Saturday, February 25, 2006
Thank You Thailand!
On my way out of Thailand, I offer up my deepest gratitude to the folks at LB/Bangkok who hosted the 1Q06 GPC this week and went out of their way to make this meeting run smoothly, all while providing consummate Thai hospitality. This was one of the most challenging and rewarding weeks of my professional life, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to be here and bask in the warmth of this country, it's people, and all the enviable beauty of its unique culture. Thank you to Tawanrat, Ood, On-Usa, Chris, the dedicated AV guys (i won't attempt to spell your names...), and all the rest of the folks at LB/Bangkok laboring behind the scenes. Your dedication and hard work made this a wonderful experience for all, and the ads you turn out are an inspiration... Cheers! Hope to see you all again soon!
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
thai chic
-a tourist's take on Thai style-
hemline manipulation & insidious heels
handcrafted accessories & inexpensive deals
all the rich allure of an ancient asian aesthetic
meets the post-modern awareness of sugary plastic synthetics
lush flavors in every alley
crushed tapestries sold on every street
quilts of scent & sight, races & tongues
traces of textured air fill slow-polluted lungs
a crowded city stocked with deep black eyes
every kind of trafficking under hot delta skies
humidity rising as inhibitions fall
unthinkable acts by impossible dolls
the high percentage of freaks ensnared
by the low cost of cheap wares
stall after stall of handcrafted silks
canvassed by broke backpackers and their bohemian ilk
local brews & Chinese herbs
filthy smog looms over congested curbs
crested jazz kingdoms and gilded bronze gods
Bangkok chic is 21st century neo-Buddhist-mod…
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Banyan Tree Views & Kangaroo Steaks
Finished up the GPC this morning. The final lists and all the work are available on Planet Leo for the first time, so it seems I won’t be going through the whole DVD construction process we’ve labored over in previous years. It is, after seeing all the work again, quite a diverse collection of work, with Milan making a surprisingly strong showing and taking home a few 8-balls for some of the strongest work we’ve ever seen from Italy. Bangkok and greater China also turned out some gems, and all in all, the meeting highlighted some very strong work from the network. Our new system worked pretty seamlessly as well. Now that the meeting is over, I have 24 hours to kill before another 24 hour travel sequence en route to Chicago… Bettter get it all in…
After one last afternoon spent tanning, drenched in blazing Thai sun by the pool, Rosalie was kind enough to show me a small spa at the mall next door to the hotel that offered full Thai massages for the ridiculous price of $14 for an hour. I booked myself for an hour at this spot, “the Palm’s Spell”, and had the pleasure of having all my knots and aches addressed by a little Thai woman named “Ni.” My girlfriend is a masseuse, so I’m no stranger to Thai massage and therapeutic touch, but it was really nice to get worked on by a stranger. Thai massage is a unique synthesis of bodywork techniques, and has some qualities not found in other traditions, such as the liberal use of standing on people to fix their problems. I emerged from the “Palm’s Spell” an hour later feeling much more aligned and at ease, and gave Ni a few hundred baht tip that she seemed very happy with. 5 bucks goes a long way out here.
Made a detour to Asia Books, my favorite Thai bookstore chain, and spent a hundred bucks on items that are hard to find in the states and would have cost twice as much. I got back to the hotel just in time for me and Rosalie to make a whirlwind trip to Bangkok’s famed Night Market, which opens at 6 pm and closes around midnight. I liked this market much better than the Sunday market, as it wasn’t nearly as hot, and easily had the same variety and diversity of things for sale. I bought a few more gifts for people who probably don’t deserve them, and then we grabbed a cocktail on the way out. We had the pleasure of seeing a live band at the Market’s stage, a strange conglomeration of Thai folks throwing down a mix of the latest worldwide hits. As we were getting our drinks, the lead singer, a gorgeous Thai woman in a mini-skirt, started with the initial strains of Beyonce’s hit single “Crazy In Love”, and all of a sudden three other fly Thai women in miniskirts showed up, and started singing along and dancing a la Destiny’s Child, circa 2003. It was surreal. They even had a guy rapping Jay-Z’s part. It's amazing the way cultures diffuse and manifest in places where you’re not expecting it... the last thing I was expecting to see tonight was a Thai version of Destiny's Child, but I'm not complaining. The band was HOT and the music was bouncing...
Made it back to the hotel burdened down with our purchases, to rendezvous with the Burnett “Latin Mafia” for our 9:30 reservation at the Banyan Tree, one of Bangkok’s most famous restaurants. The spot lies on the top floor of a 60 story building, and its restaurant, Vertigo, is a world-famous gathering spot that overlooks all of Bangkok, with only a handrail preventing a very nasty fall. It was waaaaaaaay high up in the sky, and the city looked glorious. The restaurant had a no-open shoes, long pants dress code. It’s really funny that here all the clubs have dress policies designed to keep the skanks OUT, as opposed to say, the dress codes in US clubs… Anyhow, after a brief wait at the Banyan Tree bar, drinking Vanilla Skies and Vertigo Punches, we were led to our table. I had the pleasure of practicing my Spanish with Miguel’s lovely wife Aurora, who’s an interesting foil to Miguel’s self-deprecating, sly humor, and we ate very well. I had a pepper-crusted Kangaroo steak. No joke. I can cross that particular mammal of my list… After a very lush dinner, Rosalie and I bailed and caught a taxi back to the hotel, to pack our bags, and get ready for our 4 am departure to the airport. All in all, quite the trip. 9 days in paradise. I can’t wait to come back….
After one last afternoon spent tanning, drenched in blazing Thai sun by the pool, Rosalie was kind enough to show me a small spa at the mall next door to the hotel that offered full Thai massages for the ridiculous price of $14 for an hour. I booked myself for an hour at this spot, “the Palm’s Spell”, and had the pleasure of having all my knots and aches addressed by a little Thai woman named “Ni.” My girlfriend is a masseuse, so I’m no stranger to Thai massage and therapeutic touch, but it was really nice to get worked on by a stranger. Thai massage is a unique synthesis of bodywork techniques, and has some qualities not found in other traditions, such as the liberal use of standing on people to fix their problems. I emerged from the “Palm’s Spell” an hour later feeling much more aligned and at ease, and gave Ni a few hundred baht tip that she seemed very happy with. 5 bucks goes a long way out here.
Made a detour to Asia Books, my favorite Thai bookstore chain, and spent a hundred bucks on items that are hard to find in the states and would have cost twice as much. I got back to the hotel just in time for me and Rosalie to make a whirlwind trip to Bangkok’s famed Night Market, which opens at 6 pm and closes around midnight. I liked this market much better than the Sunday market, as it wasn’t nearly as hot, and easily had the same variety and diversity of things for sale. I bought a few more gifts for people who probably don’t deserve them, and then we grabbed a cocktail on the way out. We had the pleasure of seeing a live band at the Market’s stage, a strange conglomeration of Thai folks throwing down a mix of the latest worldwide hits. As we were getting our drinks, the lead singer, a gorgeous Thai woman in a mini-skirt, started with the initial strains of Beyonce’s hit single “Crazy In Love”, and all of a sudden three other fly Thai women in miniskirts showed up, and started singing along and dancing a la Destiny’s Child, circa 2003. It was surreal. They even had a guy rapping Jay-Z’s part. It's amazing the way cultures diffuse and manifest in places where you’re not expecting it... the last thing I was expecting to see tonight was a Thai version of Destiny's Child, but I'm not complaining. The band was HOT and the music was bouncing...
Made it back to the hotel burdened down with our purchases, to rendezvous with the Burnett “Latin Mafia” for our 9:30 reservation at the Banyan Tree, one of Bangkok’s most famous restaurants. The spot lies on the top floor of a 60 story building, and its restaurant, Vertigo, is a world-famous gathering spot that overlooks all of Bangkok, with only a handrail preventing a very nasty fall. It was waaaaaaaay high up in the sky, and the city looked glorious. The restaurant had a no-open shoes, long pants dress code. It’s really funny that here all the clubs have dress policies designed to keep the skanks OUT, as opposed to say, the dress codes in US clubs… Anyhow, after a brief wait at the Banyan Tree bar, drinking Vanilla Skies and Vertigo Punches, we were led to our table. I had the pleasure of practicing my Spanish with Miguel’s lovely wife Aurora, who’s an interesting foil to Miguel’s self-deprecating, sly humor, and we ate very well. I had a pepper-crusted Kangaroo steak. No joke. I can cross that particular mammal of my list… After a very lush dinner, Rosalie and I bailed and caught a taxi back to the hotel, to pack our bags, and get ready for our 4 am departure to the airport. All in all, quite the trip. 9 days in paradise. I can’t wait to come back….
