The Pitch: Stranded in adman's exile - and loving it

By PAUL CATMUR*

I recently went to a meeting of DDB creative directors in Chicago where a colleague from the States asked me where I was from.

I told him I'd spent 10 years working in London and was now in New Zealand.

"Why?' he asked. "Did they send you?"

The idea that someone might actually volunteer to further his or her career by working in a small South Pacific nation seemed bizarre to him.

He thought New Zealand must be some kind of advertising penal colony to which I'd been dispatched for filling in timesheets late or failing to make a pass at the chairman's wife at the Christmas party.

No, I came because New Zealand was the place where I wanted to live and work, and after two years I'm having the most fun of my life.

It's not just the weather (compared to London, anyway), the fishing and the people; good old advertising has made a huge difference, too.

In London I spent most of my time producing campaigns for multinationals.

After months spent teasing a campaign past client structures that resembled the Borgias' family tree, the fun really began.

Freighter ships would steam off to continental Europe loaded down by great swathes of cardboard for research. My art-director and I would sit in London like War Office staff sticking pins into maps as we waited nervously for news. An account man would stick his head round the door.

"It's going well in Finland. They simply loved the ironic use of decadent political imagery!"

Eh? Still, high fives round the office. Next, Spain. The phone goes.

"Well, it turns out that orange is a symbol of homosexuality in Madrid, and they're not keen on the woman coming out on top, but other than that they loved it.

"Providing, of course, you change the endline, which apparently translates as 'Your mother sleeps with alcoholic pigs, and she likes it'."

And so the campaign moved on, through Belgian burghers, Portuguese peasants and Austrian aunts.

The cardboard was tattered, the concept compromised, but it was looking like we might actually make an ad. Then it reached Frankfurt.

Oh, those German housewives. Many a career has foundered on the leather-trimmed aprons that only serve to disguise thighs of oak and hearts of something far harder. Storyboards were spat at, jokes derided and endlines mown down.

"Funny? Bollockundstuffen!"

The only thing to make it back to London was a dishevelled account man with a straining expense account.

"Don't worry," he would say, patting us on the back and belching duty-free whisky fumes in our faces.

"Give it another crack, boys. In the meantime I'm off skiing with the client. See you in March."

So I really don't mind that New Zealand budgets are miniscule. I don't mind that our ads are only seen by four people and a bunch of sheep. And I don't mind that our salaries would be seen as an insult to a Madison Avenue shoeshine boy.

No, what I care about is that I have access to decision-makers. I have clients who say "I like that, let's make it."

I work with people who are more interested in ads than how they can double their salaries by fiddling their expenses. And the best part of it is that, together, we make advertising that's up there with the freshest in the world.

Watching TVNZ with its absurdly bloated advertising segments, you might doubt it, but it's lurking somewhere underneath, trust me.

No, I wasn't sent to New Zealand. I came because I love it. So take that, you Frankfurt fraus.

* English-born Paul Catmur joined DDB last year. He came to New Zealand in 2000 after a decade with Young & Rubicam London. Fed up with advertising in Britain, he was toying with becoming an author before his career as a creative was rejuvenated in New Zealand. He is DDB's executive creative director.

* Contributions to the Pitch are welcome and can be sent to Irene Chapple