It’s 8AM in the morning of a Friday, I’m sitting on a tiny chair, listening to Claire de Lune and typing away on a 21st century Lenovo, which is not even of my own posession. It’s rather humid here. The television set is spilling out some serious news; there have been floods in many parts of China, and I guess, the recent rain in Beijing is some kind of indication.

For those who’re off the hooks, I’m in Beijing right now. After Cannes, I took a day in Nice (extremely sleep deprived by then so I crashed at 5PM) and then went back to Munich and took a flight there via Dubai to Beijing. It was a long flight yet interesting flight – to the heart of China, a destination so desired by the young, the ambitious, the rich, the poor, and studious, the entreprenurial, the cultured, the glamorous. Prior to my arrival, I had only been to Beijing once, for sometime less than a week. We had visited it as a family and of course, jumped on the biggest sights like every other classic tourist.

But now, oh my, I now sit no more than 10 kilometres  north of the most symbolic gem of this city, the Tian’anmen square. I know, I couldn’t believe that either until I actually measured my distances on Google map. Technology always has a way of convincing you. or your feet. or your lost souls.

So what have I been doing in Beijing? For the first week, some jet-lag recovery (was I jetlagged?), curious adventures and nightly strolls and jesus, I’ve been eating out (yes, breakfast, lunch, dinner) every single day. I only use the kitchen stoves for boiling water ( a Jia favorite) so I’ve been enjoying the greasy Chinese delicacies for sometime now. My stomach hasn’t felt like a erupting volanoe yet, so I guess it’s fine.

And some lovely news; I landed a spot at Saatchi & Saatchi Beijing and it’s been a week since I took on the role of an Account Intern. Saatchi is conveinently located in the Central Business District (CBD) of the city at one of the busiest subway stations known as Guo Mao station (“World Trade”) – I work on the top floors of the China International Trade Center, which houses 36 floors and is surrounded by a dozen of other high rises, luxury shopping, and fancy resturants.

It’s nice, it’s very nice in fact. You walk under these tall blocks of sky scrapers so the sunrays automatically become less intensive  and when you look up, you feel like you’ve grown up, or your dreams grow up, grow close, and grow real. Manhattan on a smaller scale. Behind every window, someone could be making the decision that signs away the lives of their organization and their own. And they probably do.

Every morning I cram the main subway line with a million other citizens that need to get to work. I head back home at around 8. I go up to the reception entrance and witness the “Nothing Is Impossible” wall of Saatchi’s, over and over again. I stack my Adage and Campaign neatly, along with my travel-journal-turned-notebook and orange poreclain cup on the table. I take the elevator that gets me down 35 floors in 35 seconds. I meet new faces everyday during our irregular lunch-times. I redesign powerpoints and apply the highest standards to the smallest and most ignorable fonts. I relax and converse with my director, Alex, on his dreams, upbringings, and views on about everything. I dance to  indie beats blasted from the silver Mac’s located in all different directions. I blast my own Ingrid Michaelson and I looove the ambience. I walk by shelves of classic coffee-table books and ask them to unlock the literatures for me. I stay away from the coffee machine because I don’t need more energy than I currently bear. I peek at things with curious eyes. I don’t abuse the paid-proxies they have here for logging freely onto facebook and youtube. I smile at whoever that rides the scooter because they’re too lazy to walk around the office. I want to feel a bit more real for a while. and I have.

Everything’s so beautiful because finally, someone believes in you and they give you a chance. A lot of people ask how I got myself in. I tell them, it’s blood, sweat, and some big dozes of persistence. I’ve made more calls and crafted more e-mails than I could count – maybe 50, maybe 100 – and I’ve been shot down. A lot. But that never hindered my curiousity, imperfected my confidence, or deterred my growth. I just continued because I believed. That I belonged, and that I deserved to be belonged. Sometimes you gotta be a bit more ignorant and eager. And finally, someone decided to give me one shot. I was so happy.

 I was so happy.  

And thank you for those that believed alongside with me. Thank you. You guys have been so sweet, really. Believe in me a bit more and I’ll strive for greater things.

For now, I’ll go take a shower and get ready for a brand new day. Take care.

More photos of the office to come.

Today begins the last day of Cannes and it has been one of the craziest. We had gotten back from the Guttar bar near sunrise, slept for 3 hours, listened to 3 great speakers, had our graduation ceremony on the beach property, went to the film awards ceremony, and lastly, sang our last goodbyes at the closing gala (by the way, the Brazilians went nuts after an apparent winning match)

Surreal.

I remember walking back to the hotel near 4 and we all witnessed the Palais for the last time (hopefully not in our lifetime), with the giant banners and effortless red carpets still at such a serene hour, it really injects a sense of nostalgia, all the way back to day 0. This week has truly be filled with the most precious, adventurous , and glamorous memories and it will only be a matter of time before we all unite in Cannes again (and jump for our Simba’s on stage).