Monday, February 20, 2006
bunk-ass ads
Saw some absolutely horrible advertising today. Work that made me ashamed to be in this industry, that represents the worst elements of sensory pollution erected in the name of capitalism. Normally it doesn't really bother me too much, we routinely come across some really cliche garbage at these meetings, but this was not from one or two misguided creative directors, but from several offices spanning an entire region.... grrrrrrr... The fact that clients actually paid for this work and bought media to display it was the hardest part to accept. The committee went through the motions and unanimously voted most of it in the low 4s and high 3s, which was entirely appropriate, but as it turns out, it seems that the particular nature of the business in some of these markets means that these agencies are not compelled to make their advertising any better. They are autonomous enough and self-insulated from the larger advertising community, and to them the low scores they routinely receive from the GPC are arbitrary numbers assigned to them from a distant, faceless group of executives who have no sympathy for their particular challenges. Sad, really… I did see a few redeeming pieces today, in particular, some fantastic, innovative web work from ARC Chicago, for our Diageo client. Diageo is the larger umbrella company for distilled alcohols like Johnnie Walker Scotch, Gordon’s Gin, and a whole slew of other good quality alcohol. ARC created a website called http://www.thebar.com/, which has an entirely personalized web bartender, who knows your name, knows where you come from, and can converse about thousands of subjects while sharing with you the recipes and mixing techniques for all your favorite cocktails.
The site feels a little animatronic at the moment, in the sense that the web bartender speaks with some very strained pauses in his speech, but the technology and the personality ARC has managed to infuse into this brand via thebar.com is fantastic. This is some of the best web work I’ve seen done by Burnett in the last 6 years, and even though it’s not quite 100%, I personally will be checking out this site during my spare time to pick up a few mixologist tips…
Anyhow – I crashed hard today. The group had a dinner planned at Bangkok’s famed Bed Supper Club, but after making it back to the hotel at 6 pm I passed out and slept for 12 hours. Missed a great dinner at a very luxurious spot, I’m sure, but every now and then your body just refuses to participate in the ongoing assault on its regulatory mechanisms. Hadn’t slept more than 4 hours a night this whole week, and the constant evening cocktails and delayed jetlag finally caught up with me. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow….
The site feels a little animatronic at the moment, in the sense that the web bartender speaks with some very strained pauses in his speech, but the technology and the personality ARC has managed to infuse into this brand via thebar.com is fantastic. This is some of the best web work I’ve seen done by Burnett in the last 6 years, and even though it’s not quite 100%, I personally will be checking out this site during my spare time to pick up a few mixologist tips…
Anyhow – I crashed hard today. The group had a dinner planned at Bangkok’s famed Bed Supper Club, but after making it back to the hotel at 6 pm I passed out and slept for 12 hours. Missed a great dinner at a very luxurious spot, I’m sure, but every now and then your body just refuses to participate in the ongoing assault on its regulatory mechanisms. Hadn’t slept more than 4 hours a night this whole week, and the constant evening cocktails and delayed jetlag finally caught up with me. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow….
Sunday, February 19, 2006
To Die For
Tonight we had our first Group dinner at To Die For, a classy restaurant and bar founded by Bhanu Inkawat and Pornsiri Rojmeta, two of the former heads of LB/Bangkok. We took a rather large air-conditioned coach over to the restaurant, and then had the pleasure of getting to know some of our colleagues in a context outside of the office. I had a great night, as we ate dinner outside on low couches in a very relaxing terrace interspersed with small illuminated pools and a well-stocked buffet. The food was great, and the company was lovely. I had the pleasure of finally meeting two of the Asian observers to the meeting, Nicola Bolling & Carryl Van Dort, both from LB/Colombo, who conversed with me over dinner and a few rounds of Singapore Slings. Sri Lanka is one of our smaller markets, and is growing at a rate consistent with offices in countries characterized by recent turbulent political histories. I had the pleasure of listening to Nicola and Carryl fill me in on Sri Lanka’s recent happenings, ranging from the influence of Buddhist fundamentalists on media, to the status of the Tamil Tiger separatist movement, to the fallout from last year’s devastating tsunami. Also had the pleasure of telling them about M.I.A., one of my favorite recording artists of 2005, a Sri Lankan/English art school brat who turned out Arular, one of the most compelling albums of last year, which contain a rich hybrid of immigrant diaspora culture rooted in a very Tamil political awareness. World hip hop, in other words. Hopefully I’ll buy a bootleg copy of that album to give them before this meeting ends…
Anyhow, after dinner and drinks, a contingent of guests departed back to the hotel, leaving only a few stalwart boozehounds and a crew of happy folks from the LB/Bangkok creative department. I only got a chance to talk to a few members of their office, including Tawanrat, Ood, and Pam from their PR department, before being introduced to Bhanu, one of the restaurant’s owners, who has a creative reputation as one of driving forces behind Thai advertising in the last few decades. But that was then, and on this night he smiled at me as we chatted, and he looked infinitely more relaxed and more content than many of the ambitious & driven executives that routinely populate GPC meetings. I envy Bhanu a little, and found in him a living example of a career well-conducted. At some point in my life, after I reach a certain point of achievement in whatever field I ultimately end up in, I too would like to back off from the pervasive rat race of the business world and open a restaurant and bar, and feed people with the cultures of cuisines I’ve canvassed. Bhanu and Pornsiri have managed to do that quite well with To Die For, and I was sad when I departed a few hours later with the tipsy remnants of the GPC gang. Although we planned on going out, by the time we got back to the hotel, traffic had eaten up another hour of the evening, and I called it quits and went back to my room to sleep. My loss, I guess. Apparently, about 30 minutes after I left the lobby, the members of the rock band Oasis walked in, having just finished one of their shows in a three-night run here with Franz Ferdinand. They’re staying at our hotel, probably in a lush, guarded suite on one of the more exclusive floors. I’m not a groupie, but I would’ve dug running into Oasis. I could’ve informed them that while they write great songs, they’re honestly just flimsy Beatle wannabes pilfering the fab four’s melodic catalog while posing as talent, and then Liam would’ve punched me and I’d have infamous bruises and a great story to tell my indie-rock friends in Chicago…. But alas, no, I went to sleep, and wasn’t punched by any rock stars. Oh well. Dare to dream….
Anyhow, after dinner and drinks, a contingent of guests departed back to the hotel, leaving only a few stalwart boozehounds and a crew of happy folks from the LB/Bangkok creative department. I only got a chance to talk to a few members of their office, including Tawanrat, Ood, and Pam from their PR department, before being introduced to Bhanu, one of the restaurant’s owners, who has a creative reputation as one of driving forces behind Thai advertising in the last few decades. But that was then, and on this night he smiled at me as we chatted, and he looked infinitely more relaxed and more content than many of the ambitious & driven executives that routinely populate GPC meetings. I envy Bhanu a little, and found in him a living example of a career well-conducted. At some point in my life, after I reach a certain point of achievement in whatever field I ultimately end up in, I too would like to back off from the pervasive rat race of the business world and open a restaurant and bar, and feed people with the cultures of cuisines I’ve canvassed. Bhanu and Pornsiri have managed to do that quite well with To Die For, and I was sad when I departed a few hours later with the tipsy remnants of the GPC gang. Although we planned on going out, by the time we got back to the hotel, traffic had eaten up another hour of the evening, and I called it quits and went back to my room to sleep. My loss, I guess. Apparently, about 30 minutes after I left the lobby, the members of the rock band Oasis walked in, having just finished one of their shows in a three-night run here with Franz Ferdinand. They’re staying at our hotel, probably in a lush, guarded suite on one of the more exclusive floors. I’m not a groupie, but I would’ve dug running into Oasis. I could’ve informed them that while they write great songs, they’re honestly just flimsy Beatle wannabes pilfering the fab four’s melodic catalog while posing as talent, and then Liam would’ve punched me and I’d have infamous bruises and a great story to tell my indie-rock friends in Chicago…. But alas, no, I went to sleep, and wasn’t punched by any rock stars. Oh well. Dare to dream….
