5 minutes with... Eric Quennoy
Eric Quennoy, Executive Creative Director, W+K Amsterdam
Interviewed by LBB editor, Gabrielle Lott
What makes W+K Amsterdam unique?
I think all W+K offices share an inherent cultural DNA, but what separates Amsterdam from the other offices is that we are perhaps the most globally positioned office. Most of the other offices are set up to predominantly work with local clients, whereas we mainly serve global bits of business. With that comes a very international mix of people, and we invariably have someone happy and someone sad after every World Cup match.
How do you find talent for your agency?
We tend to look at a map of the world and wonder what obscure country hasn't yet been represented by someone in the office. Then we send our creative recruiter, Keith White, out there to find them.
Do you also work on 'local only' creative?
Definitely. On Nike, for example, at the same time as doing the big, global Write the Future campaign, we created a campaign for the Dutch national football team. We also do some really interesting work for the Film Institute of the Netherlands, which we helped rename the 'Eye'. Despite the majority of our work being global, we feel it's really important to build relationships with local businesses and to stay connected to the city we love.
Working on global accounts, how do you select directors for film work?
The same way we do on any piece of film. It's always about finding the directors who have the vision, the style and the voice that best matches the script, and sit within our budget parameters.
A hot trend amongst agencies these days is to develop their own brands and IP. Is this something that interests W+K?
Definitely. When you have so many incredibly creative people in the house, riffing on ideas all day long, it seems silly to limit their thinking to advertising. I won't pretend that we have cracked anything of major significance yet, but it is most definitely part of our agenda to make these kinds of ideas a source of future revenue.
What value do you put on winning awards?
We love to win them obviously, but we never, ever start working on a brief with the objective of picking up a Lion. The thing that drives us is simply making the most amazing work we can on every brief we get, and something that we are all truly proud of. Collecting a piece of metal is just a wonderful by-product of this.
How did you get into advertising?
Getting paid to hang out all day with your friends and come up with silly ideas for products….c'mon, how doesn't everyone get into advertising?
Does a recession call for stronger creativity to counter lower budgets?
Not sure it necessarily calls for 'stronger' creativity, but perhaps it calls for smarter solutions to the client's problems. How else can we move people, get them to think something about a brand, without relying on a massive media spend. Thing is, I'm not sure that this has anything to do with a recession. It's how we should be thinking about all our briefs, regardless of economic conditions.
