Creative teams in UAE are like the United Nations

Sun, 2008-02-03 22:16 - By

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Advertising Business, Advertising, Impact BBDO Abu Dhabi, Interview, Peter Vegas

Peter Vegas is the creative director at ImpactBBDO Abu Dhabi. He speaks to us about the Abu Dhabi advertising scene and some of the major clients and campaigns his agency has worked on.

Q1. Kindly tell us about yourself, your career and your current position at your agency.

I’ve been tricking people into buying stuff since 1990 in New Zealand. Worked my way through a few of the big agencies like the good ship Saatchi and the smaller, newer ship M&C Saatchi, then in 2000 I joined a suit I had worked with at Saatchi’s, who had set up his own agency called Spawn, in an empty building that used to house a company that welded bull bars onto vans.
In 2006 I wanted a change, so I took a break to work on a book and when my wife told me I had to get another job I decided to look overseas.

Q2. Tell us about the advertising agency scene in Abu Dhabi, how does it compare to Dubai and whether or not you think that the best work coming out of Abu Dhabi is as good or even better.

I don’t think there is an advertising scene in Abu Dhabi. It was weird coming here from NZ, where there is a really tight advertising community and everyone knows everyone. It feels like Impact is the only ad agency in town. Maybe I have lunch at the wrong places.

Q3. Creative teams in the Gulf consist of many nationalities and individuals with different backgrounds. Tell us how that enriches the creative process.
My knowledge of Indian cricket has been enriched, as has my understanding of what dirty players the Ozzie cricket team are. Our Indian creatives are cricket mad. The Filipinos music mad and the Lebanese are just mad (in a nice way). It’s great. We’re like the United Nations. Except we aren’t based in New York, we don’t have white tanks, and Posh Spice and Angelina Jolie don’t work for us (although Paul Akiki did try to hire them).

Q4. Your agency is producing some distinguished and unconventional TV work, primarily for local clients. Tell us more about client attitudes towards daring new ideas and TV work you are particularly proud of.

Our clients are really open to good ideas. They see all the best work from around the world and the pressure is on us to produce that standard for them. I don’t think we’ve done anything daring. We’ve tried to make some funny work and generally create work that stops people, gets their attention. For me, the the biggest risk we can take with our clients money and brands, is to produce work that is wallpaper. Work that doesn’t get noticed.

Q5. Tell us about some major multimedia (print/outdoor/audiovisual.. etc) campaigns your team have been responsible for.

The Coverage campaign for Etisalat seemed to be all over the place for a while last year, and in Abu Dhabi I guess the Abu Dhabi Awards had quite a high profile.

Q6. Looking to the future, can you see less obstacles to creativity in the region and more 'creative license' allowed by clients?

There will always be obstacles in Abu Dhabi. Finding a car park 1 minute before a presentation for example. Finding a taxi who will pick you up from outside Etisalat’s office after midday during the week. But I think great work, gets great results and once a client has a taste of that they want more, so if that is what more creative license is, then yes.
If there was an actual creative license you could get, like a drivers license, I wonder what you would have to do to pass? The instructors would probably be really tough. If you’d did anything in the test they had seen before they’d probably fail you. And I bet you couldn’t get your creative license in Abu Dhabi. I bet they’d make you drive all the way to Dubai to sit it.

Q7. Any final words?
‘You can’t win Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’ Obi Wan 1977