Your own perspective, the only way to originality

Ali Alvarez, creative director with British advertising agency Fallon, was on the jury for this year's AdPrint. "Print must be simply executed and creatively clear," she says, adding that there were many works that caught her eye. Romania, in her opinion, has a young but promising advertising industry. And, she says, there are many things to learn from the British colleagues who are working in the ideal advertising industry.

"I was working in Tokyo for a while. And I just couldn't do the kind of commercials they wanted. And that's because everything was different there. It all depends on the customs and culture of a country."
Going into advertising was a "fortunate accident", as she recounts. In college, she chose advertising because the job of a creative sounded like fun.

"I loved the challenge - to find a creative idea that is also efficient. This is quite a significant responsibility."
In her career, she conceived awarded campaigns for United Airlines, Bacardi and BBC. Now, she works for Fallon, a relatively young agency, with only eight years of history in Great Britain, but with an impressive potential for growth.

And that is because the British love advertising. They are, perhaps, the most refined public for this industry.
"People love watching commercials, unlike in other countries, where this form of communication is loathed," Alvarez says with a smile. "The British are different, they comment, they have their own opinions on the commercials."

To stimulate the appetite for commercials, the creatives are cultivating the traits of the targeted public, the most important being a sense of humour and tradition.

"The British are genetically very cynical, that is why our works are ironic, laden with a very dry sense of humour," explains Alvarez. "Moreover, most of the good commercials are made for TV and only some for the Internet. We are a bit old-fashioned."

Creativity, she says, is seeing things differently. "The only way of being original - because absolutely everything that could be used creatively has already been discovered - is to express things from your own perspective, because nobody can do it the same way."

To Ali Alvarez, London is the ideal place for building a career in advertising. "It has a big history in this industry. This is where people from all over the world come to make a career."

This is not to say that a small market is devoid of opportunities. "It's not like doing something at a global level. It is harder to come up with a message for the entire Europe and, at the same time, it is also less efficient because you are dealing with more cultures. When you are promoting a product on a smaller market, you need to be attuned to the respective culture, or else you risk being cast aside."

""The British are genetically very cynical, that is why our works are ironic, laden with a very dry sense of humour. Moreover, most of the good commercials are made for TV and only some for the Internet. We are a bit old-fashioned."

"The most important thing in advertising is to keep your integrity. You should never promote things you do not believe in."

"A print festival is a bit confining. I like the idea of static communications, such as the printed image. However, I do believe that the visual range is broader and could include outdoor or direct mail works."

This year, 170 creative teams signed up for AdPrint (55 from Romania), up from 101 last year. The festival attracted more foreign agencies than the previous edition. For the first time, there were creative teams from Estonia, Greece, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Russia, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Great Britain, Poland, Germany, Austria, Holland and Romania.

articol scris de Emi LISA -