Jampacked in Jatujak Market
Woke up, had breakfast at the hotel buffet, and boarded a Bangkok Sky Train for the Jatujak Sunday Market, which is perhaps the largest bazaar-styled market I’ve ever been to. As you get closer to the Market, the trains get more crowded, filled with both tourists and Thai folks, all with that expectant-consumer eagerness filling their eyes. While approaching the Sunday Market on the train, you watch it approach, a veritable quilt of flimsy roofing that goes on for what looks like a few city blocks. The Market is such a sprawling challenge that you really could wander for hours on end, and never find your way back to where you started. I spent 3 ½ hours wandering through the maze of shops and stalls, and came away with two large plastic bags full o
f gifts, handicrafts, clothes, and more. I could’ve stayed a couple more hours, but I was running low on cash, and had pretty much had enough of the heat. Some of what I saw was also hard to deal with, ranging from the stench of the enclosed dried fish stalls (in Bengali we call that kind of dried fish Shutki, and you can smell the open air Shutki bazaar a hundred meters away. Imagine the density of that smell in confined quarters) to the pet market, which was stall after stall of some of the most adorable little puppies I’ve ever seen.
Some of these puppies looked less than a week old. They were sleeping in enclosed pens, waiting for owners to purchase them, and others were in cages. There were also aquariums hawking exotic fish, and little mice, baby squirrels, baby chickens, and all kinds of wildlife available to buy. It was an interesting section to stumble across, but I was glad when I found my way out, because there’s only so many adorable puppies I can have barking at me before I’ll need to buy one…
Anyhow. I heard that most of the GPC delegation was at the Sunday Market, but it just goes to show you how big it is, cause I only ran into two of the folks I came with. I heard later some folks ate at the some of the stalls and low key restaurants littered around the Market, but I chose to head home. My loss, I guess, but I did manage to catch a few hours of prime-time sun while lounging at the pool. Probably missed a few purchases, but whatever. Tropical sun is priceless, and I have two more days to shop around in the consumer paradise of cheap and beautiful goods that is Bangkok…
Boat Rides through Buddha Bling
Quote of the Day:
“If geography is an inadequate criterion with which to define Asia, can religion be seen as playing a unifying role? Animism – a patchwork of beliefs and worships dedicated to the dead, household Gods, and nature spirits – is omnipresent in rural Asia and has permeated the popular form of Taoism also practiced by modern city-dwellers. There exists an awe of the spirit world, and of the soothsayers and shamans who make conact with the beyond. …By and large, this mosaic of pantheistic beliefs has given Asia a high degree of spiritual tolerance, for the monotheistic religions have gained little ground here. The chief characteristic of Asian religious observance is the fact that an assortment of different beliefs can coexist within the mind of each individual, due to the way in which successive strata of religious influence have been superimposed on top of one another, ranging from the many different forms of Hindu Buddhism, through the successive schools of Confucianism, to the more recent arrivals of Islam and Christianity. Governments periodically contributed to this process: imperial China, for example, was instrumental in bringing Confucianism to the Vietnamese farmers by dressing it in what were, for them, the more evocative robes and rituals of Buddhism. Imperial Japan built up the Shinto faith, the personal cult of the Emperor, which also drew on Taoism, creating a system of national observance superimposed upon an assortment of existing beliefs.”
From “The New Asian Renaissance”, by Francois Godement
-Saturday Morning-
I wake to a whole weekend away from work, two entire days where I’m not obliged to be at the office. Call it an early karmic tax return, but I now have 48 hours of free time to kill in Bangkok….
I meet the Colombo crew and Sarah at the hotel’s breakfast buffet and after a brief meal we depart for a morning full of temple viewing and river boat rides. Bangkok is bordered on its west side by the Chao Phraya river, and a slew of luxury hotels line the docks on both banks of the river. The Grand Palace and a number of legendary temples, prominent focal points of Thai culture, are also located along the river, and every day countless boats take thousands of people across the water to these powerful Buddhist pilgrimage places. Sarah, Nicola, Carryl & I caught an elevated train from the hotel to the east bank of the river, and then hopped on a long-tail motor boat that delivered us after a pleasant but choppy 15 minute cruise to Wat Arun Ratchawaram, a Grand Royal Temple built in honor of the Thai King Rama II.
Wat Arun is designed as a stupa, but unlike the Buddhist stupas I’ve seen in India and Nepal, which have been beaten down by centuries of monsoon rains into little more than grass-covered brick mounds, this stupa rises up to spear the sky in a series of what I could only call carved towers or decorated minarets. What makes Wat Arun so stunningly unique is that these towers are inlaid with what seems like a million intricately decorated porcelain plates, which cover every exposed surface, and gives the entire temple an elaborately pieced-together Chinaware surface. Statues of mythical beings from the Buddhist cosmology stare down at you behind big plate-glass eyes, and as you circle through the stupa up a series of dangerously steep stairs, you find yourself tucked into triangular inlets and narrow paths. We ascended, did a circuit or two, and left after just a few minutes.
In retrospect, I imagine Wat Arun to be designed as some sort of 3-dimensional porcelain mandala, that invites pilgrims in, inflicts its thousand glossed reflections upon your eyes, and then pushes you through its corridors as others file in behind you… I’ve been to Mecca, and circled the Kaaba with thousands of Muslim pilgrims, and this structure had a similar kind circuit rhythm inbuilt as to the pace at which people filed in and out…
After departing from the Wat Arun complex, we took a ferry across the river and headed to Wat Po, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. This temple completely blew my mind. I was expecting a Buddha statue lying horizontally on a podium, his head propped up with a hand, and with his body laid out like a man reading on the floor. I had seen pictures of the statue before but none of them offered any perspective as to its actual dimensions. What we found at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha was a gold Buddha about the size of a house. This statue was HUGE.
The temple was roughly the size of my high school gymnasium, and this statue took up a length about the size of a basketball court. As you filed into the temple, the human traffic guided you in a circuit around the statue, which you only see if you crane your neck upwards to view the Buddha looming above, gazing indirectly at the earth. It’s a surreal place. Surrounding the main statue were small altars erected all around his form, comprised of collection boxes, burning candles, incense sticks, and smaller figures, all gilded offerings paying homage to larger Buddha presence. You make your way towards his feet, which are the size of Queen size beds, and are then ushered around the other side, where you see the back of his legs and spine. Pillars along this temple wall are lined with a series of donation bowls. A money changer offers you coins for any bills you wish to break, and provides you with a bowl, filled to the brim with small-value coins. You deposit a few coins in each donation bowl as you make your way towards the Buddha’s head, and by the time you’ve arrived at the temple opening, you’ve offered up dozens of coins to this Buddha, who is said to bestow prosperity and peace upon devotees who honor him. I could use some prosperity and peace in my life, and I’m not beyond endorsing a little well-intended idolatry if it’ll bring such elusive blessings into my life. We all receive our karmic dues eventually, don’t we?
Gold-leaf Bodhisattvas in rooms of Mother-of Pearl
Transcendental Truths Sealed Inside A Samsara World
Encompassed in these statues exits a universe of historical wealth
The center of gravity of certain societies sits upon their spiritual health…
After Wat Po, we walked a few blocks northward to the sprawling complex of the Grand Palace. We must’ve walked a few hundred meters along the Palace’s high barrier walls before finding the lone entrance dedicated to the thousands of tourists intent on paying homage to the Thai kingdom’s most famous artifact, the legendary Emerald Buddha.
The story of this particular statue dates back to the year 1434, when a Buddhist abbot at a monastery in Chiang Rai discovered that one of the life-size Buddha statues had a few pieces of paint missing from its nose, which revealed a strange green glow from beneath it. After more paint flaked off, the statue was polished, to reveal not a plaster Buddha at all, as it had been thought to be, but an image carved from one solid block of green jade. The origin of this statue was a mystery, and over subsequent centuries, it became a priceless and powerful symbolic talisman of the Thai kingdom. As a consequence of several wars, the statue changed hands a few times, and for a little over 200 years was appropriated to Laos, until a victorious Thai army captured it and returned it to Bangkok in 1778. The Grand Palace was constructed in 1782, in part to create an adequate resting place, the Royal Monastery, to house this profound statue. There is sits today, on an elevated altar, at a central location in the palace complex. To see it you must remove your shoes, and enter into a hall filled with gilded statues and the most elaborate gold altar I’ve ever seen. The Emerald Buddha does not have the same overwhelming size as some of the other statues we saw today, but it does exert a definite gravitational pull, and it looms high above the hordes of people offering authentic prayers to this Buddha in the Royal Monastrey. The scene at the temple was powerfully reminiscent of a visit to a religious building that houses a relic, as such articles of faith are often cornerstones of people’s belief systems. This statue and the complex it lies within are not to be missed when visiting Bangkok, and even though this was my second visit in 4 years, I was still overwhelmed by the grace, elegance, and the refined Mahayana decadence of the Grand Palace.
