This blogpost was posted on Medium

After spending the first five weeks of our Pop Up Tour in Europe, we were ready to hit another continent. After a long flight with a stop in Kuala Lumpur we landed in one of the fasted growing countries and cities of the world: Singapore. As someone who was born and raised in the Netherlands and has spent the last six months living in Stockholm, I was immediately struck by one big, shining thing. Here comes the sun, indeed.

A client as old as we are

Let’s talk more about our job in Singapore and what we experienced while working in this city. Our client was BBH, a globally recognized advertising agency founded in 1982 by John Bartle, Nigel Bogle and John Hegarty. Unfortunately, I can’t talk more about BBH or the brief, so, for now, will devote my attention to our process.

Normally, we present our pitch after spending two days with the client, but the agency was so busy, we were forced to deliver a day early. This was a big challenge and marks the first time we spent less than the allotted 48 hours on a project.

Let’s get started

We realized it was going to be a long day when we gathered onThursday morning. Even before breakfast, the lack of sleep and jet lag conspired against us.

Because we set out to accomplish a lot in a limited amount of time, we always begin by setting our goals for the current project. The whole team sits down to discuss everything from whether or not we like the client to what we hope to achieve.

In this case, it was “no worries” all around. Everybody was excited about the job. After defining what the ideal outcome would be, we began the ideation process. People threw out some good ideas, but after two hours of filling post-it notes with thoughts, we needed to try some new brainstorming tactics.

Of course, trying something new costs more time, but we believe it’s worth it. Getting bored of doing our job is a big fear. To make sure that doesn’t happen, we constantly try to vary our methods and expand our toolkit for solving cases. Each new job provides an opportunity to do so.

That first afternoon, we checked in with the executive creative director at BBH and he gave us feedback on the concepts we’d chosen to present him with. Based on that conversation, we were able to kill the ideas that weren’t working, build on favorites, combine a few, and develop some alternatives. As the sun set, we had our final, winning vision.

It was time to build on this idea and formulate the pitch. We divided tasks and started working on them. By four o’clock in the morning, we could no longer keep our eyes open and allowed ourselves to sleep. The next day, we woke up a bit late, but at 4:55 PM, five minutes before the pitch meeting, everything was done. The client liked the idea a lot.

In the next few days, BBH would further develop our idea. Last Tuesday, the agency pitched it to its client. The response was positive.

What did we learn?

When we were traveling through Europe, the changes in culture affected us minimally. Working on a new continent throws so much more at you. First of all, there’s the change in temperature. In Singapore, it gets extremely hot — around 30ºC every day; walking from the hostel to the agency’s office takes more energy in the heat of the burning sun. The cuisine was different, too. During the day, we ate at open market places where they have all different kinds of Asian food.

There are so many new impressions to assimilate. On top of that, you’re working on a brand new brief for a brand new client. Not easy.

The upshot is that you learn a lot. In Singapore, we did just that. Over the weekend, we toured the city and were amazed; it’s booming. Construction workers sweat day and night, and new buildings are rising everywhere. From what we heard and saw, the economy seems to be growing as fast as the skyline. Singapore really is an up and coming city, which explains why more and more agencies are opening here.

The following Monday and Tuesday, we did some short sessions with the creative teams of BBH. We shared ways of working and got insight into how it rolls in a big agency like theirs (as opposed to a six-person agency, like ours). Both parties embrace novelty and implement it to suit their current ways of working.

To sum it up, we learned a lot and had a great experience in a booming, burning-hot city.

After running in the snow it’s time for something more spectaculair. Last Saturday was a historical day. The very first time I had a pair of skies under my feet and hit the slopes in Sweden. It was amazing. 

Maksimilian announced that it was time for IAD13 to get healthy and organised a ski trip. First I wasn’t totally in for it but after realizing that this probably will me my last change to hit the slopes in Sweden before going on tour I signed up. Also there was still a lot of work to do, but thank you friends for pushing me not working on Saturday and set foot to the piste. 

As a very young Woutje (je is a Dutch suffix that diminishes the noun; here my name) my parents took me and my sister on winter sport holiday. Although that sport here is a very big word because we were langlaufing. 

Together with some other students (experienced till beginner) we took the bus at 7 am in the morning and headed to Romme Alpin for our ski trip. After arriving in this beautiful resort we got our gear and it was time to hit the first slope. The weather was beautiful and there was 1.20 meter snow, perfect conditions they told me. Immediately we took the elevator to the highest point of the ‘beginner’ slope but this was a little too much, especially when you don’t know how to break. So we moved to the ‘real’ beginners slope and Maksimilian started his beginners class. After a lot of falling and taking the elevator up on the children’s slope for at least twenty times I had the feeling I was ready for something bigger.

Without knowing where I would end up I took another elevator and ended up half-way a green slope. For the first time I made quite some speed and even managed to get down without ending up with my nose in the snow. After this very cool experience it was time to repeat a few times this slope. At the end of the day I was able to go down from the highest point from the green slope and not break any leg or arm.

Summarising this trip results in admitting that I’ve found a new sport. I definitely want to go more often in the future. It’s so cool having a lot of speed and enjoying the beautiful nature. But best of all, and this I realised when I was home, was that I didn’t think about school, pop-up, future or whatever for one single second the whole day. Of course because I had to focus a lot on the skiing but most of all because I was in another world for the whole day.

Can’t wait for going next time and being able to master the black slopes! Two things I need to say. First of all I got less Fuel for a whole day skiing then I expected. Second one is that I was so jealous on those little kids (sometimes 3 years old) who already ski so much better than I did.