"Some of these anecdotes are true."
Behind the scenes of !MOOZ.
Janvāra iela – this is where the office of !MOOZ is located. It's the southeastern border of the old town right on the corner of the “legendary“ pub Rock'n'Riga – as far as I know it's actually not legendary. And I think it's currently closed. !MOOZ resides on the third floor. Their bureau offers a fantastic view to the Daugava which is the river that flows in the Baltic Sea.
!MOOZ calls itself a "human agency". The agency is considered to be the only independent agency in Latvia combating against the settlements of the global network agencies such as McCann or DDB. And in doing so !MOOZ is successful – very successful. The agency has been founded by Ēriks Stendzenieks in 1995. During the recent years !MOOZ won more creative awards than any other agency in the Baltics. "It should be somewhere around 100 of them.", Ēriks recounts – including Cannes Lions, Epica Awards, Golden Drums and Golden Hammers. That's certainly a demonstration of their creative strength. And it symbolizes their success. In 2008, !MOOZ was the first Latvian advertising agency being awarded in Cannes. The !MOOZers received a Silver Lion for their campaign "Organ donors". It's a campaign created for the Road Traffic Safety Department (CSDD) to decrease aggressive driving on Latvian roads. Aggressive drivers should look at death from a different perspective.
While waiting for Ēriks I take a look around in their office. Apparently, the guys of !MOOZ love to play darts. And Ēriks seems to be quite good at it. After standing a few minutes in the imaginary waiting line, Ēriks appears. Damn, he seems to be a medley of stressed and bugged out. My first thought: the interview will take 20 minutes at most. But I should be proven wrong. Minute by minute, Ēriks was getting more and more in a chit-chat mood – until we ended up talking for 90 minutes. And I think he had lots of fun while telling all these anecdotes. However, I enjoyed our chat. Hope you too.
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| Ēriks Stendzenieks, founder and owner of !MOOZ |
One thing of the 1990s Ēriks is still wondering about today, are the lotteries. It was a time when lotteries were not regulated by law. And that means prizes and promises were not regulated either. It rapidly became a trend to arrange lotteries. Ēriks remembers one lottery created by McCann Erickson for the Latvian beer brand Aldaris. "It must have been the biggest lottery in Latvia", Ēriks adds. And it was not only big but also crazy. For collecting 10 crown caps you had the chance to win a car. Collecting 50 crown caps could mean to win a yacht, 75 crown caps a house and for 100 crown caps you could take the so called Grand Prix: car, yacht and house – all together. And indeed, someone won this Grand Prix. "This guy must have been a heavy beer drinker.", Ēriks notes while shaking his head in disbelief. And I am shaking mine too ...
But Ēriks is not only wondering about other advertising guys. He is also surprised at himself. "We were doing things from which we thought it was advertising. But from today's perspective it wasn't advertising. It was some kind of Monty Python stuff which had nothing to do with real advertising. What the fuck ..."
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| The early years of !MOOZ in 1995 ... known as ZOOM ... |
At that time there was a marketing trend to arrange exhibitions. And companies did exhibitions. It seemed to be a total hyperbole. "It was like walking in a center of Dubai and calling out: 'Oh shit there is a waterfall! Oh shit there is a peep show with naked girls! Oh shit there is a bear driving a motorbike!'", Ēriks describes this era. Everyone wanted to be the biggest, the coolest and the most modern. But this exhibition business meant the first "more or less considerable money" for !MOOZ. Because they won the budget for creating the Latvian stand at the Expo 1998 in Lisbon. And this money gave Ēriks the chance to go over to London for doing his Master studies in Communications Design at St. Martin's College. For a wonder, Ēriks did his Master studies in London without having a completed Bachelors degree because they kicked him out by reason of his commercial projects with his agency ZOOM.
Coming home to Riga he found the agency in a bad shape: "I don't want to remember those hard times." During the following years the agency rebounded and is now considered as the most awarded agency in the Baltics. One cause for this incredible success story could be the proceeded professionalization. In 2007, Ēriks participated at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. The school offers a MBA program for creative professionals. "I met so many great guys from the best agencies in the world. You would never meet them even in Cannes. I was sitting next to some guys with 400 Lions or something like that. It was such a brilliant experience.", Ēriks reminisces. And this experience equipped Ēriks with additional skills and seemed to be an inspiration as well.