Buddha Bling – gold plated terraces and white plaster elephants
Mausoleums of dead kings and murals narrating Ramakien elements
Galleries and guest houses for visiting heads of state
Manicured trees amidst armed statuesque protectors laying in wait
Power is only as potent as the structures it erects-
In this complex, spiritual and material energies overlap & intersect…
Floating piers on murky brown water
Odoriferous dried fish and a day that gets progressively hotter
We get lost after the palace, disoriented and distracted –
Portraits of sun-drunk folks who’ve had presumptions refracted
Reframed
Refocused
We seek out a quiet meal
We stumble across a spot and feast for a steal…
After being turned away by the legendary Oriental Hotel for not having appropriate attire (!!!), we ate out our lunch at a small restaurant we found tucked into an alley, sitting at a garden-terrace table beneath an overarching tree and a few slow buzzing electric fans. The restaurant was a quiet little place decorated with tropical vines and hanging flowers, and the food was fantastic. We ate a spectrum of spicy and compelling Thai cuisine, and finished up with a dessert of mango slices and sticky rice, as well as fried bananas over coconut ice cream… ahhh… all in all, a sweet ending to a seemingly stretched morning…
We spent the evening at Khaosan road again. I bought a few trinkets and a t-shirt or two for friends, and drank some MaeKong Whisky, a local distillation that actually stands up well to its overpriced English and American cousins. I pretty much give my stamp of approval to any country that manages to turn out good Whiskey….
We made it home right before midnight after a misguided and rather hectic tuk tuk race instigated by one of my traveling companions. Jesus Mary Joseph Allah & Buddha, thank you for letting me survive that little drag race through Bangkok traffic… I’ve seen too many rickshaw & baby taxi accidents in my day, so riding fast on a three-wheeled motor scooter filled with 4 intoxicated people isn’t really high on my list of cheap thrills. Damn I sound like a wuss, but man, I've got too much to live for… like tomorrow for instance, and a shopping spree at the Sunday Market…
“If geography is an inadequate criterion with which to define Asia, can religion be seen as playing a unifying role? Animism – a patchwork of beliefs and worships dedicated to the dead, household Gods, and nature spirits – is omnipresent in rural Asia and has permeated the popular form of Taoism also practiced by modern city-dwellers. There exists an awe of the spirit world, and of the soothsayers and shamans who make conact with the beyond. …By and large, this mosaic of pantheistic beliefs has given Asia a high degree of spiritual tolerance, for the monotheistic religions have gained little ground here. The chief characteristic of Asian religious observance is the fact that an assortment of different beliefs can coexist within the mind of each individual, due to the way in which successive strata of religious influence have been superimposed on top of one another, ranging from the many different forms of Hindu Buddhism, through the successive schools of Confucianism, to the more recent arrivals of Islam and Christianity. Governments periodically contributed to this process: imperial China, for example, was instrumental in bringing Confucianism to the Vietnamese farmers by dressing it in what were, for them, the more evocative robes and rituals of Buddhism. Imperial Japan built up the Shinto faith, the personal cult of the Emperor, which also drew on Taoism, creating a system of national observance superimposed upon an assortment of existing beliefs.”
From “The New Asian Renaissance”, by Francois Godement
-Saturday Morning-
I wake to a whole weekend away from work, two entire days where I’m not obliged to be at the office. Call it an early karmic tax return, but I now have 48 hours of free time to kill in Bangkok….
I meet the Colombo crew and Sarah at the hotel’s breakfast buffet and after a brief meal we depart for a morning full of temple viewing and river boat rides. Bangkok is bordered on its west side by the Chao Phraya river, and a slew of luxury hotels line the docks on both banks of the river. The Grand Palace and a number of legendary temples, prominent focal points of Thai culture, are also located along the river, and every day countless boats take thousands of people across the water to these powerful Buddhist pilgrimage places. Sarah, Nicola, Carryl & I caught an elevated train from the hotel to the east bank of the river, and then hopped on a long-tail motor boat that delivered us after a pleasant but choppy 15 minute cruise to Wat Arun Ratchawaram, a Grand Royal Temple built in honor of the Thai King Rama II.
Wat Arun is designed as a stupa, but unlike the Buddhist stupas I’ve seen in India and Nepal, which have been beaten down by centuries of monsoon rains into little more than grass-covered brick mounds, this stupa rises up to spear the sky in a series of what I could only call carved towers or decorated minarets. What makes Wat Arun so stunningly unique is that these towers are inlaid with what seems like a million intricately decorated porcelain plates, which cover every exposed surface, and gives the entire temple an elaborately pieced-together Chinaware surface. Statues of mythical beings from the Buddhist cosmology stare down at you behind big plate-glass eyes, and as you circle through the stupa up a series of dangerously steep stairs, you find yourself tucked into triangular inlets and narrow paths. We ascended, did a circuit or two, and left after just a few minutes.
In retrospect, I imagine Wat Arun to be designed as some sort of 3-dimensional porcelain mandala, that invites pilgrims in, inflicts its thousand glossed reflections upon your eyes, and then pushes you through its corridors as others file in behind you… I’ve been to Mecca, and circled the Kaaba with thousands of Muslim pilgrims, and this structure had a similar kind circuit rhythm inbuilt as to the pace at which people filed in and out…After departing from the Wat Arun complex, we took a ferry across the river and headed to Wat Po, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. This temple completely blew my mind. I was expecting a Buddha statue lying horizontally on a podium, his head propped up with a hand, and with his body laid out like a man reading on the floor. I had seen pictures of the statue before but none of them offered any perspective as to its actual dimensions. What we found at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha was a gold Buddha about the size of a house. This statue was HUGE.
The temple was roughly the size of my high school gymnasium, and this statue took up a length about the size of a basketball court. As you filed into the temple, the human traffic guided you in a circuit around the statue, which you only see if you crane your neck upwards to view the Buddha looming above, gazing indirectly at the earth. It’s a surreal place. Surrounding the main statue were small altars erected all around his form, comprised of collection boxes, burning candles, incense sticks, and smaller figures, all gilded offerings paying homage to larger Buddha presence. You make your way towards his feet, which are the size of Queen size beds, and are then ushered around the other side, where you see the back of his legs and spine. Pillars along this temple wall are lined with a series of donation bowls. A money changer offers you coins for any bills you wish to break, and provides you with a bowl, filled to the brim with small-value coins. You deposit a few coins in each donation bowl as you make your way towards the Buddha’s head, and by the time you’ve arrived at the temple opening, you’ve offered up dozens of coins to this Buddha, who is said to bestow prosperity and peace upon devotees who honor him. I could use some prosperity and peace in my life, and I’m not beyond endorsing a little well-intended idolatry if it’ll bring such elusive blessings into my life. We all receive our karmic dues eventually, don’t we?
Gold-leaf Bodhisattvas in rooms of Mother-of PearlTranscendental Truths Sealed Inside A Samsara World
Encompassed in these statues exits a universe of historical wealth
The center of gravity of certain societies sits upon their spiritual health…
After Wat Po, we walked a few blocks northward to the sprawling complex of the Grand Palace. We must’ve walked a few hundred meters along the Palace’s high barrier walls before finding the lone entrance dedicated to the thousands of tourists intent on paying homage to the Thai kingdom’s most famous artifact, the legendary Emerald Buddha.
The story of this particular statue dates back to the year 1434, when a Buddhist abbot at a monastery in Chiang Rai discovered that one of the life-size Buddha statues had a few pieces of paint missing from its nose, which revealed a strange green glow from beneath it. After more paint flaked off, the statue was polished, to reveal not a plaster Buddha at all, as it had been thought to be, but an image carved from one solid block of green jade. The origin of this statue was a mystery, and over subsequent centuries, it became a priceless and powerful symbolic talisman of the Thai kingdom. As a consequence of several wars, the statue changed hands a few times, and for a little over 200 years was appropriated to Laos, until a victorious Thai army captured it and returned it to Bangkok in 1778. The Grand Palace was constructed in 1782, in part to create an adequate resting place, the Royal Monastery, to house this profound statue. There is sits today, on an elevated altar, at a central location in the palace complex. To see it you must remove your shoes, and enter into a hall filled with gilded statues and the most elaborate gold altar I’ve ever seen. The Emerald Buddha does not have the same overwhelming size as some of the other statues we saw today, but it does exert a definite gravitational pull, and it looms high above the hordes of people offering authentic prayers to this Buddha in the Royal Monastrey. The scene at the temple was powerfully reminiscent of a visit to a religious building that houses a relic, as such articles of faith are often cornerstones of people’s belief systems. This statue and the complex it lies within are not to be missed when visiting Bangkok, and even though this was my second visit in 4 years, I was still overwhelmed by the grace, elegance, and the refined Mahayana decadence of the Grand Palace.
