Some things you don’t learn in school
Unless of course, you are the teacher.
Timeline
It's all luck, but that doesn't make it random.
One day my boss said: “congrats, you’re not a junior anymore”. He pointed out how my life had changed. I had a partner now. And I had become a college professor, teaching design and communications on my days off from work. I had even become a board member of an improv school in Brussels. And a consultant for consultants. I had instigated digital courses for my non-digital colleagues at our office. And helped set up our agency’s first TikTok team. I gave workshops for schools visiting our office. I mentored several interns and even a junior team. Together with Manoah I managed even to get a creative print ad made! My life has indeed turned into some sort of movie! A B-movie. For now.
😷 Can
'
that’s not possible right now' be optimistic?
I was so inspired by this common, negative COVID-19 saying that I made it the leitmotif of this year’s BAS opening speech.
Speech for Belgian Ad School – BASTA 2020
⚰️ Is death reversible?
We showed Belgians that even the last page can be turned, with a press ad on the back of De Standaard newspaper.
Print ad for RebornToBeAlive – Publicis 2020
🦄 Should teachers help students forget school?
in 2019 I discovered that the less school looks like school, the more students want to learn. So, for my latest course I threw all the rules overboard and built my own digital art campus.
New Photoshop learning method for AP Hogeschool 2020
⏲ Is Instagram the key to solving food waste?
Food pics on Instagram encourage food waste, but what if they became expiration date reminders that gave you recipes?
Social activation for the UNWFP – Young Lions Live 2020
🎧 Do resits always cancel your summer?
Noise cancelling technology helps you study anywhere. Even at that festival you booked tickets for, before you got a resit.
Festival activation for Sony – Publicis 2020
⚡️ Is a coach coachable?
Ben Hartwig is a doctor, a geneticist, a trainer, and an improviser. I helped him find his brand identity & oversaw implementation.
Full rebranding of Neuroblitz – Freelance 2020
🕰 Can you travel back in time to teach yourself?
“Teaching students is a lot like debugging old versions of yourself.” But then the lockdown came … and I adapted.
Series of online classes for AP Hogeschool 2020
🍗 Can you outsmart a Holiday commercial?
Supermarkets spend millions on their Holiday commercial. But could it be, that a big part of the battle takes place elsewhere?
Holiday campaign idea for Carrefour – Publicis 2019
🎭
Hey, I’m a total noob. Mind if I join your board?
I never asked that. But in 2019 I did become a board member of the highest rated improv school in Brussels, at the age of 27. How? Click, and I’ll tell you.
🌵
Can the truth be just as inspiring as a buzzword?
Working in the applied arts is tough. 93% is rejection. To illustrate this to my students I created a kid-friendly metaphor.
Inspirational talk & booklet – AP Hogeschool 2019
🍞 Can a cook-off replace a mentorship program?
Belgian Ad School’s annual alumni kickoff, didn’t work anymore. So my team and I changed the recipe. Starting with the speech.
Event for Belgian Ad School – BASTA 2019
🤞
Would my exact opposite and I get along?
Early in 2019, I met Manoah Iannello. Like all advertising’s greats before us: we merged our names. It spells … majo, with a j.
Team Portfolio featuring all our published advertising work
✂️ Am I becoming one of those ‘maker-creatives’?
Honing your craft as a writer, art director, and designer sometimes means taping 12 jars of Nutella together.
Physical media for Digitas/Publicis – 2018, 2019
The trials & errors of juniorship
For various reasons, our startup didn't make it. I returned to Belgium and teamed up with an old classmate. We freelanced for several months. I took the extra time to hone my design, illustration, art direction and writing crafts. I brushed up every case in my portfolio, even the old ones.
I landed an internship at Happiness (FCB). My internship turned into a job. After about a year I switched to Boondoggle. And then Digitas; because a friendly colleague I had met at Duval Guillaume had become CD, and he hired me. He taught me about business, and its inner workings and politics. He mentored me further. And freed up budget so I could get a partner. This partner was Manoah Iannello, and together we would write advertising history. That was, and still is the plan.
🍊 Can I write nice things for an HR department?
Did you know Orange is a Top Employer? They’re far
too humble to tell you themselves. So we hired an actor.
Video, webcopy, … – Digitas/Publicis 2018, 2019
👚 What would that visual look like on the radio?
Fashion retailer SKM sells clothes that aren’t just
pretty, but practical too. Even on the radio.
Audio-rebranding for SKM – Boondoggle 2017
🏷 Can you make your appearance say more?
If people wore meta-tags, like websites do, wouldn’t we all
find our soulmate during an after-work-networking-event?
Stickers for Belgian Ad School – BASTA 2017-…
📱 Is our online behavior maybe a little bit funny?
Top up your phone and get double data. You know … for likes and stuff. Turns out, human beings are fascinating.
Radio for JIM Mobile – Happiness 2016
🍔 Creative technologists are awesome. Am I?
Playing with various ‘new technologies’ for our
national hamburger restaurant chain: Quick.
VR, 3D & Chatbot spielerei for Quick – Happiness 2016
🎉 Can Tomorrowland have a happy ever after?
Tomorrowland seizes to be relevant once the summer ends.
What if their aftermovie kept going and spamming people?
Joke-gone-too-far for TML – YoungDogs competition 2017
🐧
Can ‘not choosing’ be marketed as a choice?
