Absentee Brick

Yesterday, I received this email from my old boss, Kevin Lynch. The subject line was "Chicago Show" (aka the Chicago Creative Club Awards).

I just presented radio, and you won. please hurry back and pick up your brick.

congrats,
kevin

I'm guessing this was for "Search and Rescue" which was written for the NPCA, a great client who always let us do great work. I'm very happy we won. But if Y&R Chicago doesn't put the brick into a FedEx pouch bound for Geneva, I'll understand.

1-1-8!

Recently, I posted about the CERN rap. Apparently, rap videos are not a unique way to communicate in Switzerland.

A few months ago, some long-term public phone numbers were privatized, causing a lot of confusion. Chief among the problems was that the number to call if your house caught fire (118) was confused with information. People who only needed to know when daylight savings went into effect were calling Geneva's fire hot line.

Here's the video that remedied the problem. It's all in French. But if you've got soul, it don't matter, yo.

  

Black Hole Watch

CERN's Large Hadron Collider was activated yesterday. So far, no black holes. Not that I've seen anyway. Nice to see Google acknowledging the event on their main page, though.

Tardy Slips and Culture

We had an agency meeting yesterday for a presentation on account management. It was really well put together. I enjoyed it. But there were probably 20 people who attended, and with a handful of exceptions, the majority of us were late.

Our CEO asked if he could say a few words before the presentation and said he had "a moan." He told us there is no excuse for showing up at meeting 10 minutes late when everyone knew it was supposed to begin at noon. He didn't talk down to us. He just made it very clear that he didn't want tardiness to be a part of our agency culture.

There were two things I loved about this:

1. I don't think I've seen an agency leader be that stern about starting a meeting on time. Ever. (In fact, because of their schedules, it seems it's often the agency leaders that are the late ones.) Very refreshing.
2. He wasn't complaining because his time was wasted. He was being a vanguard of our agency's culture. Here's a CEO who not only understands the importance of culture, he's consciously trying to shape ours for the better. Again, very refreshing.
   

Lunch Break Photos Are Coming In

Lunch break photos are starting to trickle in. I've received pictures from four people so far, and each of them is really refreshing and inspiring in their own way.

Please keep sending these to me at greg.christensen@yr.com. I'll post them October 1st. (Be sure to include the location and what you ate.) I think this is going to be a cool show.

Every Office Needs A Frank

Frank Sorgues does a lot of our interactive work. He’s a musician who had never heard of Y&R before taking this job. He spends his free time experimenting with different film and animation techniques, and making clips like this for his own amusement:

I would guess Frank's less concerned about getting into the One Show than he is about creating something cool. He’s got a thick layer of glitz insulation. When he wins a Cannes Lion, my guess is he won't value it as much as his “Nobody Lies To A .45” beltbuckle.

To see more of Frank’s work, check out his homepage and his YouTube site.

Bikin'

I started riding my bike to work this week. I bike. To work. In Europe. I feel like I should get a basket on my handlebars and fill it with baguettes.

Geneva is a very bike-friendly city. There are huge paths set apart from motorized traffic. Even when bike and car traffic merge, there are small traffic signals specifically for bicyclists.

The only disconcerting part of the ride is the occasional lane that is designated for buses, taxis, and bikes. They may as well include mothers with prams. It’s kind of like having a special room in your house for rare paintings, fine china and wildebeests.

The Lunch Break Challenge

The Y&R offices are about three blocks from Lake Geneva. So at lunch, I take my sandwich and a bottle of water down to the shoreline to eat. Here are a few pictures of my lunch breaks...

(I ate a pepperoni sandwich here.)

(Chicken gyro from a place called Istanbul Kebab.)

(Salmon sandwich and carrots.)

I have to wonder what I would have discovered if I would have spent my lunchbreaks in Chicago like this. At Y&R Chicago, I'd take the elevator down to the foodcourt and either return to my office, or eat in the open space of the creative area. Working in a habitrail complex was great during the Chicago winters. But I never spent a summer day eating at Millennium Park. I never took an extra half hour to walk down to Navy Pier or Grant Park. I never ate between the lions on the steps of the Art Institute.

I don't expect to get many responses to this request, but here it is:

Before summer is over, take a lunch break somewhere unusual/cool/inspiring, send me a picture of your cool lunch spot and I'll post in on this blog. This is open to anyone, not just salaried employees of the Greater Chicagoland area. Send pics to greg.christensen@yr.com. I'll post them at the end of September.