Erik started his career as an art director in Belgium, but eventually left to South Africa where after only one year became the highest ranked creative in the country, and one year later, the most awarded creative. In 2002 Erik became Executive Creative Director at TBWA Paris and in September 2003, President and Executive Creative director. Two years later, TBWA Paris was the 2nd best creative agency in the world, a little later the agency had 10 lions including the 2003 Grand Prix. Erik has also been voted Best Creative Director in France for 3 years in a row. This year Erik took 12 Clios and in Cannes he brought back the Agency of the Year award to TBWA Paris for the fourth year in a row.

With his leather pants, long hair and scrubby beard, Erik Vervroegen could easily pass off as Keith Richard’s nephew. During the night, his close friends call him the ‘Lizard King’ (perhaps because of his table dancing abilities), but during the days they simply refer to him as ‘The best art director in the world’. I met Erik in Palm Springs where he was judging the Clio Print work and it was very clear that his presence eradiated respect from all the other Clio judges. The next time I saw Erik he was going up and down the stage picking up awards at the Clio Festival and again the same thing happened at Cannes when I finally decided to pick his brain and find out what the secret of his success was. Erik is plain and simply one of the most talented, modest, funnest and nicest guys you will ever meet in advertising.

ihaveanidea: You’ve accomplished a lot, I want to know about your trip getting here, to the top. How hard was it? Everyone always says the same thing about you, ‘Oh he’s super talented’, but what else is behind your success?

Erik: I guess I should start with something that happened two days ago. I was on my way to present some stuff for TBWA and suddenly I ended up getting really sick and ended up in the hospital.

I think it was too much stress and too much tension.

The French industry is unfair, you have to be ready to fight all the time. I believe anyone can achieve success if he/she is ready to work hard. Talent is nothing if you don’t have passion. That’s what I really believe in. If you have talent and passion nothing can stop you. If you have talent and no passion then you’re screwed and if you only have passion you’re also screwed. I think you need a little bit of both. I think my passion is 10 out of 10 and my talent, probably something like 4 (laughs).

People are always trying to intellectualize a job that is basically very simple and I think there are too many people giving their opinion about what advertising really is. You have to be strong enough to trust yourself and cut to the chase because there are too many people trying to make money out of their intellectual vision of advertising, which is self-serving.

This is something that I learnt from people who gave me a chance to play and a chance to experiment.

“I think they understand that I create a playground for people with passion. If they don’t have this passion then they will be unhappy.”

ihaveanidea: Is it lonely being a President and Creative Director? What do you do when you have problems? Who do you turn to?

Erik: I don’t know what it’s like in other countries, but what I have learnt about this job is that people are terribly unfair and want you to give, give and give but don’t give anything back. You have to be tough and you have to realize that most of the people you’re working with are basically children, and they will behave like children. They complain all the time and you have to deal with it. I think that’s human nature, they want you to do everything for them and they want to give you nothing back. This is the nature of the job and you should not take on the responsibility of leading an agency if you’re doing it only to help people and if you’re not going to expect anything from them. I expect them to be happy and to work in an environment where they are able to do great work, that’s all I expect. I don’t expect them to be nice or to be my friend, I would love to, but I can’t.

ihaveanidea: What have you learned as a Creative Director working at TBWA. What’s it like to work as a CD under Lee Clow?

Erik: Again I will cut to the chase; people like Lee Clow, John Hunt, or Jean-Marie Dru understand that creativity is the most important thing. So, I’ll have to say they’re nice, they’re keen and they probably know what this business is all about better than anyone else. That’s probably why TBWA has such a great network. That’s basically all I have to say about them, they’re great visionaries.

ihaveanidea: Your legs must be in good shape after all the going up and down picking up trophies at all the award shows. What do awards mean to you?

Erik: It’s all about balance, because if you’re winning a limited amount of awards and not posing a threat to other people, then it’s ok. I realized this 4 years ago in Paris. The average amount of Cannes Lions awarded in France was around 2 for the entire country. So, when I started at TBWA and worked for a couple of months, we came back with 5 Lions. It was a little bit shocking. The next year we won 9 Lions and Agency of the Year and what happened was that Worldwide Creative Directors basically spoke to their French Creative Directors saying ‘Now hold on, for years you have been saying it’s impossible to win in France because of the client, because of the money, because of this and because of that. So explain to me what’s going on at TBWA Paris!?’

And they said ‘Oh no, no, it was an accident it won’t happen again.’ but it happened again and again.

So, what these Worldwide Creative Directors did was put pressure on their lazy French Creative Directors who then decided to start a controversy by claiming that the ads we were doing were not real.

It’s true that award-winning work is aimed at small audiences, but this is where the world of advertising is going. You can take one product and split up the target in several slices. Some audiences you can reach by the Internet, others by radio and others by TV. These guys are still thinking, “I’ve got money, I’m going to do a big TV commercial and a print campaign” which is completely ridiculous.