Buddha Bling – gold plated terraces and white plaster elephants
Mausoleums of dead kings and murals narrating Ramakien elements
Galleries and guest houses for visiting heads of state
Manicured trees amidst armed statuesque protectors laying in wait
Power is only as potent as the structures it erects-
In this complex, spiritual and material energies overlap & intersect…
Floating piers on murky brown water
Odoriferous dried fish and a day that gets progressively hotter
We get lost after the palace, disoriented and distracted –
Portraits of sun-drunk folks who’ve had presumptions refracted
Reframed
Refocused
We seek out a quiet meal
We stumble across a spot and feast for a steal…
After being turned away by the legendary Oriental Hotel for not having appropriate attire (!!!), we ate out our lunch at a small restaurant we found tucked into an alley, sitting at a garden-terrace table beneath an overarching tree and a few slow buzzing electric fans. The restaurant was a quiet little place decorated with tropical vines and hanging flowers, and the food was fantastic. We ate a spectrum of spicy and compelling Thai cuisine, and finished up with a dessert of mango slices and sticky rice, as well as fried bananas over coconut ice cream… ahhh… all in all, a sweet ending to a seemingly stretched morning…
We spent the evening at Khaosan road again. I bought a few trinkets and a t-shirt or two for friends, and drank some MaeKong Whisky, a local distillation that actually stands up well to its overpriced English and American cousins. I pretty much give my stamp of approval to any country that manages to turn out good Whiskey….
We made it home right before midnight after a misguided and rather hectic tuk tuk race instigated by one of my traveling companions. Jesus Mary Joseph Allah & Buddha, thank you for letting me survive that little drag race through Bangkok traffic… I’ve seen too many rickshaw & baby taxi accidents in my day, so riding fast on a three-wheeled motor scooter filled with 4 intoxicated people isn’t really high on my list of cheap thrills. Damn I sound like a wuss, but man, I've got too much to live for… like tomorrow for instance, and a shopping spree at the Sunday Market…
Friday, February 17, 2006
GPC - Day 2 - Asia Rising
...just finished up Day II. Saw some fabulous work from Asia, particularly out of greater China and Bangkok, work that wasn't revolutionary but just exquisitely crafted and well thought-out. Good, solid work that was both aesthetically pleasing, intuitive to absorb, and groundbreaking in its underlying strategy. You'd never think so much effort could go into making a 30 second spot, or a single print ad, but one of the things that really distinguishes great work is that you can tell a team spent a lot of time laboring over the small details. Immaculate attention to detail separates great work from the stuff that's simply mass-produced pulp, pumped out effortlessly like so much machine-made garbage. That's my rule of thumb for all media, actually. A film like Tarantino's Kill Bill is an example of a work of art that functions on multiple levels, where every frame is thought-out and deliberate, and nothing extraneous finds its way into the final cut. But movies like that are rare, and are really the exception in an industry that churns out a bunch of formulaic schwill that may make money, but are essentially soulless explorations of tired storylines that have no vertical depth to their narrative arcs. Ads are no different. You can really tell when someone's spent the hours and bled time and effort into an execution, as opposed to a piece that came off a standard assembly line, and has a few bells and whistles strapped to it in a half-assed attempt to make it stand out from a million virtual clones....
anyhow, i'm beat. probably getting a little inarticulate. gonna go clean up and then head to a nice dinner with the gang... Word on the street is that this restaurant is adjacent to the best anime bookstore in Thailand, so maybe i'll get a chance to pick up some badass asian comics. I'll let y'all know...
happy friday!
more later...
anyhow, i'm beat. probably getting a little inarticulate. gonna go clean up and then head to a nice dinner with the gang... Word on the street is that this restaurant is adjacent to the best anime bookstore in Thailand, so maybe i'll get a chance to pick up some badass asian comics. I'll let y'all know...
happy friday!
more later...
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Sun Salutations
Sun Salutations
So I stumbled out of bed for a complimentary 6 am Yoga class at the hotel’s health club. The instructor was a small, lithe little Thai man who didn’t speak a word of English. The class was pretty low-impact, but there’s really no better way to start a day than to do something nice for your body, and Yoga is high on my list of activities your body will thank you for. Managed to shake off a little jet lag, ran a few kilometers, ate a fantastic breakfast, and headed off to the office again to finish up GPC preparations. Considering how productive we were yesterday, it looks to be a relatively short day, which means we might get a chance to catch some late afternoon sun by the hotel pool… I think we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that all our tech issues work themselves out…
…3:30 pm…poolside…
bronze, baby, bronze
make me brown again, birth me anew
lathered and baked by heat waves,
flesh awakening from beneath the whiplash bite of cold Chicago winds
I watch my fellow sun worshippers as they watch me
a sunkissed waiter in white brings me a tall glass of Thai iced tea
Slowly under sweat I labor to comprehend the connections that brought me here:
a commingling of market-savvy and an accidental adman career
the paths we took are varied but the drive is the same:
to manifest the mysterious power that suffuses brand names…
Food for thought quote:
“It is possible that an Asian entity might emerge in the future, just as the beginnings of European unity have emerged. Nevertheless, as recent problems in Europe have shown, unity requires agreement on some form of shared identity, or at least voluntary progress in that direction. Is there such an identity in Asia’s case? The answer to that does not lie in triumphant generalities about the rise of the TransPacific and Pacific Basin economies…. The very idea of Asia is clearly a mirror-image based on the idea of Europe: the East as conceived by the West, as Edward Said trenchantly argues. Said also points to the fact that, for Europeans, the term “East” primarily denotes the Near East, which they believe should fit their own conceptual framework, while the very term “Far East” reflects the region’s remoteness….
Francois Godement, from “The Asian Renaissance”
After a few hours at the pool, various members of the GPC started turning up. Flights from Europe get in to Thailand in the late afternoon, and as I headed back to my room after a few hours of late afternoon sun I came across Miguel Angel Furones, el Jefe himself. Miguel is quite the charmer, the suave Spaniard alpha-male in greater scheme of Burnett’s creative hierarchy, an accomplished writer, leader, problem-solver, and, it turns out, quite the Sushi connoisseur. He insisted on treating Rosalie, Duncan, Sarah Okrent, Alexandre Okada and myself to a rather expansive meal at Shintaro, the hotel’s deluxe Sushi restaurant. It was quite the spread. I must confess some of the Sashimi pushed my threshold – raw fish, no matter how well cut, how tender, how exquisitely prepared, never really feels like a natural choice. The Bengali river boy lurking in my bloodline would rather see fish covered in spices and fried. But regardless of my tastes, the meal was challenging, the company refined, and the service endearing. A fine way to start the evening…
After dinner Rosalie, Duncan and I took a quick wander up the street to the open air markets lining the road, in the hopes of doing a little shopping. We weren’t disappointed. Everywhere, along both sides of a crowded street, stalls and tables were set up, manned by a solitary artisan or merchant, hawking their wares to passersby. I picked up a few t-shirts, some ornaments, a gift or two, and came across some very intriguing Buddhist wood carvings, and my buddies bought a few items as well. Bangkok, it seems, is still running strong at 10:00 pm. There’s money to be made, tourists to take advantage of, and in countries where culture is a commodity commerce rules the roost. Capitalism looms over everyone struggling to make a living, and in Thailand the necessity of hustling to get by is writ large on the face of all the folks selling their wares to a carefree world. All of us need our clientele, don’t we?....
