to be a Romanian trait. I heard a story of a brother who has run away to Ireland where he lives illegally. Were he to try to return to Romania he would face a hefty fine. But he is well on the way to getting Irish citizenship. Realising how much the Irish loved folk band he and his friends have formed a Romanian folk music troop though none can play music. This band has a swelling and variable cast of member “musicians” which is proving an open door on getting Irish citizenship. This was but one of many stories I heard of Romanian resourcefulness in the face of obstacles whether institutional or practical.

We arrrived at Sister's offices - in a leafy suburb behind the parliament building. The office looks like a startup - just enough desks and chairs to match the number of employees and the rest is space. But in every room at least one wall was given over to an elaborate wallpaper pattern.  When Alexandra swept in I asked her why the expensive wallpaper - Because this is MY agency and I'm a WOMAN she retorted. It turned out that the floor of the meeting room was hand built for much the same reason and she was still haggling with the builders for not doing it to standard.  The next half hour was given over to my very least favourite actitity namely making the numbers add up - getting the names, numbers and details on an invoice, contract and fiscal certificate required several versions before I had got it right. This is because of the need to get the dreaded stamp on the right version of the document - it means that all business dealings are dependent on physical paper originals. If I got this wrong it could take months to sort out.  Thoroughly relieved to keep it to half an hour.

We went out to a Romanian restaurant. When we arrived Alexandra went in to check if there was room because we didn't have a reservation. Leaving me sitting in the car when I became aware that I was the focus of two children on the pavement. Who after asking for money in Romanian switched to English to make the same request. I gave a reply in my best and friendliest Japanese. They retreated to review the strategy. Next was the test for English comprehension - I might not speak the Queen's English but if I didn't understand Romanian I must understand English - they started taking turns - the one watching while the other tried different phrases - the concentration levels were ferocious and there was no way they were letting up. I got a flashback - I had seen this scene before - in Jurassic Park with small dinosaurs - possibly velociraptors circling the car trying to find a way in. At which point Alexandra came to the rescue.  As we ate one of the topics was the work she does working with street children. One of the reasons she founded Sister was so that she could work with children's charities and support herself while she did so. She explained that while there were gangs who used children to beg, the majority had become the main breadwinners because their parents couldn't earn the same income. The role for the charity was to get the trust of the children - meet the parents, and find them work thus freeing the children to be able to go to school.  She broke off the conversation to head for the kitchen to negotiate with the chef for some bags of food to give to them children. They'll still be there? I asked doubtfully. Of course they are always there.

Later several of the others in the agency turned up to continue the meal.  At the end of the evening the ever resourceful Delia took me back into the no car zone in the Daewoo. This time the barrier looked as if it was going to stay down. Sorry she said to me I smiled but it didn't work. More remonstrations and then again the barrier lifted.  One of the questions I was asked was what advice I would give to junior planners. To which my reply was Change your job. Until you've done other jobs around the agency and learned how much you dislike them you'll never be grateful to be a planner nor have the hunger to keep jumping out of your chair poking your nose into everybody's business to make the work better. It occurred to me that if Romanians had turned resourcefulness into an art form this was exactly what made capable planners good ones and good planners great.

Day 6 Bucharest

Early start at 6 to assemble the deck al fresco then a beautiful walk through the cobbled streets back to the Amsterdam to do the training. I’ve discovered that all of the groups I have trained have been reluctant to ask questions at first. It’s not the language barrier apparently. I’ve been told there’s a cultural barrier – they want to know the right answer – they’re not used to being challenged to think and to generate their own thinking.

But running the course this way with day one on adding value to the client they can move from the ‘basics’ to the more advanced and left of field tools.  The brand screenplay writing technique goes down a treat – I can tell that everybody wants to use it but is worried that it won’t work for them. And I’ve made a judgement call that it is better to give them lots of tools and let them work out the implications for themselves – so no time to try a technique that really needs at least an hour to breathe.