 Back to the curriculum – we had our very last 2 speakers coming in today – Dick Van Motman, CEO of DDB China and Craig Davis, founder of BrandKarma and former Chief Creative Directot of JWT North America. Out of the many speakers this week, Mr. Motman has been the only one coming from Asia and it ignited great interest for me.  He studied marketing and economics in Amsterdam and he is an interesting mix of many many roots. Having worked in advertising for 20+ years, he finally rose to the chief executive position at DDB China and now he lives and works in the metropolitan of Shanghai.

I enjoyed his presentation greatly because instead of it being focused completely on Advertising, he gave an excellent overview of the Chinese marketplace, which is exotic to most of us (even some to me) in terms of unique attributes and trends.  Some of the insights that he shared:

Despite China being the infamous copy-cat-factory of literally every big brand in the world, from Apple to LV, there is actually much more to that. Out of the 10 top global solar technology  companies, half of them are Chinese companies. The car company, BYD, to which the logo looks a bit similar to BMW, was originally a premier battery company and as it started manufacturing cars, it received a 500% return within 2 years. Luckily Warren Buffet had already predicated all that and made an investment in BYD before it went hot.  Mr. Motman also introduced a website called 新茶, which was started by a foreigner for the intention of connecting China’s creative communities together. 

China’s future mission? To change it from MADE in China to DESIGNED in China. Seeing the drastic and constant evolvement of this young yet cultured nation, I can’t help but feel a bit excited to be a part of bringing this vision alive. At the end of the session, Mr. Motman kindly gave me a little gray book filled with quotes said by the great Bill Bernbach, seeing the material was printed in both English and Chinese. Really a precious give, every saying of Bill’s makes you feel that much stronger, closer, and so damn energetic about advertising. Really appreciated it!

Our second speaker, Craig Davis, as some may already know, created the website BrandKarma. Prior to listening to him, I never knew how BrandKarma operated. Basically, online users can follow, rank and comment on over 300,000 brands across a dozen of industries. All comments are public and users can choose to either agree or disagree with other users’ comments.  The mission of BrandKarma is “to help everyone make better brand choices and influence brand behaviour for good” and as Craig shared, BrandKarma does the following:

[+] make brand owners accountable

[+] share, amplify, and mobilize your opinions

[+] help consumers make better purchase decisions

As consumers  become increasingly engaged with the building process of brand images via online contributions, Brandkarma definitely seeks to expand into the next social-media powerhouse. Their business model works simply as selling the databases to large organizations that take the interest in what a consumer has to say about their brands, competitors, and industries. The project is currently sponsored entirely by Craig at the moment. BK is a pretty neat idea.

Forthwith to the speakers, it was time for all of us, like first day, to give a presentation on What Cannes Meant To Me. It was a project given a couple of days ago but I’m positive due to the excessive late night explorations… everyone crammed their video/powerpoint/skit in minimal time. Some were very creative (they did an awards show, presenting awards to what they thought were the most valuable parts of the Festival), and some, like myself, just did a very gesticulative powerpoint on how absolutely fabulous these past 7 days have been for each single one of us.

Around 3, we all headed towards our graduation ceremony by the beach. Everyone grabbed a few champagnes and we all had such a wonderful time taking our last photos, receiving our diplomas, and thanking Rick and Clive for their most wondrous  teachings and support in us. It felt like prom in Cannes – our attire might have been a little casual, but the backdrop sure was an enjoyable one, with the sun and waves right by our ears. As a goodbye gift to both the tutors, we had made shirts at the Youtube station that said “Yes, We Cannes ‘10” in the Obama blue and red font – everyone has signed the shirt so it looks more colourful and valuable than any other souvenir you can find on this coast.

Clive and Rick gave us a few kind words; to always have passion and work very very hard because any of the best people in advertising got to where they are today not only lending to their talent but moreover, to their diligence and absolute standards to only do the best work. They’re so cute and we’ll miss them very dearly!

AWARDS & the GALA

The last awards ceremony is actually a new one this year called Film Craft. I’m not really what the innate difference is between that and short video but Canada grabbed a lion today on the Tropicana video that has been circulating quite around during festival. A very poignant clip made by the Canadians, such a great joy to watch in the auditorium.

After the awards show comes the closing gala, held at the same property as the opening gala, which is at the beach of Carlton Hotel. Even though I had been suffering from a sore throat the night before (and what seemed a mild fever), I still, and surprisingly, went all out and didn’t waste a minute dancing with the crowd and mingling with the people from coming all over the world. Really, I think that is the true beauty, to meet Spain, dance with Italy, talk with Swedish, and drink with Singapore. As the gala ended around 2, everyone headed out to the Guttar Bar, the most notorious hangout spot during Cannes and truly, it is a phenomum! As soon as it hits 3, you’re guaranteed to see a massive roadblock at the intersection filled with just the classic ad men with a drink in one hand and cigar in the other.

