napoleon world tour

So. On Tuesday and Wednesday last week Neil, Jeffre, Ben and I bored a small group of Romanian ad folk senseless with endless tales of how great it is to work at The Design Conspiracy and Wieden + Kennedy. Or at least that's how it sometimes felt from the stage.

We were guests of the splendid Headvertising, and especially Bogdana, who invited me out to reprise the trip Bill and I did a couple of years ago. Her initial suggestion was a two-day Russell Davies conference which even my enormous ego baulked at, so I said how about they forget about the fee and I'll try and persuade some other people to come - because I bet people would be up for a trip to somewhere they've never been. So huge thanks to Ben, Neil and Jeffre for coming just because it seemed like fun. (And huge thanks to Bogdana and  Headvertising, and everyone, who's hospitality was generous and perfect.)

Things I learned in Romania:

If you're not sure people will believe your ad, you might want to write 'True: statement' on it. Just to reassure them.

When bloggers travel together, infinite loops quickly become possible. This is a photo of Jeffre, taking a photo of Ben, taking a photo of me.

This is the second largest building in the world.

People who organise conferences don't like it when you tell them that you'll just make up the agenda as you go along. (Early on the first day, Bogdana, pictured above, looking worried, told Ben she realised that we really didn't know what we going to do, and was rather alarmed, she'd just assumed I was joking.)

Romanian ad folk are slightly better than North American planners with spaghetti and marshmallows. And they're smart, energetic and funny.

It's hard not to be intimidated when told this is your venue.

Bucharest has some rather beautiful bits, but not in a prissy, touristy way, instead in a rather attractive, rough at the edges way that I'm not really capable of photographing.

Stencils are very fashionable in Bucharest right now.

Blogging is doing to planning what television did to variety/music-hall.

I've always thought that a planning career is very like a stand-up comedy career. You spend a couple of years getting a decent 40 minutes together (act/presentation). That means you can go on the circuit and do presentations, meetings, pitches. Then if you're good/lucky you get a few more bits and stretch it out to an hour, maybe 90 minutes, and that means you can be a consultant, doing the same old schtick to a new audience every engagement.

Television killed variety because it quickly consumed everyone's act and the jugglers and novelty seal-balancers couldn't delight a new audience every night, because everyone had already seen it on TV.  And  blogging's doing the same for planning.  You can see here that Claudinho felt he'd already heard everything I said because he'd read it on the blog. And he was probably right. But I only have so many ideas and I really like throwing them away on here. (Though I am starting to think I've not got much else to say about brands, I'd like to write about some other stuff.)

We really like going to new places. So, if anyone out there, somewhere off the usual beaten advertising track, would like some of us to turn up and talk for a couple of days, we'd love to do so. Me and three or four like-minded folks. You'd have to cover travel and hotel and stuff but we wouldn't ask for a fee. If anyone's interested, drop me a line. (But please bear in mind, this is not a way for you to get cheap speakers at your conference, the idea is to get something to happen that wouldn't happen otherwise.)

Comments

[Lauren]

If it suits you, keep February '08 open for a web design conference in Vancouver. I convinced one of the hosts that it would be a good idea to have a couple planners there to talk about the creative process with major brands and consumer trends on the web.

[Richard Buchanan]

What would be on the rider of a planner doing a big gig?