I do a little tourist shopping by myself very pleased that I am finding my bearings. Then to the Amsterdam for the first international drinks night organised by Planning Above and Beyond. This is where the Amazon commission from book sales for the last 6 months gives a drinks tab of 150 euros. I am worried that the entire advertising industry will descend on the Amsterdam to freeload but the result is the same as ever. Even free drinks aren’t sufficient incentive to draw more than 17 of the perhaps 150 people who have attended the training. But it is a fine evening. We have representation from at least 5 agencies – and people come from all 3 courses – there’s lots of movement. I’m delighted to spend time with some of the chief planning bloggers for the Romanian scence – lots of talk about forming an APG for Romania and organising a programme. Talk also in hushed tones of Russell Davies blogger supreme when he next visits Romania and how they can tempt him over. I am thrilled to be presented with a souvenir: a stamp of my very own – Romanian style with the Planning Above and Beyond logo on it – for stamping contracts and invoices. So pleased in fact that I provoked the assembly by branding myself on the forehead for the evening. Apparently stamps are so essential to commercial life in Romania that such frivolous usage is considered mildly subversive. See the attached album for photos.

I had bet the Romanians that they couldn’t drink the entire tab. This had  after all been the experience of years of having Planning Above and Beyond drinks nights. But tonight they won the bet comfortably. It was only the following day that I realised that in one evening we had drunk the entire income of a well qualified office worker in the city and a quarters income for a rural worker. Pause for thought %-}

We left the bar at 12 and went for a meal.

Day 5 Bucharest

It’s Sunday – time to switch hotels and head for the centre of Bucharest. Oana came to collect me. She’s the office manager for Sister – an agency startup I am due to train on Monday. We cab to the Rembrandt a hotel in the Lucania district in old Bucharest – one of the parts of the old city which Ceaucescu didn’t manage to bulldoze and turn into apartments. The area is full of character – it also looks dilapidated – something which people apologise about – when the EC handouts arrive it will be fixed. I try to explain that lots of places in the EC are like this and it isn’t a problem and not every ancient town has to look as pristine as a town like Freiberg but here it comes again – the same paranoia – we are backward we aren’t keeping up. (The bulletholes in the picture are from around the back of the gallery which faced onto revolutionary square - some 700 people died here)

Oana offers to take me on a walk around Bucharest to show me the sights. As we walk we find one of the old churches – and catch the end of the Orthodox mass. The churches are dwarfed by the blocks around them – they look like pebbles caught in the cracks. After the great fire of London Christopher Wren rebuilt the churches in proportion to the houses and squares around them but these churches have been overwhelmed. Everyone is standing and the priest brings out the Evangalion from the sanctuary to show to the people. The choir sings a final Alleluia. It sounds wonderfully rich. Oana lights some candles and we leave. She tells me she is new in Bucharest and doesn’t know her way round, She comes from Buca in Moldavia to the north. When she goes back she feels she has changed and that her parents are still the same. It strikes me that Rumania is in the same predicament – leaving the safe and the known – for the unknown and not entirely from choice.

On our walk she takes me past the people’s palace a vast building the second largest in Europe. It has so many rooms that no one knows what to do with it. From the outside the mass of it is not a lot different to Battersea Power Station – though from this picture taken a week later of Battersea power station - the People's Palace is a lot bigger.  A lot of old Bucharest was ploughed under to build it and the apartment blocks around it. I get some shopping in and notice how many stores have their own security guard.

Later in the afternoon I taxi to the Mariott to meet with Alexandra Tinjala the founder of Sister to plan the training. Then I have a meal with the BBDO planning team led by Sarin Psatta. This includes a planner from Proximity also.  I catch a cab to the Amsterdam where I’ll be doing the training to check the room at around 10pm before I get directions for walking back to the Amsterdam. (I think) I got ripped off by the cabdriver – the inflation levels have been such that there are 2 currency denominations in circulation one worth a thousand times more than the other and used interchangeably. Trying to work out which notes in the dark to the nearest thousand is very difficult.