Vedett used to be this cool anti-beer-marketing-beer
But then more brands came. So we built a penguin.
POS for Vedett – YoungDogs competition 2016
💰
Can Skittles make bookkeeping fun?
There are ±168 Skittles in a $1,3 pack. So, 1 Skittle = $0,0077. Now tell me, how many Skittles is say … your education worth?
Webshop concept – e-commerce masterclass 2014
The post graduate that saved me
“You’re not in advertising to make friends” Is what my boss said in his goodbye speech for a colleague they had just fired. It made a deep impression on me. Outside, the world was changing. Mortierbrigade was losing relevance. And I had picked up the habit of reading business books. This gave me so many questions, and no answer seemed to satisfy me. “Maybe I should resume my Master’s? After all, this initial internship was part of a bigger Master’s program …” While I was in the process of making the right choice I failed my Master’s and lost my job at the one agency that gave me a chance. So I decided it was time for a post-graduate: the recently founded Belgian Advertising School looked perfect. And they were kind enough to accept me.
This turned out to be a foundational year in my life. I would learn strategy, tech, digital marketing, behavioral economics, ideation, finance, scrum, ... from the best in the industry (because this post-grad seemed to hire everybody). I would practice teamwork. And work on real pitches for real clients every week. We would run our own agency. And I scored a 6 month ‘Creative & Behavioural’ internship mentored by Tom De Bruyne in Amsterdam.
Better yet. Upon graduation I would be selected by a world class startup program, and travel all over Europe. Our startup would be chosen, patented, funded and on its way to conquer London. What could possibly go wrong?
💊 Is there a pill for every one of our problems?
First World Problem pills that (not quite) treat your ailment. Buy them to treat a much bigger ailment: medicine inequality.
Fundraiser case study for Aids Fonds – Sue Amsterdam 2015
💸 Can we
occupy Wall Street using
Adwords?
Back in 2014 you could! I gave Wall Street a taste of its own medicine to impress my dream employer on a portfolio night.
Digital protest for Occupy – Wieden+Kennedy LDN 2014
🍴 Why are cooking videos always so damn short?
Tv chefs are impossibly fast. You want to pause them, but
you have your hands full. Now you can ask them to slow down.
Voice commands for VRT Digital – Belgian Ad School 2014
First internship and the birth of hubris
The ad world is a tough place to break into, even for unpaid interns. None of the agencies we emailed would take us. Except one. The legendary — and notoriously choosy – Mortierbrigade. Hired on the spot. But, if we wouldn't deliver, we'd be out that same week. That was the deal.
Then, my teammate dropped out, and I became a SOLO copywriter. Challenging, without a writer’s background. And the internship hadn’t even begun! When I arrived I found out that the few available spots to sit were taken by other intern teams, so I set up camp in the lunch area, moving all my stuff when the others took their lunch break. The briefs I got, varied from ‘finding pictures for the employees’ to ‘writing 2 lines Google ad copy’. Not at all what they taught me in school.
Terrified to mess it up in this agency full of champions, I gave them all I had: my sole dedication, and my time. Arriving as soon as the shutters went up, leaving with the last train home. Often working 72 hours straight and crashing in the MB Hotel. I absorbed everything they would give me. And in turn, they rewarded me with respect, even friendship, better briefs and eventually ... a job offer.
🔅 Do you have wisdom(s) to share at age 21?
As the months of my internship progressed, I got better at writing, observing, concepting, designing, and arrogance.
Bunch of quotes – Mortierbrigade 2013
💭 Apples to apples, forceps to contraception?
“Which Belgian invention is the greatest of all time?”
A question so futile, we used it to make four 30” videos.
TV commercials for Radio 1 – Mortierbrigade 2014
💉 Does a celebrity make for a good guinea pig?
We experimented on Lieven Scheire (a popular
science/nerd-culture tv-maker) to sell more Humos.
Radio for Humo magazine – Mortierbrigade 2014
The art school years. Where it started ...
I was always captivated by the human mind. After 12 years of classic (maths & science) education, I was all set to go study psychology or neurobiology at the university of Ghent, but I ended up choosing an artistic college instead. Advertising. In 4 short years I had to build up my drawing, painting, conceptual thinking, typography, photography and presentation skills from scratch. I was the youngest student in my class, and rather shy. This meant I often let all my fellow students go first in reviews. But the consequence of that was, that all the obvious ideas were taken by the time it was my turn. This forced me to find ideas no one would have thought of ... even if that initially meant sacrificing on relevance.
🍭 Does some music belong in a pharmacy?
A music album — basically a drug — for a Belgian artist,
that you can only buy with a real doctor’s prescription.
Design for Dr. Lektroluv – UC Sint-Lucas Antwerp 2012
💪 Have we been marketing eggs wrong?
‘Energy’ and ‘protein’ claims, do they have to be hollow? What if the next aspirational message came from an egg-brand?
Campaign for VLAM – UC Sint-Lucas Antwerp 2012
💝 Is Merci
the perfect gift for every occasion?
Unearthing entirely new business opportunities by
removing the Merci logo from its iconic packaging.
Stunt for Merci – UC Sint-Lucas Antwerp 2011
🚽 How would you design a bathroom for dogs?
Keeping the streets clean with ... canine porter potties!
Public service campaign – UC Sint-Lucas Antwerp 2011