After chatting for about half an hour it seems to be no wonder that it has been Ēriks who primarily went over to western Europe and established a dependance of !MOOZ located in Berlin. This action is very typical for him and illustrates his entrepreneurial courage. Finally, !MOOZ is the first Baltic advertising agency conquering the "Old Europe". It's exceptionally the other way around. But there is a but within this story: "It didn't develop as I expected it. That we would … like … BOOM … kick open doors in Mercedes or Siemens and having a multi million dollar business.", Ēriks says with an amused smile. And he continues: "The big lesson is: advertising is such a human based business. You have to be present 24/7/365."
But Ēriks is not only founder and owner of !MOOZ. He is initiator and director of the Latvian Art Directors Club (LADC) as well. And Ēriks is considered a well-known advertising veteran in the Latvian society in general. He could be one of those infamous Mad Men of Riga. And as I learned, he is.
At least there exists some gossip about Ēriks. People tell each other that Ēriks is sometimes very rough towards clients. Ēriks responds to those rumours with an impish smile: "Some of these anecdotes are true." And he gives me an insight perspective into the true anecdotes ...
Anecdote 1: Eriks and the red pencil.
One day, some guys from Uzbekistan contacted the Client Service Director of !MOOZ. They asked for creating a Corporate Design for their company. The briefing was short. And the time to realize the project was even shorter. The creative team had only five days to create a name, a logo, the corporate colors and some more stuff. There was one important hint within the briefing: No connection to Uzbekistan because the international reputation wouldn't be that good. Although the briefing was strange and the time short, !MOOZ decided to go for it because the Uzbek guys left a credible mark. After five days of hard work, Ēriks was very proud of the result. He remembers the meeting: "Then one of these guys stood up, took a huge red pencil and started to redesign our logo. And he said: 'I can't see Uzbekistan here.'." Afterwards, the Uzbek guys sent an email to the Client Service Director: "We've never seen such a superficial and unprofessional presentation. Next time, please bring some guy with an education in design and someone who knows how to combine colors." Normally, Ēriks is a relaxed dude "but one phenomenon that absolutely crazes me is unexplainable stupidity ... 'I just don't like it this way' or 'Make it more red' ..." And that's why Ēriks wrote an email to the Uzbek guys giving a little lecture on values and behavior. It was written in his "roughest style".
Anecdote 2: Eriks and the falling portrait.
One day, !MOOZ held a presentation to show their ideas of a campaign for promoting Latvia on CNN. Bertolt Flick, "the king of Air Baltic", was one member of the jury. Ēriks started to introduce the ideas of !MOOZ and the king of Air Baltic was not amused. He criticized the approach of Ēriks. Ēriks tried to stay polite. And for the first five times of Flick's critique he obviously managed to do so. But for the sixth time he packed his laptop, slapped the door of the meeting room and ran away. "His critique was personal, irrelevant and baseless. He obviously had a shitty day.", Ēriks explains his glaring reaction. Through slapping the door of the meeting room the portrait of Bertolt Flick felt down and broke. "It was not the beginning of a war. We discovered that each of us has balls.", Ēriks sums up. In the end, it was the starting point of a three year business relationship between Air Baltic and !MOOZ.
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| Some stuff for Air Baltic |
Anecdote 3: Eriks and the porn-presentation.
It must have been the year 2007. The goverment of Latvia just changed and they did a pitch to shift their advertising for the state-owned Riga Airport. !MOOZ was one player of the game. At the final day of the pitch, Ēriks entered the conference room and found himself standing in front of a "board of authorities including politicians and other clerk." Normally, you should behave politically correct in such a situation – normally … Ēriks' intention was to add "a bit more Rock 'n' Roll to their communication". Because Ēriks generally thinks that "the task of creative agencies is to take the clients as fas as you can – and to act provocative and courageous." Finally, his idea was to show examples of innovative and courageous advertising. One case was the one of London's metro. Another case was the British brand Virgin. A big failure … However, Ēriks clicked on the Virgin-clip during the presentation. "Of course it was not THAT Virgin. It was some other virgin which was basically part of a rude porn.", Ēriks tells and adds: "I had 20 seconds to come up with a story explaining what they had just seen. It was one of the quickest decisions I had to do during my whole career." Indeed Ēriks had a logical explanation and could save the situation. Amazingly, this honest board of authorities only noted: "We think that's a bit too sharp for us." Ēriks tells me that he walked out of the conference room and immediately slid down to the floor. "What a bloody situation.", he closes this anecdote.
