The side effects of moving to Barcelona

While unpacking in our new apartment, I have found something in a box. For about ten years I have thought I'd lost them. They are some layouts of a Stolichnaya campaign we created in 1997 when I worked in PMSvW Y&R Amsterdam.

The brief was simple. We are a Russian vodka that has never really advertised but is still selling. So we want to suggest we have neither money nor skills to do proper ads. We are experts of vodka but not communication. We need something ugly and it should not make too much sense. Extra low budget.

It was a dream job. The art of trash, every moment we spent on it was amazing. But then something funny happened in the end.

I remember we produced around 15 different leaflets for the presentation with my two team mates, I wrote all the copies in English as I wasn't perfect in Dutch, they presented and the client approved all of them. (It was an in-store gift promotion without a gift, and we used the ugliest, cheapest leaflets fixed on the bottles with old rubber bands.)

Then I said, great, now you can get a Dutch writer to translate them and let's put them in the stores. But my colleagues immediately answered, no, they will run them just like this because my English text was so funny as if it had been written by a really bad Russian copywriter.

I still haven't decided whether I take it as a compliment or an insult. But this was definitely one of the most rewarding projects I worked on in Amsterdam. To illustrate what I mean by ugly: the black and whites below are actual photocopies of the final leaflets.

I hope I will have at least this much fun working as a consultant, a startupper and a freelance creative in our new home. The atmosphere of Barcelona is even better than I remembered, people I met so far were really kind and open, from business leaders to the guy in the corner shop. By the way, next time I will check if he sells Stolichnaya.