So I stumbled out of bed for a complimentary 6 am Yoga class at the hotel’s health club. The instructor was a small, lithe little Thai man who didn’t speak a word of English. The class was pretty low-impact, but there’s really no better way to start a day than to do something nice for your body, and Yoga is high on my list of activities your body will thank you for. Managed to shake off a little jet lag, ran a few kilometers, ate a fantastic breakfast, and headed off to the office again to finish up GPC preparations. Considering how productive we were yesterday, it looks to be a relatively short day, which means we might get a chance to catch some late afternoon sun by the hotel pool… I think we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that all our tech issues work themselves out…
…3:30 pm…poolside…
bronze, baby, bronze
make me brown again, birth me anew
lathered and baked by heat waves,
flesh awakening from beneath the whiplash bite of cold Chicago winds
I watch my fellow sun worshippers as they watch me
a sunkissed waiter in white brings me a tall glass of Thai iced tea
Slowly under sweat I labor to comprehend the connections that brought me here:
a commingling of market-savvy and an accidental adman career
the paths we took are varied but the drive is the same:
to manifest the mysterious power that suffuses brand names…
Food for thought quote:
“It is possible that an Asian entity might emerge in the future, just as the beginnings of European unity have emerged. Nevertheless, as recent problems in Europe have shown, unity requires agreement on some form of shared identity, or at least voluntary progress in that direction. Is there such an identity in Asia’s case? The answer to that does not lie in triumphant generalities about the rise of the TransPacific and Pacific Basin economies…. The very idea of Asia is clearly a mirror-image based on the idea of Europe: the East as conceived by the West, as Edward Said trenchantly argues. Said also points to the fact that, for Europeans, the term “East” primarily denotes the Near East, which they believe should fit their own conceptual framework, while the very term “Far East” reflects the region’s remoteness….
Francois Godement, from “The Asian Renaissance”
After a few hours at the pool, various members of the GPC started turning up. Flights from Europe get in to Thailand in the late afternoon, and as I headed back to my room after a few hours of late afternoon sun I came across Miguel Angel Furones, el Jefe himself. Miguel is quite the charmer, the suave Spaniard alpha-male in greater scheme of Burnett’s creative hierarchy, an accomplished writer, leader, problem-solver, and, it turns out, quite the Sushi connoisseur. He insisted on treating Rosalie, Duncan, Sarah Okrent, Alexandre Okada and myself to a rather expansive meal at Shintaro, the hotel’s deluxe Sushi restaurant. It was quite the spread. I must confess some of the Sashimi pushed my threshold – raw fish, no matter how well cut, how tender, how exquisitely prepared, never really feels like a natural choice. The Bengali river boy lurking in my bloodline would rather see fish covered in spices and fried. But regardless of my tastes, the meal was challenging, the company refined, and the service endearing. A fine way to start the evening…
After dinner Rosalie, Duncan and I took a quick wander up the street to the open air markets lining the road, in the hopes of doing a little shopping. We weren’t disappointed. Everywhere, along both sides of a crowded street, stalls and tables were set up, manned by a solitary artisan or merchant, hawking their wares to passersby. I picked up a few t-shirts, some ornaments, a gift or two, and came across some very intriguing Buddhist wood carvings, and my buddies bought a few items as well. Bangkok, it seems, is still running strong at 10:00 pm. There’s money to be made, tourists to take advantage of, and in countries where culture is a commodity commerce rules the roost. Capitalism looms over everyone struggling to make a living, and in Thailand the necessity of hustling to get by is writ large on the face of all the folks selling their wares to a carefree world. All of us need our clientele, don’t we?....
GPC - Day 1
The meeting started today. Rosalie, Duncan and I got there at 7:30 and sorted out the set-up, and by 8:30 the gang had turned up from the hotel, and the room was packed to capacity with an interesting spectrum of talent from across the Burnett network. 30 participants in all, I believe, from various corners of the globe, all converging upon 1 room to learn a little bit about quality control, the perils of creative democracy, and how to best serve a client by telling the best story you possibly can. It’s quite the motley crew, this GPC gang…
Last night I had the distinct pleasure of explaining to a non-native English speaker what the slang phrase “sausage-fest” means. They were amused after I spelled out the definition: any gathering where there are 3 or more times as many men as there are women constitutes a “sausage-fest.” Although it usually refers to a party filled with about 15 somewhat socially-challenged dorks and 3 or 4 misplaced, miserable but often sympathetic women, it’s a phrase that can be used for any gathering with the same kind of gender percentages. The GPC, for all its worth, validity, and integrity, is a definitive “sausage-fest”, a quarterly congregation of egos and tongues and alpha-male posturing that rarely manages to invite any more than a handful of high-powered female creative directors from LB worldwide. It is NOT a sexist institution, the sad truth is that at the highest levels of Creative Departments throughout the ad industry, women are simply underrepresented, for any number of reasons. I won’t care to speculate why (like the infamous and legendary adman Neil French did somewhat apocryphally last year: see here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_French), but it is somewhat disconcerting to see that the committee is so consistently predictable in its make-up. I’ve wondered in the past if the scores of the ads would change with a female jury, but realized that ultimately, a good ad is a good ad, regardless of who sees it, and shit is shit for all of us….
Anyhow – the first day of the GPC went well. We are way ahead of schedule, Planet Leo worked flawlessly, and the group turned out to be quite a collection of compatible characters and interesting perspectives. The work has been OK so far, I only saw a handful of ads that really jumped out at me, none of which scored particularly well, but I did see one or two pieces that made my day. From Fiat, no less. Hopefully the piece in question will be a 7 after the revote session on Tuesday, but even if it doesn’t make the cut, I doff my hat to whoever dreamed up a car commercial that spoofs the training montage made famous by Philly’s own Rocky Balboa …
Caught a few interesting critiques in the GPC comments. Every now and then the committee comes across an ad that could have been stellar, but instead of being great, it’s bogged down by 3 or 4 misguided choices the creative team made somewhere in the production process. For print ads, it’s usually using too much copy alongside a powerful image, or using a bad tagline, and for TV, well, aside from the pervasive acceptance of poor production values, certain ideas are just not executed to their potential. Not that I know anything about the compromises inherent in producing a good spot, but I do know bad decisions when I see them, only because I’ve heard the same litany at the GPC quarter after quarter, year after year. It’s predictable, really, but then so are the strategies and briefs our creative teams choose to endorse. As in any industry, it is a rare and beautiful thing to come across a truly fresh idea, or to encounter a unique methodology or aesthetic that acts in the service of communicating an authentic human quality. A few of the ads we saw today had that going for them, but you could clearly see where the artistic vision had been co-opted by client demands, and the where a fantastic idea was pruned off to fit into a particular campaign’s clothing. Such is the nature of business, the nature of working for clients you cannot control – compromise and free artistic reign go out the door when the primary concern is market viability. Agencies get paid to build business, and the businesses we build are very often not interested in pushing creative boundaries, but in turning a profit. In all honesty, I believe that motivation ultimately underlies all our actions, on both a collective and personal level…
Anyhow – the day went by fast. Finished up early, spent the early evening at the pool with most of the LB/Chicago delegation, and had a fantastic dinner at the inimitable Spice Market with Rosalie & Sarah. Duncan McIntosh departed back to Paris, after a furious 3 day trip troubleshooting our Planet Leo system, and I realized I will miss this eccentric French-speaking, Barbeque-hawking, boat-loving South African. How often do you meet an IT professional who’s been a carpenter and backpacker and beach bum on multiple continents over the course of their life? Not often, at least not in the circles I run in. Thank you Market Forward for sending such a unique and competent character to help us fix our problems. And to my Capetown connection, cheers!
Tomorrow we’ve got a few more Multinational clients and the work from the Asia region to look at. Should be a great day. I’m gonna try and catch that 6:30 am yoga class before heading to the office, so enough for now… this story’s still unfolding…
Last night I had the distinct pleasure of explaining to a non-native English speaker what the slang phrase “sausage-fest” means. They were amused after I spelled out the definition: any gathering where there are 3 or more times as many men as there are women constitutes a “sausage-fest.” Although it usually refers to a party filled with about 15 somewhat socially-challenged dorks and 3 or 4 misplaced, miserable but often sympathetic women, it’s a phrase that can be used for any gathering with the same kind of gender percentages. The GPC, for all its worth, validity, and integrity, is a definitive “sausage-fest”, a quarterly congregation of egos and tongues and alpha-male posturing that rarely manages to invite any more than a handful of high-powered female creative directors from LB worldwide. It is NOT a sexist institution, the sad truth is that at the highest levels of Creative Departments throughout the ad industry, women are simply underrepresented, for any number of reasons. I won’t care to speculate why (like the infamous and legendary adman Neil French did somewhat apocryphally last year: see here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_French), but it is somewhat disconcerting to see that the committee is so consistently predictable in its make-up. I’ve wondered in the past if the scores of the ads would change with a female jury, but realized that ultimately, a good ad is a good ad, regardless of who sees it, and shit is shit for all of us….
