#BEHAVIOR4 — YOU GET AFTER IT
Last week, my Les Gaulois’ CEO, Christophe Lafarge left the agency.
He was always saying that “in advertising you need to have “balls”!” or that “A great idea is an idea that scares”.
As our American cousin, we share a lot of similarities with @ArnoldWorldwide who says in its welcome book:
“You go as big as you can. You’re not gun-shy. You understand what is, always ask what’s next, and more no one has ever done before. We call that moxie. And kid, you’ve got it.”
I agree in somewhat but, for me, advertising is much more like a love story than a “balls” issue.
First you have to seduce the client, you make him confident, you build a strong relationship and if you do not keep the flame alive, you fall into a routine and you start to get bored.
It’s an everyday matter. To surprise them, to keep them curious, amazed.
It’s a contract: everything depends on us. If we do our best to keep them excited by what we’re doing, we’ll continue to have fun.
The people I met @ArnoldWorlwide are not fundamentally soldiers, fighters.
Of course sometimes you have to fight, internally or with the client, but it’s more than a passionate debate, than a struggle.
Arnold people are some kind of mad scientists, passionate, trying to give life to greatness with experiments.
Everything is not only based on creative teams. People are all inspiring and inspired by someone else.
Someone told me: “In general, I feel I work with smart people, who challenge me, who respect voice and opinion of everybody, the old or the new one.”
All together, with all their expertise, the trust they have in each other, they are smart problem solvers.
As a good lover, they take a lot of pleasure to solve issues, to find crazy ideas, to imagine new solutions to keep the flame alive.
All of this is about PASSION, of course they get after it!
I enjoyed working in that incredible agency because it’s an attitude, a tacit agreement between all of them.
Everyone is just trying to do something new everyday, to go good to great, and that’s why I choose this job!
I want everyday as an adventure, I want to continue to learn stuff from everyone, I want to reinvent my own job, to open to new perspectives and I refuse to feel trapped in a sad routine.
I refuse to consider my client’s relationship or our creative/account person relationships as fights.
Our job is playful, enigmatic like a love story; we have to keep it like this!
I don’t want to scare my clients with big ideas;
I want to get them excited, curious by crazy ideas.
As storytellers, we have to find good stories.
New ones that fit perfectly to the clients needs and not to what the client just asks.
New ones that we would love to do and that we just have so much fun to imagine.
We have to get after it.
Pam Hamlin is at the head of heart that has “balls” (although as a woman she did not of course!), that has moxie.
We may have lost our “balls” with Christophe’s departure but we still have our heart with Elisabeth Billiemaz, and @ArnoldWorldwide just make me understood that I prefer Love stories to fights.