In the end of our chat, Eriks philosophizes about creativity, strategy and humanity. Ēriks thinks back to an experiment – it's one of those high explosive top-secret things. Normally, those experiments would have to be managed by professionals – by agents like Mulder and Scully. But Ēriks is courageous. He tried to find out how an idea is born. So he took a voice recorder while having a creative meeting and tried to capture the unborn idea. His demand: "How do we come up with ideas through a brainstorming?". Afterwards he listened to the record. What was going on in the room? "It was full of abrupt phrases. You couldn't rebuild it. You just listened to complete nonsense.", Ēriks tells deeply dissapointed. Because neither Eriks nor me were able to solve this question we switched over to another topic. And it's questionless the best friend of creativity. It's about strategy.
Well, strategy … "Strategy? In some companies the only task of strategists is not to talk to the people. The only task is to kill the competitors." Ēriks tells of a meeting of Pampers … "Imagine the world of Pampers: babies, smiling families, softy clouds, love, peace und harmony." Ēriks becomes more and more ironic while narrating. "I walked into the conference room and there was a big banner on the balcony with huge Helvetica letters on it: 'Kill the Huggies!'" That was the headline of the meeting. No harmony. No peace. No love. It was war – advertising war.
I ask Ēriks about his personal labeling on the !MOOZ website. He calls himself "Creative Strategist". He doesn't really take this too serious and starts joking about the term: "During the next few years, I certainly have to call myself Chief Phygital Strategist." Ēriks stumbled upon the word "strategy". He observes an "over-strategising" in the economy. Ēriks enumerates two cases when the strategy was crap. He thinks of New Coke which he calls one of the biggest strategic failures ever. Ēriks speaks very ironically about a "super duper strategic research". And the second case that comes to Ēriks' mind: the merger of Mercedes and Chrysler a couple of years ago. It's not the first time during our conversation that Ēriks shakes his head in disbelief. "Every cleaning lady would have said while scratching her back: 'Chrysler? Mercedes? What a bullshit – of course not!' ..." Ēriks' simple advice is: "Sometimes it's better to ask your grandfather than strategic consultants."
And what he means by that is that a knowledge of human nature and an empathy towards social changes is often more important than spending millions of bucks in creating heavy strategic screeds with millions of data. That seems to be Ēriks' understanding of thinking and acting in a strategic way. One example that puts several social developments in a nutshell is the campaign for the bank Citadele. The banking crises and a social change forced them to do a rethinking. And they did. In the end, the simple formula has been: "You are = You can." And which group of people would communicate the idea in the best way? !MOOZ decided to integrate the Latvian athletes of the Paralympics as the protagonists of the campaign. "Such social things are bigger than everything else: products, services or brands.", Ēriks sums up.
By talking about social changes, the deeper meaning of advertising and its societal impact Ēriks starts to philosophize about humanity and human behavior in general. In the end Ēriks concludes: "In general, it progresses towards humanity. Because 300 years ago your pig became ill and you therefore blamed your neighbor as being a bad guy practicizing black magic. Afterwards you would have burned him at the market place. And everybody was watching and applauding it – not very cool stuff. By comparing things over centuries all in all the world is getting more and more human."
Wish you all a human year 2013.
Yours sincerely,
William James Carlton
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Upcoming story in January:
Mad Men Of The World – Behind the scenes of five decades in the international advertising business.
Hans-Joachim Timm, deceased in 2012, was one of those original Mad Men. Timm worked, amongst others, for advertising agencies such as McCann, Ted Bates, BBDO, Leo Burnett, Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA. And he invented the Nails for the German Art Directors Club during the 1980s … Stay tuned ...