Anyhow – the first day of the GPC went well. We are way ahead of schedule, Planet Leo worked flawlessly, and the group turned out to be quite a collection of compatible characters and interesting perspectives. The work has been OK so far, I only saw a handful of ads that really jumped out at me, none of which scored particularly well, but I did see one or two pieces that made my day. From Fiat, no less. Hopefully the piece in question will be a 7 after the revote session on Tuesday, but even if it doesn’t make the cut, I doff my hat to whoever dreamed up a car commercial that spoofs the training montage made famous by Philly’s own Rocky Balboa …
Caught a few interesting critiques in the GPC comments. Every now and then the committee comes across an ad that could have been stellar, but instead of being great, it’s bogged down by 3 or 4 misguided choices the creative team made somewhere in the production process. For print ads, it’s usually using too much copy alongside a powerful image, or using a bad tagline, and for TV, well, aside from the pervasive acceptance of poor production values, certain ideas are just not executed to their potential. Not that I know anything about the compromises inherent in producing a good spot, but I do know bad decisions when I see them, only because I’ve heard the same litany at the GPC quarter after quarter, year after year. It’s predictable, really, but then so are the strategies and briefs our creative teams choose to endorse. As in any industry, it is a rare and beautiful thing to come across a truly fresh idea, or to encounter a unique methodology or aesthetic that acts in the service of communicating an authentic human quality. A few of the ads we saw today had that going for them, but you could clearly see where the artistic vision had been co-opted by client demands, and the where a fantastic idea was pruned off to fit into a particular campaign’s clothing. Such is the nature of business, the nature of working for clients you cannot control – compromise and free artistic reign go out the door when the primary concern is market viability. Agencies get paid to build business, and the businesses we build are very often not interested in pushing creative boundaries, but in turning a profit. In all honesty, I believe that motivation ultimately underlies all our actions, on both a collective and personal level…
Anyhow – the day went by fast. Finished up early, spent the early evening at the pool with most of the LB/Chicago delegation, and had a fantastic dinner at the inimitable Spice Market with Rosalie & Sarah. Duncan McIntosh departed back to Paris, after a furious 3 day trip troubleshooting our Planet Leo system, and I realized I will miss this eccentric French-speaking, Barbeque-hawking, boat-loving South African. How often do you meet an IT professional who’s been a carpenter and backpacker and beach bum on multiple continents over the course of their life? Not often, at least not in the circles I run in. Thank you Market Forward for sending such a unique and competent character to help us fix our problems. And to my Capetown connection, cheers!
Tomorrow we’ve got a few more Multinational clients and the work from the Asia region to look at. Should be a great day. I’m gonna try and catch that 6:30 am yoga class before heading to the office, so enough for now… this story’s still unfolding…
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Acclamating
…jet lag…
the drag of recently abandoned time zones on an unsettled body clock…
I stir awake after a restless 3 hours of pseudo-sleep and get ready to go to work…
Something about this scene feels so right,
sitting at a familiar Asian crossroads not far from where I was raised
where my paths and fortunes were first appraised
uncles around the corner
old friends a dock away
back where the sun never fails to show up
where the Buddhist Avatars hold sway
nexus of rivers
a playground for predators
certain places are populated with high percentages of playas
older civilizations have accumulated layers
a certain self- awareness of depth in time
-I live to partake of other culture’s perceptions
Compiling and weaving together pieces of a larger collective Mind…
Spent most of the day at LB/Bangkok, unpacking boxes, setting up the GPC meeting room, inventorying materials, and generally helping Rosalie get settled into the workspace we’ll be camped out in for the next week. We left the hotel with the intention of walking to the office, but got sidetracked along the way, and after 15 minutes of sweating profusely in 80 degree heat we gave up and hopped in a cab. A short drive later we pulled up to the new LB/Bangkok office, in the glittery Sindhorn Tower complex, right next door to the American Embassy. The new office is gorgeous. The old Bangkok office that hosted the GPC in 4Q01 was comfortable and accommodating, but the new space they’ve relocated to is in a much more impressive building, and from the moment you walk through the doors it’s evident that you’ve entered a stimulating creative environment. The building itself is a study in marble and glass, replete with running waterfalls, elaborate fountains, and a lobby that’s built on multiple terraces overlooking each other, which gives an open communal feel to all the cafes and businesses located in the towers. The actual Burnett office is located on the third floor, and is spread out onto a few stories, with wide planes of glass enabling you to see all the folks you’re working with at any given time. It’s a very welcoming layout, populated with busy creative people, and with a lot of natural sunlight streaming in from the outside. Looks like a great place to work, and I’m happy I’ll be spending the next week here…
We spent most of today dealing with the technology issues surrounding the GPC’s implementation of Planet Leo. For the first time in the history of the GPC we are no longer accepting submissions on reels or DVDs, and have begun utilizing a system whereby all of our offices upload their work to a central server. In other words, we’ve taken the first step towards moving beyond hard media, towards a fully digital mindset, which heralds the end of the analog era for the whole global Burnett network. In a few years reels and videotapes will seem quaint and outdated, remnants from an age when media moved at a much slower pace. It’s nice to be near the leading edge of the digital revolution, but unfortunately, we’ve encountered a slew of problems as we’ve tried to make this transition from analog to digital submissions. These problems were to be expected, though, given the sheer number of GPC submissions from 50 or more Burnett offices scattered around the planet, and so Market Forward, the company that powers our Planet Leo digital asset management system, sent us a tech support specialist from their Paris office to assist us with any problems we encounter here in Bangkok. Enter Duncan McIntosh, my new friend, a true cosmopolitan with globe-trotting stories to tell, a breadth of techie knowledge way beyond my comprehension, and an appetite for good beer. Duncan and Rosalie spent most of today patiently navigating the many pitfalls of trying to optimize Planet Leo in our Bangkok office, occasionally cursing, while talking live to tech support in Paris and Chicago. Aside from pervasive bandwidth issues and occasional random system crashes and innocuous error messages, it would seem that we’re ready for this meeting… There’ll be a few glitches, but I think the whole meeting will go smoothly…
After a long day at the office we headed back to the hotel, and switched gears over a few early evening cocktails at one of the hotel bars. A few Daiquiris, Capiroska’s and Singapore Slings later, Rosalie, Duncan, and I had relaxed enough to ease into the evening. The best part of these meetings is getting a chance to talk to and connect with creative travelers like Duncan, whose perspectives color and broaden your own understanding of your place in the grand scheme of international business. For instance, over our evening drinks, we talked a little bit about the Open Source model, which came up as we compared notes as to what kind of operating systems we each use. Open Source, for those who might not know it, is one of the most intriguing alternative business models currently en vogue in creative communities, because it represents the working alternative to the Microsoft business model. In as simple terms as possible, Open Source represents communities of like-minded individuals collaborating on a finished product, without seeking to possess or claim the intellectual property rights associated with the product. It flies in the face of business models which are constructed around very well-defined ownership rights, and to many vanguards of the IT world, it represents the future. The digital revolution has engendered an entirely new approach to the availability and distribution of information, and it is only a matter of time before better methodologies emerge that enable people to share knowledge without fearing the consequences. Read more about Open Source here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
To a certain extent, the Open Source model mirrors what we do at the GPC: we share information, critiques, and methodologies, all in the service of ultimately creating a superior product. It was nice to hear the reasons why Duncan endorses the Open Source LINUX operating system, because it mirrors my own appreciation of that model in the realm of music. As a music producer, the work I create is always more impressive and stimulating if I can incorporate elements of other people’s work, without fearing the consequences of copyright infringement lawsuits. Anyhow, after a somewhat drunken conversation, we went back to our rooms to work for a bit and then decided to meet up for a late dinner.
A few hours later the three of us were crammed into a Tuk Tuk, a three-wheeled Thai auto-rickshaw, headed to the notorious Khaosan Road for dinner and drinks.