Got back late from a few things last night and this morning we started with Jimmy Smith, who we’ve seen quite a few times on stage grabbing probably one of the most awarded campaigns this year – REPLAY by Gatorade. The idea behind it was refreshing. 20 Years ago, it was the first time in history that the two biggest rival highschools ended their football game in a tie. What Gatorade did, it called back all the football players, who are in their 30’s now and aren’t in the best physical shape, and retrained them for weeks and arranged a replay of the ’91 game. The game was sold out in hours and for once and for all, it was going to determine the real winner. This campaign received an enormous amount of heat and already, the word on the street is that this will be turned into a movie and the same  version of REPLAY will be found in other sports such as hockey.

Jimmy is now a group creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day in San Fransisco. The sweet spot for Gatarode was ages 13-18 and they wanted to target a larger group with what they dubbed Mission G. For the REPLAY campaign, the budget was 10 million dollars for 10 eposides, which was extremely low. Fox, Warnr Brothers, Sony, and Dreamworks all discussed producing a movie out of REPLAY.

Jeff Benjamin was our first speaker, like any other jury president on the day after their category’s award show, Jeff looked a bit strained from all the partying he had probably done hours ago. Nonetheless, he was extremely friendly, down-to-earth, and jeez, looking young for a cyber jury president. Jeff first studied political science and wanted to pursue law, instead, did graphic design for a couple of years in New York and then spent his time at Goodby and Crispin. He talked about the rising popularity and organic growth of real-time campaigns (such as REPLAY by Gatorade) and its ability to build culture and create inspiration, giving everyday consumers like us the tools and power to pass the message on. What I also found interesting is when he discussed his career-path change, from law to advertising – he said to “Run towards something, not away from something”.

Then we went over to a seminar by MDC Partners. It inspired me a lot. The CEO said the best time to start an agency is right now. He gave the example of Droga5; Droga felt like he spent his life building on other people’s agencies and finally, he took his personal assistant to start a shop in New York 4 years ago. He himself started in the mail room, but he was able to meet generous people that shared their ideas and beliefs, as well as their visions to do things different – such as Hal Riney and Mary Wells. An interesting proposal was given at the seminar, MDC is always looking to invest in young talents and is auctioning off 1 million dollars to help start-up any agency. It really got everyone excited because heck, that’s a big prize for at least quarter of the auditorium that is under 30 years old. I think one of the prominent examples in the Canadian industry would be Taxi, which has expanded through Canada and also established bases in New York and Amsterdam.

After the seminar, we went back to class to be greeted by the probably most talked about individual during Cannes – David on Demand. David stirred a huge Twitter wave by attaching a 24 hour camera on his head and a gigantic computer screen at the back that shows all the tweets made by his followers. What’s so special about these tweets? Well, people on the internet get to tell David what to do (thus, David on Demand) and the only borderline is legality so in the past few days, David has already gotten a tattoo, rented the most car in Cannes, and so much more. Every move he makes is being watched and being twitted. It was so great to have him come in and talk to us (with everything streamed live on the Internet) – he’s actually a Creative recruiter from Leo Burnett and along with David came Susan Credle, one of the superwomen in the business. Susan worked for 24 years at BBDO NY as a Chief Creative Officer before taking on a new creative role at Leo Burnett Chicago, the HQ. One of my favourite sayings from Susan is:”learn from the past, observe the present, and dictate the future. There’s a difference between ideas that you spend on and those that you invest in. Selling a product is short-term but selling a brand is long-term. We’re gonna start doing good to do well.”  She also showed us a McDonald’s Proud Papa ad that seemingly no longer works in the current market because no one pays much attention to the storytelling anymore. This ad was extremely adorable and you can take a look at:

www.http. MCDONALD’S PROUD PAPA

In the evening, I was off to La Pizza with the Canadian Young Lions Competitors and a few lovely Canadian representatives from Strategy magazine and BLACK (Dean’s agency). It was a dinner sponsored by the Globe and Mail and Dean had invited me to it the day before. Being the youngest of the group (again and always, haha), it was great to meet and learn about each person’s fascinating experiences. There were two teams for Print and one for Media and they all had to place top on the national level (the Young Lions competition held by the Globe) to compete in Cannes – such an amazing accomplishment and we all felt so proud for them as Canadians!

We snuck into one of the parties held by one of the big partners (some Pepsi people were inside) and the night/morning ended at the Guttar Bar, the most notorious hangout spot in Cannes. There were too many people wandering on La Croisette, I guess it’s because it’s the last day. You never get tired here. Just don’t sleep. Oh gee, we still have to make a presentation tomorrow about our experiences. I will… increase my efficiency tomorrow morning.