Amsterdam Ad Blog » Interview

Interview: Mark Chalmers

AAB — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:24:25 +0000

Mark Chalmers is ECD at Perfect Fools Amsterdam. He studied architecture, because already at the age of 11 he wanted to build his own home. But he didn’t mind getting into advertising, cause marketing is essentially the same thinking process; you also create an environment – the important difference though is quicker gratification. He loves guerrilla advertising and that’s probably why he is a fan of Zevs, an artist who invented ‘visual kidnapping’. Chalmers is also influenced by Carlo Mollino, “a true Renaissance Man”. His most surreal experience in advertising was curating a choir of staff from the Japanese brand Onitsuka Tiger. And the most important lesson, he learned from Graham Fink, who had it written on his studio wall. Chalmers, who calls advertising ‘art with a deadline’, is fascinated by street art as it tells stories and represents the mood of a city. And he likes Amsterdam, because it’s like a Tim Burton set with wifi. Read the entire interview here.

Interview: John Weich

AAB — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:21:22 +0000

John Weich is ECD at Lemon Scented Tea – alongside Rogier Heining. Though he is an avid copywriter, John’s first creative efforts were making book illustrations – at the age of 4. From books he later moved to magazines. One of his most satisfying creative works was a magazine called ’34′ – a sexy, Turkish lifestyle magazine. When it comes to inspiration, he loves rewriters, like Delillo, Nabokov and Brodsky. His favourite craetor is eclectic multi-talent Martin Kippenberger. And it is Howard Gossage who made him realize that advertising is best created by non-environmentalists who primarily will look at advertising as content. As a true Amsterdammer, John gets irritated by tourists who cannot ride bicycles, but as a foreigner he thinks ‘bad’ in Holland has a Disneyesque quality compared to ‘bad’ elsewhere in the world. Read the entire interview here.

Interview: Mischa Rozema

AAB — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:13:45 +0000

Mischa Rozema, director and co-founder of PostPanic, is the kind of creative that completely forgets time when he’s in flow. Already as a teenager, he could practice his guitar skills for hours on end. Nowadays he loses his perception of time when making films. Mischa is fascinated by weird stuff, so it’s no surprise that among his favourite creators are Stanley Kubrick and Francis Bacon. On the question ‘when did you decide to work in advertising’, he poetically answers: ‘I didn’t choose advertising, advertising chose me’. He loves football, so his favourite moment in advertising has been teaching Ronaldinho a football trick during a Nike shoot. And outside advertising, he loves to play football in the Vondelpark. Read the entire interview here.

Interview: Richard Gorodecky

AAB — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:09:01 +0000

Richard Gorodecky is ECD at Amsterdam Worldwide. As a kid, he didn’t seem very disciplined, but today he believes in working really, really hard. His sense of humor is in a big part derived from Douglas Adams’ Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – he read it over and over again. Gorodecky started to develop an interest in advertising when stealing ads from the trains on the London Underground. And one of his most important lessons in advertising is not to be an asshole. Maybe that’s why he is not a big fan of all the dog shit in Amsterdam. Read the entire interview here.

Interview: Erik Kessels

AAB — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:37:06 +0000

Erik Kessels is founding partner and ECD at KesselsKramer. When he was a kid he already loved drawing, but he is careful to address this as creative moments. He loves storytelling and among the creative minds that inspire him are: Jim Jarmusch, Marlene Dumas and Helmut Krone. What he enjoyed especially about his first job in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather was working with people from different backgrounds. His favourite client is Hans Brinker Budget Hotel and he loves to shop at Parallaxe – specialized in photography accessories. Click here to read the full interview.

Interview: Wencke van Amstel

AAB — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:53:35 +0000

Wencke van Amstel is founding partner and ECD at Pink and Poodle. Though she is a typical Amsterdammer, she grew up and studied in the south of the Netherlands. Apart from dancing on bars and drinking cocktails, Wencke loves to use her creativity in fashion, photography, psychology and advertising. Therefore it’s not much of a surprise she admires a broad party of creative minds; from John Irving to 50 Cent and from Jeff Koons to Maria Callas. And although she picked up some wise lessons from the Scientology Church, Muhammed Ali and Donald Trump, she doesn’t like people who are angry. Click here to read the full interview.

Interview: John Norman

AAB — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:10:30 +0000

John Norman is art director and ECD at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. He grew up in Texas and as a kid his first creative moments were ‘playing war’. Unlike George W. Bush, John got over it and nowadays he is fascinated by design and nano science. Apart from that, he is inspired by Michelangelo’s stubbornness for his own believes and by Terrence Malick for the sparseness of his dialog. John moved to Amsterdam after following up Jelly Helm’s advice to check out the city. And now he loves it so much that he wouldn’t change a thing about it, if he had the chance. Outside work, John loves racing bikes and is a sucker for a field full of bunnies. To read the entire interview, click here.

Interview: Andy Fackrell

AAB — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:58:42 +0000

Andy Fackrell has worked for 180 Amsterdam since 2003. He also worked in Wellington, Singapore and Portland, but his love for the Dutch ‘krentenbollen’ keeps him here. We could call him a specialist in sports advertising, since he worked most of his career for Nike and Adidas. Funny is not his thing; he likes the element of art in advertising. Andy is clearly fond of talking about advertising and, as a true creative, his mind jumps quickly and associatively from subject to subject. Enthusiastically he shares his love for Napoleonic battle scenes, Anthony Gormley’s plinth in Trafalgar Square, Aha’s ‘Take on Me’, Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘The Sirens Of Titan’, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and that ‘little one lane bridge at Ouderkerk’ – among many other things. To get the full picture, you can enjoy the entire interview here.

Interview: Colin Lamberton

AAB — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:02:55 +0000

Together with our new visual identity, we’ve added a new section to Amsterdam Ad Blog; Interviews. And we are very happy that Colin Lamberton, art director and ECD at Grey Amsterdam, is the first Amsterdam creative to answer our 9 questions about creativity, advertising and Amsterdam. So if you want to know what Colin Lamberton says about Betamax, Booty videos, Post-war Modernism, Kraftwork, Lowe Howard Spink, Eric Cantona and Artis Zoo, then click here to read the full interview.