Focused and Simple.

When I was around 5 to 6 years old, I started to appreciate music for real. My brother is 11 years older than I am and I was basically listening to his music. From The Beatles to Slayer.

When he wasn’t at home, I used to choose and handling with care his precious vinyls and put them to play on his turntable.

I was in love with the moment.

Choose an album, move the needle, hold and look at the album cover the whole time while listening.

Some time after, I started to draw the album covers, specially the Iron Maiden ones.

That was the foundation of my album cover design passion and my music taste.

Around 1992, I bought my very first CD. It was Iron Maiden’s “Fear Of The Dark”.

The new technology was so great that I moved from vinyls to CDs with no hesitation.

And it was the same when the MP3 and the internet also came in.

I was so focusing on the amount of albums I could listen that I was consuming music very differently.

When I got a job, the only places I was listening to music were commuting or at work. It was fast consumption. Choose the record, press the play button, put the head phones and went do something else.

I was living the era of “open the streaming service app, choose an artist and play the most popular songs, but I don’t know the songs names anymore”.

I wasn’t deaf, but I was blind.

I know the music, but I don’t know it at the same time.

Some headbangers have this thing called: “I know more bands than you do”.

It’s was all about bragging.

Nowadays I quite often say: “I don’t know this band” and I don’t feel shame of that anymore. Who cares?

I need to listen the stuff I like, not what “specialists” are telling me to listen.

On my last visit in Brazil, at a very nice and fancy store, my wife gave the idea: “Why don’t you buy this portable turntable?”

“Yes! I have some old vinyls at my mom’s place!”.

I bought the turntable and brought back to Finland all of my old vinyls. They were waiting for this moment for more than 20 years. (Drama moment).

In the past 2 months I started to buy some new albums and I can tell you that I’m a different version of myself now.

All the nostalgic feelings, the same ones I had in the mid 80s and the feeling of not being in a hurry are so amazing.

For me, listen to vinyls is not about the sound quality, it’s much more than that.

Is about the experience. I’m not talking about a marketing trend word, but the moment of joy.

I choose one vinyl, put on the turntable and stop whatever I’m doing to actually just listen the music — also educate musically my kids :).

Now I can see the music. Now I know the songs names. Now I slowed down.

I realised that I can bring this to my advertising daily work.

Some people are trying to so hard to be the first ones to share a trend / tech / gimmick, that they forget what is really important: The people.

We don’t need to consume everything. We don’t need to know everything.

That’s why we work on teams. Every person brings something different and we just need to collaborate.

Personally, I like to be inspired by the things people like and my passions.

Great ideas comes with simplicity and the obvious. That’s normally what connects the idea and the people.

We receive so many messages and so many informations that we know everything, but we know nothing.

When I talk about stop everything to listen to an album, is the same as we need to focus on the people.

Technology is an infrastructure, not the answer.

Let’s focus on the ideas first, then we can choose the way to deliver the message.

Let’s find the truth. Let’s actually listen to the music.

Choose and album you really like, stop everything you are doing and focus on the feelings.

Don’t need to be a vinyl. You won’t regret.

Have a great weekend :).