Uwe Gutschow has made his first professional foray stateside, recently joining Saatchi & Saatchi LA as director, interactive strategy, after an accomplished tenure at Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town, which included his founding that shop’s interactive group AtPlay and serving in a lead strategic/creative role on the lauded Peugeot 107 “Break Free” initiative, which earlier this year earned a South African Gold Loerie Award for best digital mixed media campaign, as well as a Loerie Bronze medal for its digital mobile component.
“Break Free” connected meaningfully with its desired target market of 18 to 25 year olds, inviting them to design their own 107 cars by using online decals.
A competition rewarded those who designed the best customized cars. The multi-platform campaign spanned such elements as banners, a mobile site, mobile advertising through MXit, mobile software using Semacodes, MySpace blogging as well as a microsite.
Gutschow’s formal education included an economics and business management degree followed by studies at Cape Town advertising school AAA, where he specialized in media. He landed an internship at Saatchi Cape Town, which eventually led to a media position upon his graduation from AAA.
He then moved onto new business management at Saatchi, helping to plan strategies for the Cape Town office to garner global clients. This led to it winning the Guinness account. But the pivotal career move came during the dot-com bust in 2000 when Gutschow paradoxically saw real business opportunities in the interactive space. He put a business plan on the table, helped to implement it, and interactive has grown steadily at the Cape Town shop ever since, including generating a 150 percent increase in revenue this past year.
SHOOT: What drew you to the opportunity at Saatchi LA?
Gutschow: We managed to do some pretty cool stuff in South Africa, but there’s only so much you can do on limited budgets. I wanted to be at the forefront of where change and technology is happening, to work with more scale.
I had opportunities elsewhere around the world but ultimately it was the people here, the rapport I felt with [Saatchi LA Chief Strategy Officer] Mark Turner and [Saatchi LA Exec Creative Director] Harvey Marco. It’s a team that is committed to change and innovating.
And Saatchi LA has a huge media department. Media is the new creative and without a direct link to media, you’re a little removed from where you need to be. Ultimately everything just felt right about Saatchi LA for me. It all fell into place.
SHOOT: You were both creative director and strategist on the Peugeot 107 “Break Free” campaign, in a sense reflecting the coming together of interactive strategy and creative at Saatchi Cape Town. Is that a dynamic you hope to bring to Saatchi LA in that your dual role on “Break Free” had you crossing and blurring the lines between creative and interactive strategy?
Gutschow: I think that’s part of why Mark and Harvey wanted me here. Having started the interactive side in Cape Town, I wound up doing a bit of everything in that building process. And I learned a lot going through that process, working with creatives across the board whether they were specialists in certain interactive areas or focused on storytelling.
We all need to connect–creative, strategy and media–if we are going to successfully connect with consumers in a meaningful way that will still drive sales given the dramatic changes in the advertising/marketing landscape.
We need to all work closely together, to sit down with creative and media teams and brainstorm. Media is not just driving traffic. Media needs to be used in a creative way. The use of media has to be innovative if you’re going to connect with consumers.
So many agencies today are struggling with the disconnect between interactive and so-called traditional ways of working. You have to flatten the landscape and bring everything together. Harvey Marco has already done that to a large extent. There are no “interactive creative directors” here in L.A. They are all “creative directors” and they’re being teamed with people who have skill sets in different areas. There’s a real collaboration going on here and I want to add to that.
SHOOT: Is your transition to the American market made easier by the fact that you’re still part of the same Saatchi family?
Gutschow: Yes, there’s still a great deal of continuity. Tom Eslinger [Saatchi worldwide interactive creative director] moved from Los Angeles to London, and I think that’s why he wanted me to be here to help lead the charge a bit. But with Tom and his partner Howard Geisler [Saatchi’s worldwide interactive managing director], there’s a real sense of a global network for all of us.
We had brainstorming sessions, what we call tribe sessions, the other day to discuss projects.
Work and briefs are disseminated throughout our global teams. Tribes are brought together on different continents and their ideas are fed to Tom who reviews them and gives his feedback.
There’s very much a kind of global team effort in the interactive space. Everyone just wants to pitch in and help.
And it’s not driven by who gets to execute what, but instead by how we can help by formulating and exchanging ideas that ultimately will enable our clients to connect in meaningful ways with consumers.
SHOOT: At Saatchi LA will you primarily be working on Toyota?
Gutschow: I’ll be very involved in Toyota. There are so many different facets to what Toyota is doing–youth ambassador stuff, lots of social networking initiatives, launches of new creative on Matrix, Yaris and so on.
We also recently won the EMI [record/CD label] account. And they’re paying for our ideas and strategic thinking.
The music business has changed drastically, just like advertising has. And just like us, record labels have to reshape and redefine their business. Whenever you have an industry in which there’s a middle person–a record label, the publishing industry–there needs to be reinvention in that a lot of product is becoming easier for people to access directly.
So with that kind of creative and strategic challenge, EMI is an account I’m very much looking forward to contributing to..
That’s why I’ve been at Saatchi for almost 10 years. I’ve stayed for so long because of the freedom and entrepreneurial spirit here. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, I felt like there was an opportunity still to make the interactive space an area of real business growth for the agency. Saatchi Cape Town was open minded enough to hear me out even then.
I put a proposal on the table and we grew from there. Making that opportunity happen in the face of chaos that would have suggested otherwise is what I like about Saatchi. In a down market, we found the undervalued stock and made it work. The attitude at Saatchi is that if you can make things happen, go for it.
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