LÜRZER'S ARCHIVE "YES, WE ARE"
I studied Literature. I came to advertising much later, when I was almost 27 years old.
I remember my first day at an agency. It was Leo Burnett Lima. At that time, one of the three best Leo Burnett agencies in the world. Until then, I only knew jobs in offices, where everything is formal, in silence, with musts and don'ts. The first thing I noticed, when entering the big creative room, was the floor. Or, to be more precise, the fact that I couldn't see the floor: it was covered by a thick layer of colourful plastic balls, from wall to wall. "We used them for a shooting, and we didn't know what to do with them afterwards, so we just put them here", told me the assistant that was leading me to my desk.
Once there, I felt that I entered a madhouse. It was radically different to anything I experienced before. First of all, nobody cared about how you were dressed. You could go in jeans and t-shirt, which, for those times in Peru, was outrageously cool. You could be loud, swear, play, put music... you name it. It was a temple for worshipping freedom. I fell for it, of course, and acted as an advertiser for a good while.
Several agencies and years later I realised that this freedom was fake. You are allowed to act free if you act as an advertiser. But you are not free to be too deep. You are not free to doubt about the importance of the awards. You are not free to disbelieve the advertising heroes. I felt, very soon, trapped into a very small box, together with people who, ironically, were preaching that you should think outside the box, blinded by the glamour, the fashionable toys, the plastic optimism, the mirage of success. It's a space with a dark side, packed with jealousy, selfishness, egotism, while claiming to be exactly the opposite.
Only a few of them escape this box, and they happen to be the best advertisers I know. My real advertising heroes. The advertising 1%. I have been doing my best to be part of that 1% throughout the years.
When Lürzer's Archive wrote to us asking if we could do a print campaign for them, of course I said yes, it was a great opportunity. Not only because it was the first global campaign done ever in Lithuania, for anybody, but also because I had the chance to sneak in some honest (and sarcastic) appreciations about the industry. And also some personal experiences, which resulted in being more common in the advertising world than I expected.