Back at the hotel internet access is free and I am able to check mail and the latest Romanian blogs who are already covering my training. It appears that the level was too basic – they wanted more advanced material. But with only 1 day to train I didn’t want to underestimate the level people were at. Perhaps only 25% of the IAA delegates were actual planners or working in agencies with planning. My proposal that creative briefs should be signed by the client has obviously put the cat among the pigeons. Some do – most don’t but they struggle with bad briefing and erratic decision making by clients which this would largely address.

Day 4 Bucharest

It’s Saturday – we’re training in weekend time. I’m always very aware when this happens – it represents a genuine commitment or else people can get very resentful. There was plenty of moaning about needing to get off to the seaside – aka the Black Sea. I became very curious as to what the seaside is like. I’ve not seen any pictures. The singles go there to party and to hook up. Parents take their kids there and leave them with nannies or relatives. It seems as if most people in the agency head for the beach at weekends. And I have no impression – does it look like Blackpool or Playa de las Americas?  It helps marginally that there’s a torrential downpour during the morning – perhaps it is raining on the beach also.  We go to a Serb restaurant for the lunch break – which is when I discover the wonders of the (non) drainage system. Cars are having to queue to plough through water 3 parts of a metre deep every 2-300 metres. It’s chaos – there’s abandoned cars – cars trying to cut through backstreets to avoid the worst ones and cars driving on the wrong side (left – hurrah!) to avoid potholes.

When we reassemble I discover that apart from the seaside the other reason why this is a lousy weekend for planning training is that July 1^st is the last weekend for snowboarding  in Romania – 2 hours away. So I upbraid them about the generally negative way in which they talk about Romania – you can choose to surfboard or snowboard in the same weekend – a lot of advertising people would kill to work in a place like that. Which cheers them up a bit.

After the training a few of us return to the Burnetts office to watch the England Portugal disaster. Eating sunflower seeds which is apparently obligatory when watching games! I’m quite surprise how pro England my companions are.  After the church of England website was overwhelmed during May by prayers for Wayne Rooney’s foot, the irony of him being sent off just as he reached peak fitness was just too much. Owen off, Beckham off, Rooney sent off. Somebody somewhere has to use the word self destruct. I haven’t the energy to go out again tonight so head for the hotel intending to get an early night – but am completely distracted by the Brazil France game and France’s complete domination – with good football beibg played on all sides. The sublime moment when Henry scored then turned and trotted back to his own half without even lifting his eyes to acknowledge the crowd. It reminded me when the receptionist of a London ad agency – a raving Arsenal supporter engaged me in a very strange conversation about how whenever Henry got the ball for her, it was like the moment in American Beauty when the rose petals fell. For once I saw what she meant.

day 3 Bucharest

For the next 2 days I train a team of 20 from Burnetts on days 2 and 3 of the planning training course I designed predominantly for non planners so that everyone in the agency can get what planning is about but the planners can pick up techniques which they can use but without taking their role for granted. My voice is taking a hammering now. I really thought I was going to lose it just before the midday break. It is becoming clear that although they work across the line - that advertisng and advertising creative really rules the roost here. And that creative standards are actually very high.

Preparing first thing in the morning I was staring blearily at my screen going through a showreel when I couldn't help noticing 2 things. Firstly that there was a conscious attempt to build creative ideas around Rumanian insights and to film in city locations that were local and not prettied up. Secondly that it looked suspiously as if Bogdan the creative director a charismatic and larger than life character I'd met the previous day - was a lead actor in several of the ads. I was given 3 explanations for this.  Firstly because the clients demanded it - Secondly because he could act - he delivered the script better than other actors. Thirdly because it saved money. I thought it was actually a nice signature for an agency's showreel. Unlike Placido Domingo  - who on the Desert Island disks programme legendarily requested a complete set of all of his recordings. Bogdan wasn't in all of the ads!

