Gods of Advertising

From my morning run in Berlin…

I’m not going to lie to you. This post is likely to be scraggly. That’s because I’m in the 11th hour of a painfully long journey home from Europe and my mind is running on reserve power. I believe I’m over Colorado now. California is but two states away. I think. My biological clock tells me it’s 4:30 AM.

Focus, Steffan! The people don’t give a shit about your high-class travel problems. They’re not interested in the fact that you can’t sleep on planes and no longer even try. They don’t want to hear about all the movies you watched. (Believe it or not, Bad Grandpa is not so bad.) They most certainly don’t want to hear about the old German crone sitting behind you wet coughing like a turning zombie. (I swear to God I almost shoved my little white airplane pillow in her festering mouth. Sick bitch.)

Anyhoo…

I was in Berlin for a 2-day conference of Executive Creative Directors from all the offices in the gyro network. We call it the Creative Front. Dubai was there. London. Singapore. Madrid. Chicago. New York. Several others. And me: San Francisco.

Aren’t we a cliched bunch? Night of the Living ECD’s.

Without getting into particulars, the theme for our gathering was transformation, specifically as it pertains to our creative product. Relative to the holding company behemoths, gyro is young and growing and has something to prove. We talked about doing just that. Creating more and ever-better proof of our philosophy and positioning.

But, like I said, that’s proprietary information.

The big reason we chose Berlin to have this meeting was because of the seismic transformation that took place there 25 years ago, when the wall separating East and West finally came down. I think that synergy is pretty cool. And since I’d never been to Berlin I was pretty keen on being there.

Like a little New York!

Hip but sweet, hotel coffee shop

Though we all were sequestered in our hotel’s meeting space from morning to night I was able to run every morning and see this funky, ersatz city in a way that only pedestrians can. Berlin is like a non-pretentious hipster. There is a genuine sweetness to its creative vibe. Like New York without the assholes and scariness. A bit messy and unkempt, Berlin grew on me. It was and is a great metaphor for the creative department.

I don’t have a clean ending. My hands are trembling from fatigue. My brain is a caffeinated jellyfish pulsing in my skull. Time to watch Thor: The Dark World.