piece of mind 04

Dialogue en Mono

“Salut, t’es là? Oui, c’est encore moi. Ça fait longtemps qu’on a pas parlé, hein? Ouais, ‘y a beaucoup de choses qui se passent, tu sais... je sais que tu savais, t’es toujours là pour me regarder non?”

“C’est bizzare… je peux même pas te décrire ce que je sens pour elle. C’est une émotion inexplicable. Tu sais, elle ne reste pas statique, elle bouge, dans toutes les directions, elle me creuse le coeur, tout droit jusqu’à mon âme… elle chatouille tout mon être. Ouais, elle devient un tumeur. Mais la difference, tu vois, normalement avec un tumeur, tu meurs… mais, avec ce tumeur, tu vis.”

“elle me donne une raison de vivre… une raison de continuer, de marcher jusqu’au bout du chemin. Je veux même pas courir, je veux juste marcher, pas à pas, avec elle dans mes bras… parceque, tu vois, elle devient ma vie… elle vit en moi.. et j’ai trouvé ma vie en elle. Une vie que j’ai révée depuis toujours, sans la vraiment savoir. Tu vois, tu sais jamais ce que la vie va te donner… une surprise après l’autre. Et elle est la plus grande surprise que ma vie m’a jamais donnée.”

“car, tu vois, l’amour n’a pas de sens quand tu donne un future. Tomber amoureux ne se conjugue pas au future, ni conditionel. Tu dis jamais ‘je tomberais amoureux de toi un jour’, non, tu dis, ‘je tombes amoureux…’. C’est ça qui m’est arrivé quelques temps après l’avoir rencontrée. Aucune prédiction. Une surprise.”

“pour moi, mon amour pour elle c’est comme… hmmm… comment te dire? Bon, tu sais que de temps en temps t’as une fleur qui pousse sur le trottoir? Elle s’arrête pas de pousser, de grandir, de vivre et elle va traverser toutes les barrières imaginables pour rester en vie. Et c’est ça en faite… c’est une fleur qui pousse sur le trottoir. Une rose, pas rouge, mais blanche. Une rose pure, sans prétention. Ouais, une rose blanche sera la plus appropriée. Elle va toujours vivre sur mon trottoir. Et je vais la garder avec tout mon coeur.”

“jusqu’à ce moment, la réalité ne nous gâte pas, tu vois… une condition qui nous sépare, qui met une espace entre nous, infranchissable. Mais dans la vie, les conditions changent et la réalité, c’est nous qui la faisons. Pour le moment, nôtre réalité existe seulement dans nôtre tête, dans nos mots… un monde qui existe en nous.”

“je l’aime… très fort. Si fort que je deviens souvent faible. C’est bizarre qu’une force si grande te donne une faiblesse si forte. C’est le balance de l’universe, peut-être.”

“un jour, je te dirais son nom… un nom qui m’énivre tous les jours, qui reste sur le bout de ma langue, qui dort dans les parois de mon âme.”

“en faite, je crois que tu peux deviner son nom… non? T’aurais dû m’ecouter plus attentivement…”

“je crois en elle, elle est ma vie, ma vie est en elle, et sans elle, il y aurait pas de vie pour moi. C’est une chose certaine.”

“bon, merci de m’avoir écouté… je reviendrai ici de toute façon. C’est le seul endroit où je peux te parler en privé.”

*a dialogue on a stair, while cityspotting...*

citra pariwara...?

Last Friday I went to the a celebration of creativity and craftmanship, something that everyone waits for a whole year, a place to meet the industry and yes, a chance to show off your talent. The holy Citra Pariwara.

And how did it turn out?

For this kind of event, during my whole advertising half-life, I was only frustated twice. The first one was in AdFest 2005, when I looked at rows and rows of creative advertising and excellencies of ideas. I was flabbergasted on how we are way behind those guys in terms of outputs. The second was, well, last Friday.

Frustated because after all these times, what I see from the gallery doesn’t show any improvement. Au contraire, we could see a very noticeable decline in terms of ideas and craftmanship. Of course there were some ads that outstand others, but when you take a second look, they doesn’t have something new to offer. The way of thinking is very western, and it’s not something that was supposed to happen in Citra Pariwara.

You see, Indonesia is a vast multicultural melting pot that has became a nest for different cultures and ideas. It’s a country where you have everything. The way of living is so varied you could find new things every single day. Unpatterned life. And like a diamond, there are so many facets and angles to look at and every single one of them shine.

Yet, in Citra Pariwara, we could only see communication problems being solved by very few angles and most of them are being seen with western binoculars. Indeed, you see every tools of advertising being shown, from the witty headliners (in english, while you are supposed to talk to Indonesians) to the everlasting thing-transformed-to-other-thing-to give-a-new-meaning.

But the soul is missing.

Now, I know I don’t have the qualifications to say whether an ad is good or bad, heck, even my entries didn’t get as far as I hoped. But I know one thing; that there were none of them striked my heart as powerful as, let’s say, IKEA’s “sale on sale” print campaign with an idea so simple you would’ve die to have it (which is not necessary, you need only to observe things, but that’s a different story).

The theme of this year Citra Pariwara is “Surviving Change”. I didn’t see any change, thus I didn’t see why would we need to survive it. Indeed, advertising industry is changing globally as it evolves into a new species. But we do not need to go there yet because there are so many homeworks to be done first. Like finding the uniqueness of Indonesia.

Wow.

That’s a big word. Uniqueness.

But that’s what, I think, we are supposed to do.

Thailand rarely put any of their traditional dances nor their art. They simply put their thai life in their advertisings. And that what’s makes them unique in front of international judges. They dare to be honest with themshelves. We talk funny, let’s make it a strength instead of being ashamed. We have silly habits, let’s put them in ads as they are. The creators observe things around them, almost without missing a single thing.

We should look closer around instead of thinking the way those award-winner hotshots think. It’s not “what would Droga do?” but rather “what would Droga not be able to see around him”.

Our environment is our uniqueness. And that’s something Kelly, Judee or Guerrero don’t have.

Another factor that comes into the equation would be our inability to think strategically. What I see in the Citra Pariwara are often eye-candy advertising. I see Jessica Simpsons instead of Catherine Deneuves. We need beauty with brain. Not dumb blondes. It’s the scam/initiative factor when you do an ad for the sake of craftmanship and forget the very core dna of advertising: communicate with people. No, it’s not a grammatical error, instead of communicating one way TO people, we need them to respond, to build a dialogue between producers and consumers. That is why you need a good strategy to back up your ads. It’s not “I have an execution idea, let’s do it!”.

It’s time to really put the suits’ names in the certificate not for the sake to fill the blanks.

Strategy is always the biggest part of a creative process because from there, we could truly give birth to outstanding ideas that would hit the right spot in the eyes of the consumers. I can assure you that ads that has an excellent strategic back up would not only shine in the award circuit, but would also gain public interest and last much longer than your usual one hit wonders (remember “I never read The Economist”?).

That’s what I really want to do from this moment, doing ads that has those two characteristic, not eye-candy things and for that, I would need support from my account service’s fellows. And I intend to involve them as much as possible.

Once again, this is my point of view; it could differs from yours or theirs, but I honestly believe in that.

And belief is everything.

-/-

Another chapter.

Another story.

It was a sweet story. The writer fell in love with the story.

But this writer doesn’t know how would the story go.

So he decides to put the story down for a while, for he’s afraid that the story would disintegrate along the way.

Too bad the story wouldn’t want this writer to continue it, ever.

The writer sits down and ponders.

He would play solitaire until then.

*thanks for everything...*