If, for instance, you look at McDonald’s, you could split their target market into at least 4 slices: Girls, who are afraid to eat there, because they think they’re going to get fat. Kids, who go to McDonald’s to have fun and hang around without having to spend a fucking penny. And families and men.

There are different targets and we need to talk to these people differently, but they don’t get that. They’re lost. I’m not a guru but I know that, and I’m not the only one who thinks the same way. Those people are in danger, because they can’t deliver and they want to make us go away. I think we’ve succeeded quite well this year because we’ve won awards and because I’m still happy to sit here beside my Lions.

“I don’t own a house. I don’t have anything. My life’s just in a bag and that makes me a good creative.”

ihaveanidea: When people talk to me about you, they always refer to you as the world’s best Art Director. Technically speaking, how could I become the world’s best Art Director?

Erik: You know what my secret is? If I have a secret, it is this: money and power are not appealing to me.

I’m completely and absolutely free in what I do and because I think this way, I’m still a child in my mind. I don’t want to lose that, I really do not want to lose that.

That’s why I don’t own a house. I don’t have anything. My life’s just in a bag and that makes me a good creative, because I’m afraid of the future. The only thing I have, which took me like 35 years to get, is this bike I really wanted…that’s it.

I think the secret is to always stay fresh and to not be bothered by things that have nothing to do with your job like money or internal politics. You’ll be set free and the only thing you’ll have to do in your life is do your best to make your work different.

I have no fear, I have no debt, I have nothing.

So, if something happens tomorrow and I lose my job, it’s going to be OK, because I’m free and I’m still a child. It’s these two things that are my secret: no money pressures and no power pressures. It will give you that BANG!

I’m still a little bit nuts, but you need to remain curious. I’ll give you an example, the other day there was a fisherman, just a guy fishing and I became really interested in that. I asked myself “What kind of guy likes fishing?”

So I went to him and started asking him questions and we ended up having a 40-minute conversation. By that time everyone had gone. They probably thought “fishing is fucking stupid!” but it probably helps being curious, fresh and open. I think it helps a lot.

ihaveanidea: When you’re in a place like Cannes where everyone is in advertising and all they talk about is advertising, do you ever ask yourself, “who are these people and what am I doing here with them?”

Erik: I think I can’t pass judgment on everyone here, but if you’re talking to me and you’re nice, then cool we’ll talk. However, if you’re fucking with me then I can be the worst motherfucker on the planet. I love nice people and I hate fuckers.

So, I don’t know, I’m trying to avoid people like that, but I’m polite with everyone.

ihaveanidea: Tell me the story behind making the PlayStation2 Head ad. What did it involve?

Erik: Well, it started with a very simple idea: a guy split in two with a couple of things inside. I remember reading that a Red Hot Chili Peppers’ video was inspired by over 20 kinds of movies including Metropolis from Fritz Lang.

These movies had very rich and detailed theatrical backgrounds. That was the start of everything, to make it as rich and as complicated as humanly possible. We wanted to make it like the backdrop of a theatre.

Once we started, I asked the teams to develop many ideas. Everything should be an idea that leads to new ideas, new ideas and more new ideas.

Then we had a problem because we weren’t happy with the crop, because it was hard to see inside the head. So we had the head drawn by an architectural specialist who had a better idea of how perspective works.

We tried to respect the layout but our first ideas weren’t cooperating, so we had to make a very simple model of a head split in two with all the different levels and decide which angle we were going to choose, left or right. Then, on top of that, we started to shoot a couple of things and because they weren’t working either we had to re-shoot a lot of stuff like walls and objects, and we tried to do some stuff with computers and 3D, but that didn’t work because we found it to be too clean and I wanted texture and materials like wires to make it a bit more messy and realistic. I think it was one of the most complicated pieces we ever did.

ihaveanidea: It sounds more like a TV shoot than a simple print ad.

Erik: Yeah. It was all about improvising and trying to find what’s wrong and then saying “Ok that’s wrong, let’s fix it.”

The rest was more like:
“We don’t have time anymore.”
“We’ll find time”
“We don’t have money anymore”

“We’ll find money, we’ll do the work ourselves.”

ihaveanidea: Not everyone can ride a motorcycle in leather pants into the sunset and not own a house. How can you make people work and think in the same way you do?

Erik: I think they understand that I create a playground for people with passion. If they don’t have this passion then they will be unhappy.

Most of the time they like to complain, but when they see the results they just shut up. It’s always the same complaint; it’s about money.

I don’t care if they are not like me. I don’t judge, I don’t judge people because all of a sudden they decide to have kids or need to earn more money, we’re all different so I respect that very much.

What I try to do is protect them from making bad choices with their careers. You know what they say, “You are as good as you’re latest ad.”

A good salary in a bad agency can be worst than a bad salary in a good agency, especially when you realize after a while that your work sucks. So, I think they all hate me now because they’re working with me, but one day when I’m gone they’ll realize why I pushed them so hard.