Culture Shock

My Discovery: There are no Sharpies in Switzerland.

My Reaction: What?!

I was at the office this weekend helping pull together a presentation. When we began making revisions, I asked if we had any Sharpies. I got a room full of blank stares. "You know? Sharpies? A black marker." I was handed a generic black marker. "No! Sharpies!" More blank stares. I even tried pronouncing it in French. Nope. Sharpies are not to be found in Switzerland.

No peanut butter and no root beer. This I was prepared for. But no Sharpies?

Meet Victor!

Our new website has gone live. Still very rough. (Victor, the little blue guy will be more animated - especially on the second page. And there are a few bugs to work out, like the fact that you always have to go back to the home page to view the other pages.)

What's your candid opinion? Though I was able to contribute a few ideas, the concept for this began before I arrived, so I won't take criticism too personally.

What do you like? What do you not like?

Thanks.

Frank & Kimya

The first time I ever heard about Kimya Dawson was a couple years ago when we were trying to license a Moldy Peaches song for a Sears commercial. But I think it was her work on the soundtrack for Juno that really made her famous. A few weeks ago, my friend Frank saw I was playing Juno on iTunes.

Frank: Oh, you like Kimya Dawson?

Greg: Sure.

Frank: She’s married to my friend, you know.

Greg: What?

Frank: Her husband, Angelo. We used to be in a band together.

Greg: What?

Frank uses my keyboard to get onto Kimya Dawson’s MySpace page. There’s a cute photo of her with her husband and baby girl.

Frank: Yeah, that’s Angelo. He’s from Anncey. [Frank’s hometown.] You know the song Vampire?

Greg: Yeah.

Frank: They recorded it in my house.

I play “Vampires” from the Juno soundtrack.

Greg: This song?

Frank: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s this version, but the first one was recorded in my house.

So our interactive guy is friends with Kimya Dawson and her husband. Cool. A few days ago, he told me Kimya and her family were coming to Anncey, and they’d be staying with him. Interesting. But it was a surprise when Frank came to work this morning with a copy of Kimya’s new children’s album “Alphabutt” signed by the whole family.

What Kimya wrote for me...

What Angelo wrote for me...

What their daughter, Panda, wrote for me...

And, yes. The cover art features cute animals passing alphabet gas...

Now if I could just find a turntable in Geneva.

Rainbowlicious.

Fire and Water

We brought a 1000-Watt transformer with us so we could continue using our U.S.-format electronics. The problem is, there is only one outlet in the apartment that can handle that current, and it's in the closet that's designed for the stacking washer and dryer.

Since we use the building's laundry room, our wash closet is our computer hutch. We say it's temporary, but if it's still the set up in 2010, I won't be too surprised.

Connected to the transformer is a power strip with six U.S. outlets, which means this closet is where we get online, recharge the Leapster, plug in the iron, and (as you can see) make our popcorn. We brought a waffle iron, but I don't want batter dripping on my iMac.

The good thing about this being in the washer closet is that if there's ever an electrical fire, we can just turn on the tap (on the right, just behind the broom).

Clearing Out iEverything

I've been a little frustrated with the memory of my computer at work. It's a G5, loaded up with the latest Adobe Creative Suite, as well as the previous version (neither of which I need as a copywriter), and after I loaded a scant 100 albums from iTunes, I was left with only 2 GB.

For the last two months, I've been managing the memory on my hard drive by pulling off albums I wasn't using and deleting podcasts I wasn't getting around to watching, including most of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

This morning, it occurred to me to log on as the freelance art director who had this computer before me and see what he had on his desktop. In short, about 50 albums on iTunes, a couple of iMovie projects on an iDVD template, and almost 1000 pics on iPhoto.

Deleted them all. And I'm cruising with 119.36 GB right now. I'm loving the new Genius playlist feature on iTunes, and I'm pulling some old albums off my iDisk and taking them for a spin. 

Side note: Even though I missed most of the Democratic and Republican conventions, I made a point of watching Palin's and Obama's addresses. But neither one compared to this:

Monday Morning Ad Thoughts

When I was at Hadrian’s Wall (now Zig in Chicago), I began reading Jim Aitchison’s Cutting Edge Advertising. I found a lot of great quotes in that book, and began emailing selected quotes to the agency (all six of us) every week. They became our Monday Morning Ad Thoughts. Here’s a sample:

"The more I judge shows, the more I realize that people do come up with similar ideas. That's why the presentation of an idea can make such a difference. Because people are thinking in similar ways, it's more and more incumbent on you to execute everything to the finest detail."

-Bruce Bildsten (creator of Fallon’s BMW Films)

“Instead of people pitting themselves against each other, and being rather petty and jealous, everybody was interested in what the other person was doing, just to see the great ideas that were coming out, and to want to do better through admiration rather than through jealousy.”

– Neil Godfrey on his early days at DDB.

“Advertising companies show reels of commercials when they make pitches to prospective clients. The reels are samples of past work; they can be as old as you like. But nine times out of ten, we show reels from only the last three months. The oldest reel we would show – if, for instance, we needed to make a specific point – would be six months old. We would never show a seven-month-old reel, even if it was great work. This pushes people to the limits very fast.”

- St. Luke’s Andy Law

I discontinued Monday Morning Ad Thoughts when I joined Y&R Chicago (I think I was too intimidated to email advice on creativity to people like Mark Figliulo and Tim Cawley).

Anyway, I’ve started Monday Morning Ad Thoughts again in Geneva. I send them out each week to our creative department, but if you’d like to be on the email list, too, just send me your email address to greg.christensen@yr.com. If you have any of your own, please pass them along.

Resisting the Gravitational Pull of A Big Mac

Last Thursday was a bank holiday in Geneva (Jeûne Genevois, or the Fast of Geneva). I took Friday off as well, and took our family to Lugano in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. 

This is where we went:

And this is what we ate:

I harbor a lot of guilt about eating at McDonald's now that we live in Europe. Lugano offered authentic bruschetta and gelato and pasta al forno, and we ended up supersizing.

But after weighing the pros and cons, taking three hungry and over-exhausted kids into a lake-side Italian bistro wasn't going to work. Were we pragmatic parents or stupid Americans? As long as the kids are full, we'll be whatever we need to be.