In the evening we went to a bar belonging to the family of a planner in the department - to watch the Argentina Germany game. It was nice to be in a local place and away from hotel/restaraunt ville.  One interesting item was the issue of protection rackets - the resident minder didn't just collect his payments but hung around during the course of the evening makeing me wonder if this was really crime or just a rather antisocial way of getting a peculiar form of employment.  What I've been told is that Bulgaria is a lot worse. But when you see a TV report where the police wear balaclavas to take criminals into court - for their own protection you do wonder about the level of organised crime.

A couple of jazz musicians turned up - guitar and trumpet -  I was foolish enough to accept the inviation to sit in but they were charitable!   

In the late night drives around Bucharest I've seen a lot. I still don't know where anything is though. My 4 maps from 4 tourist books of Bucharest show completely different parts of Bucharest - it is taking a while to get the idea. In bed for 12. Much better!

Day 1 Bucharest

I can't get the mobile to post blogs and pictures here so the photos will have to be backfilled from the mobile. Arrived here very early Wednesday morning. There is a heatwave on - temperatures across the 30s. Although it was 1am the traffic crawled. The reason was that a helicopter was being towed down the main road into Bucharest.  The 'pilot' was holding a flare out of the window of the helicopeter for added safety. My driver was disgusted.  'I thought they would have finished by now'. Apparently he had had to queue to get to the airport an hour before because they were towing a plane down the same road.

Straight into the first day of training for the IAA.  About 30 people came. Slightly phased to discover that several of them have been reading my website for up to 3 years and know the slides better than I do. I do an interview with Campaign magazine for Romania. They ask me why account planning is such a hot topic. My incredulous expression clearly gives me away.  However tepid the planning scene may appear in London in Romania planning and planners are in danger of overtaking creatives as the next BIG thing.  Jackpot ;-).  And it is clear the attendees have come along to learn - not all of them planners and not all of them from agencies with planning departments.  So back in frontier territory again - which is always an energising place to be.

I had to spend part of the time signint certificates for those who had taken the training- just think certified by Planning Above and Beyond. . I couldn't help noticing that there is an anomaly between English and Romanian title - all of the male recipients were each named as Mr. But all of the women were presumed to be Mrs. Miss or the odd Ms. doesn't seem to be an option. But from the English side it felt downright peculiar to be training a female audience composed entirely of married women.

Finish at 5. I have a couple of hours to explore my surroundings.  Every new city has a different set of proportions which you have to get used to. I don't know what it is about Bucharest but the mass of the buildings and the width of the boulevards makes people seem smaller - and the lanes of cars hurtling towards you seem faster. It is a lot greener than I expected considering the heat. I walk to a park on the other side of the main highway where there is a boating lake. Again the paths and walkways are massive. It makes London look like a toy town.   I take a turn around the shopping mall attached to the hotel - only half the store spaces are taken and the mall is deserted. The stores are a mix of local grocery stores - selling everything and wildly aspirational. To my untutured eye - I have after all only got off the plane less than 24 hours ago - the furniture and clothes look as if they've come from the set of Dynasty.

The temperature has been in the upper 30s outside during the day. On the news it says that parents have been negotiating with schools to make sure that there is enough water for children who are in classes  and in particular those taking exams. Apparently children are fainting at their desks. Clearly sending them home isn't an option. 

Razvan and Costin from Burnetts take me out to dinner at a Romanian restaurant - bearskins on the wall in the entrance hall and sturgeon and bear on the menu - though my tastes were more modest. Hunting and the mountains is one of the themes which comes up time and again. I met some one from a digital agency who claimed to drive 200 miles to eat a meal in a mountain restaurant. Given the reports I've heard of Romanian roads this is dedication indeed.

Off again

Mon 26/06/2006 14:33 26062006

And at the airport i buy a coke and they explain its free with a Daily Telegraph and throw the paper in the bag. No wonder circulation is heading south. Do newspapers have a death wish ? Advertisers please note.