(Read more about Tuk Tuk’s here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuk_tuk) Rosalie and I spent several evenings on Khaosan Road the last time we were in Bangkok – it’s one of the most famous backpacker destinations in Asia, filled with international hipsters and bars and restaurants catering to the most bohemian elements of the low-cost traveler set. (Read more about it here: http://www.bangkok.com/area-guide/khao-san.html). Considering the crazy lovable cast of characters we encountered the last time we were there, it was our first stop on our first evening in Bangkok. We had a couple drinks, ate some decent Thai food, did some people-watching, and then headed home after a few games of billiards and a little light shopping. What could have been a nutty night was instead relatively tame, as we all had work to do and had to put in a few more hours before going back to the office in the morning. As we were hurtling back to the hotel on a tuk tuk, breathing in diesel fumes and the pervasive pollution so characteristic of Asian cities, I had a moment of authentic pathos – I was raised in traffic like this, in Bangladesh, amidst the soot, dirt, and raw humanity of masses of people struggling to earn a decent wage. Although in recent years I may have acclimated to the lifestyle of middle America, in truth I feel at home here, even though I don’t speak the language and may as well have tourist tattooed across my forehead. Some places just resonate right, hit all the right notes, and cull forth long neglected parts of my psyche. Asia, y’all… There’s nothing like it, and given recent trends, it looks to be the emerging epicenter of 21st century culture… I’m blessed to bear witness to it…
the drag of recently abandoned time zones on an unsettled body clock…
I stir awake after a restless 3 hours of pseudo-sleep and get ready to go to work…
Something about this scene feels so right,
sitting at a familiar Asian crossroads not far from where I was raised
where my paths and fortunes were first appraised
uncles around the corner
old friends a dock away
back where the sun never fails to show up
where the Buddhist Avatars hold sway
nexus of rivers
a playground for predators
certain places are populated with high percentages of playas
older civilizations have accumulated layers
a certain self- awareness of depth in time
-I live to partake of other culture’s perceptions
Compiling and weaving together pieces of a larger collective Mind…
Spent most of the day at LB/Bangkok, unpacking boxes, setting up the GPC meeting room, inventorying materials, and generally helping Rosalie get settled into the workspace we’ll be camped out in for the next week. We left the hotel with the intention of walking to the office, but got sidetracked along the way, and after 15 minutes of sweating profusely in 80 degree heat we gave up and hopped in a cab. A short drive later we pulled up to the new LB/Bangkok office, in the glittery Sindhorn Tower complex, right next door to the American Embassy. The new office is gorgeous. The old Bangkok office that hosted the GPC in 4Q01 was comfortable and accommodating, but the new space they’ve relocated to is in a much more impressive building, and from the moment you walk through the doors it’s evident that you’ve entered a stimulating creative environment. The building itself is a study in marble and glass, replete with running waterfalls, elaborate fountains, and a lobby that’s built on multiple terraces overlooking each other, which gives an open communal feel to all the cafes and businesses located in the towers. The actual Burnett office is located on the third floor, and is spread out onto a few stories, with wide planes of glass enabling you to see all the folks you’re working with at any given time. It’s a very welcoming layout, populated with busy creative people, and with a lot of natural sunlight streaming in from the outside. Looks like a great place to work, and I’m happy I’ll be spending the next week here…
We spent most of today dealing with the technology issues surrounding the GPC’s implementation of Planet Leo. For the first time in the history of the GPC we are no longer accepting submissions on reels or DVDs, and have begun utilizing a system whereby all of our offices upload their work to a central server. In other words, we’ve taken the first step towards moving beyond hard media, towards a fully digital mindset, which heralds the end of the analog era for the whole global Burnett network. In a few years reels and videotapes will seem quaint and outdated, remnants from an age when media moved at a much slower pace. It’s nice to be near the leading edge of the digital revolution, but unfortunately, we’ve encountered a slew of problems as we’ve tried to make this transition from analog to digital submissions. These problems were to be expected, though, given the sheer number of GPC submissions from 50 or more Burnett offices scattered around the planet, and so Market Forward, the company that powers our Planet Leo digital asset management system, sent us a tech support specialist from their Paris office to assist us with any problems we encounter here in Bangkok. Enter Duncan McIntosh, my new friend, a true cosmopolitan with globe-trotting stories to tell, a breadth of techie knowledge way beyond my comprehension, and an appetite for good beer. Duncan and Rosalie spent most of today patiently navigating the many pitfalls of trying to optimize Planet Leo in our Bangkok office, occasionally cursing, while talking live to tech support in Paris and Chicago. Aside from pervasive bandwidth issues and occasional random system crashes and innocuous error messages, it would seem that we’re ready for this meeting… There’ll be a few glitches, but I think the whole meeting will go smoothly…
After a long day at the office we headed back to the hotel, and switched gears over a few early evening cocktails at one of the hotel bars. A few Daiquiris, Capiroska’s and Singapore Slings later, Rosalie, Duncan, and I had relaxed enough to ease into the evening. The best part of these meetings is getting a chance to talk to and connect with creative travelers like Duncan, whose perspectives color and broaden your own understanding of your place in the grand scheme of international business. For instance, over our evening drinks, we talked a little bit about the Open Source model, which came up as we compared notes as to what kind of operating systems we each use. Open Source, for those who might not know it, is one of the most intriguing alternative business models currently en vogue in creative communities, because it represents the working alternative to the Microsoft business model. In as simple terms as possible, Open Source represents communities of like-minded individuals collaborating on a finished product, without seeking to possess or claim the intellectual property rights associated with the product. It flies in the face of business models which are constructed around very well-defined ownership rights, and to many vanguards of the IT world, it represents the future. The digital revolution has engendered an entirely new approach to the availability and distribution of information, and it is only a matter of time before better methodologies emerge that enable people to share knowledge without fearing the consequences. Read more about Open Source here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
To a certain extent, the Open Source model mirrors what we do at the GPC: we share information, critiques, and methodologies, all in the service of ultimately creating a superior product. It was nice to hear the reasons why Duncan endorses the Open Source LINUX operating system, because it mirrors my own appreciation of that model in the realm of music. As a music producer, the work I create is always more impressive and stimulating if I can incorporate elements of other people’s work, without fearing the consequences of copyright infringement lawsuits. Anyhow, after a somewhat drunken conversation, we went back to our rooms to work for a bit and then decided to meet up for a late dinner.
A few hours later the three of us were crammed into a Tuk Tuk, a three-wheeled Thai auto-rickshaw, headed to the notorious Khaosan Road for dinner and drinks.
(Read more about Tuk Tuk’s here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuk_tuk) Rosalie and I spent several evenings on Khaosan Road the last time we were in Bangkok – it’s one of the most famous backpacker destinations in Asia, filled with international hipsters and bars and restaurants catering to the most bohemian elements of the low-cost traveler set. (Read more about it here: http://www.bangkok.com/area-guide/khao-san.html). Considering the crazy lovable cast of characters we encountered the last time we were there, it was our first stop on our first evening in Bangkok. We had a couple drinks, ate some decent Thai food, did some people-watching, and then headed home after a few games of billiards and a little light shopping. What could have been a nutty night was instead relatively tame, as we all had work to do and had to put in a few more hours before going back to the office in the morning. As we were hurtling back to the hotel on a tuk tuk, breathing in diesel fumes and the pervasive pollution so characteristic of Asian cities, I had a moment of authentic pathos – I was raised in traffic like this, in Bangladesh, amidst the soot, dirt, and raw humanity of masses of people struggling to earn a decent wage. Although in recent years I may have acclimated to the lifestyle of middle America, in truth I feel at home here, even though I don’t speak the language and may as well have tourist tattooed across my forehead. Some places just resonate right, hit all the right notes, and cull forth long neglected parts of my psyche. Asia, y’all… There’s nothing like it, and given recent trends, it looks to be the emerging epicenter of 21st century culture… I’m blessed to bear witness to it…
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
24 Hours En Route to Thailand
ablutions after airplanes
scrubbing out the insides of my brain
cleansed of the crud of two continents
crusted to 24 hour terminal skin
I begin to remember
What Bangkok felt like the first time
Four years back
Couple laps before on the same career track
Capturing the essence of markets in flux
networks redefined – version 3.0 redux
mine is the business of smuggling effective methodologies
I trade in the tools that work and I make no apologies
All of caught somewhere in the cogs of a giant machine
Oiling all the wheels to keep it running clean
Smooth operators and interface connoisseurs
Eying ugly executions and dishing out vicious honest cures
All of us trying to keep the essence pure...
All of us trying to keep our business pure…
Damn I love this hotel…
scrubbing out the insides of my brain
cleansed of the crud of two continents
crusted to 24 hour terminal skin
I begin to remember
What Bangkok felt like the first time
Four years back
Couple laps before on the same career track
Capturing the essence of markets in flux
networks redefined – version 3.0 redux
mine is the business of smuggling effective methodologies
I trade in the tools that work and I make no apologies
All of caught somewhere in the cogs of a giant machine
Oiling all the wheels to keep it running clean
Smooth operators and interface connoisseurs
Eying ugly executions and dishing out vicious honest cures
All of us trying to keep the essence pure...
All of us trying to keep our business pure…
Damn I love this hotel…
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