Translator: Athina Mellidou Reviewer: Chryssa Takahashi
I am truly honored by this invitation
and it is a great pleasure
that I can tell you all I have to say in Greek
for reasons I hope you will understand.
Ancient Greeks separated their Gods in two categories.
The ones concerned with man
and the ones concerned with nature.
And somewhere in between was Hermes, who, to paraphrase things a bit,
was their lawyer, their broker and their advertiser.
And he was supposed to be in the service
of the other two big, noble categories.
We live in an age where the advertiser, the lawyer, the broker, they define
what one should produce and how the other will then deal with nature.
And probably, this does not sound very good.
I am one of them and I honestly don't feel very proud about it.
We cannot talk of our great successes
when things have taken such a turn,
due to the category of people I say I belong to.
And we have committed many crimes.
One of the biggest, in a pure Orwellian way, is that we have switched concepts.
We confuse, for instance, celebrity with talent,
ambition with genius, information with knowledge,
style with content - we even confuse design with architecture-
and of course, consensus with opinion.
And the worst of all we've done,
we confuse the meaning of creation, of production,
of industry, with the gambling of their future value.
Among all these, we are obliged to communicate to the people,
through the small hole of advertising,
a language that everybody can understand.
But how will everybody understand it? And what I claim now,
is that there is a truly universal language,
which has derived, and still derives, all its knowledge from Greece.
But you cannot really go around saying this,
which is why I am happy to talk in Greek.
And it has defined some codes that, when applied,
they meet great success.
And they work today.
I am not being nostalgic of a non-existant past.
I believe that these things work today,
we just don't use them.
So, to feel less guilty, I say that our occupation,
for people who are in my field, is how to make things,
how to live and how to be.
It sounds much better than luxury,
sounds much better than consumption.
But the answer is essentially there.
And so is the question.
Because we are interested in man-creator, not man-consumer.
I am not interested in man-consumer.
Man-consumer will not get us out of recession.
The creator will get us out of recession.
So we should be careful with what to inculpate to the creator
and what not.
How can we now communicate these messages to everyone?
Especially when everyone has different points of view to perceive them.
I still haven't defined these messages, I will get to them.
If we think of classic movies, from different countries,
and we can extend that to consumption,
and the creation of brands and companies.
American classics
- you will forgive me for this great generalization -
American movies show what people do.
In British movies, it is important to notice
what they say, or even more, what they mean.
The interesting part there is the dialog, and what is meant and what is implied.
In French movies you have the sentiment,
"He doesn't love me but now I know why my mum always loved me"
and things like that. (Laughter)
In the Italian, the interesting part is that they show how they do it.
You can take this also to style.
And the messages that these big brands, the companies, put across.
American companies always show something related to success,
status, development of what I am doing.
If we look at the British, they always sell -
or actually, I will start with the European, the French.
They sell a culture at the subconsciousness.
The interesting thing with the British movies,
is that they sell subculture.
That's why they show punk
and the others show, I don't know, the Eiffel Tower.
If we look at the Italians, they know how to make shoes well.
They know how to work leather.
And this fits in the movies.
We can expand that.
We can go to Japan, where the important thing in movies
and in what they make, is the process with which they make it.
If we go to China it is all of the above for now, but it doesn't matter.
Just a small deviation here, what they allow us,
and we should go after it, as a way of narration,
or as what we Greeks do, this is just a deviation I repeat,
they give us the right to say how we thought of something.
And we do not use that enough.
Thought, the right of philosophy, they still give that to us.
So I think we should really go after it,
the how we thought of it, not how we did it, not how we wore it, etc.
So, is there a universal language,
that I can speak to people with so many different perspectives,
that uses things that are accepted all over the world?
This is what I will try to explain with a few words.
First important division is universal vs global.
Global has a sense of conquest.
I am a soft drinks company and I conquered a country
and then I will set up another company there
where I will conquer the next country and send my people there.
It is a logic of conquest.
Universal doesn't do anything like this, neither historically, nor geographically:
Universal stays in one place, and whoever wants, comes.
And it attracts people.
If we manage - talking again from the vile level of advertising-
if I manage to have such a language, am I in a better position?
Instead of chasing, bombing my consumer,
if I express something that attracts people, am I in a better position?
Second element of the universal in relation to the global.
The universal -and think how many references
we can make to Greece about all these -
the universal is addressing people as adults.
What I mean by this:
Marketing, of which I am not the biggest fan,
was made in a beautiful country,
at a time of great and good adulthood, or maybe in its adolescence.
And all of marketing was based, and still is, in adolescent phobias.
With basic low reciprocations.
"Eat as much as you want, you will not get fat."
"You will not work much, you will make money."
"Wear this perfume, you will finally get a partner."
I don't have a problem with this,
but maybe there is another way to say this.
So, if the universal didn't make adolescent reciprocations --it doesn't,
would I have a language with greater appeal
than these basic low reciprocations that I mentioned?
And of course, the universal is addressing the spirit.
It speaks to man, as I said, as an adult.
It is not a coincidence -what I say about adults-
it is not a coincidence that all monuments, courts,
state buildings all over the world, especially in the Western world,
but you will also see the Chinese, they have Hellenistic elements.
Why? Do they maybe project elements of justice,
superior knowledge and good anthropocentrism?
And they are used as a communication medium to promote justice,
equality, democracy and all these?
Perhaps we have the code, but we are not using it?
Second criterion of the universal.
For the past two thousand years of our lives, ethics make aesthetics.
And ethics tell us whether the body of a woman is pretty or ugly.
But what I have learned by looking at simple things,
aesthetics make ethics and not the other way around.
And if we begin really strictly,
we will see that it can influence ethics a lot through aesthetics
in a good way, not manipulating.
It is not a coincidence, the simple example that you will litter an already dirty street
and not a clean street, the same person, let's say.
Therefore, aesthetics makes ethics and not the other way around.
And you know, they say of course, that no matter how much you suppress it,
beauty always finds a way.
And we will always see this, that no matter how suppressed,
things are made with beauty as a criterion.
So one day, when I was making all this formula,
that we shouldn't have cheap reciprocations,
that we cannot have this marketing
with these really low techniques,
maybe we should promote some other things,
the value of the creator,
the value of inspiration, of talent, of imagination, all these.
And I said, I have to avoid reciprocations.
I tell you truly, I was watching tv, on the couch with the computer,
many years ago, and on the screen
the movie Seven was playing.
And I give you my word, suddenly I stand up
and go "Aha!", like Archimedes.
"That's it!"
And I say, how can I define these reciprocations?
So, if, in whatever I want to express,
I avoid lust, gluttony, sloth, pride, all these,
if I manage to avoid these elements,
am I speaking in a different level?
In a level which puts my messages across very well,
and makes the other person respect me more and follow me more seriously.
So this was the logic of the formula I am talking to you about.
And eventually, if we think of the way that we transmit messages,
you will see again the references to Greece.
If we think of the way that we transmit messages,
there are four worldviews, in my opinion.
There is the capitalistic - sorry, I will start with the theocratic,
which tells you to learn - because advertising is supposed to learn something
- you will learn what we tell you to.
There is the capitalistic,
you will learn what you need to, in order to: enter university,
use this machine, be happy.
But there is always "in order to",
which is the capitalistic approach to learning.
There is the Asian worldview, from Confucius etc,
which essentially teaches you how to be a learner.
And says that man is a small part of the whole
and with great consistency, every day, he will be able to be a better learner.
I respect it a lot.
But the Greek one says something that we find more suiting.
It takes man, places him in the middle and surrounds him with arts,
sciences, athletics, nature, agriculture and allows you to learn whatever you desire.
It treats you as an adult, with a free will
and teaches you how to learn, not how to be a learner,
which is also interesting.
It teaches you how to learn.
So again in relation to learning and universality
one looks at things, if he looks at them from this perspective.
So what is the recipe? Because I am obliged
to oversimplify things for which I would like to talk more.
What is the recipe?
If I aim - because I try to respect myself a little
and I try to respect people too - if I aim at the universal,
if I aim at the truth which is derived from knowledge
and not just from receiving information.
Even if this knowledge is subconscious,
even if I communicate that someone has the knowledge,
if I aim at aesthetics and not ethics,
because through aesthetics I am able to transmit great things,
and eventually place man in the middle, and have a true love for man,
my code, in the low level of the development of a brand,
the creation of a company, or at least the promotion of a creator,
it has a meaning which, I tell you again, I believe it functions very well.
Especially in a world that looks at all of this quite suspiciously.
And it is right.
I will show you some examples without analyzing them,
starting with this one I had seen in '96.
I don't know if you can see it well, but it shows an African woman
-it is an expensive brand of clothes-
so, this expensive scarf is worn by the African woman
to carry her child, like they do in Africa.
This campaign was in '96 -and I have nothing to do with it.
So, this campaign was in '96 and its theme was Africa.
When I saw this in '96, I thought, "That's it!"
Who dares do this thing today? In '96.
I searched for this man and today he is my partner.
And together we searched to find the code how we could do something like this
without getting chased by everyone, especially by the client.
Why does it speak in such a higher level?
And why does it eventually touch me in another level
that doesn't make me a bit ashamed of buying the expensive scarf.
A more modern example.
You can look if you want for the elements I told you about,
or at least for some Greek references, in the way of thinking.
This is an English company.
Its jewelry line is called "The Friendship Collection".
Defining Friendship as the relationship of an important archetype
- of Artemis with the little deer -
and defining that friendship is about love and trust.
See now how each one looks at this image.
The British in this case, as we know from football,
all the symbols of their teams are derived from nature, birds and plants.
All their symbols.
Most of their symbols.
And all their clubs.
And all their references are from nature.
So here they see a symbol which they consider clearly British.
The Europeans and the French see their own Renaissance.
The Americans see status.
Portrait photography.
And of course the Renaissance and all that.
Asians see status and culture.
And all these lead towards the same good direction,
using symbols which have always existed.
And they are also true for the brand.
Because you try to interpret,
through the symbols there, the concept of friendship.
For example, all this work here was to see,
through symbols, how movement is defined.
That was the strategic, let's say, subject.
And what better than looking for movement through the definition of grace.
The best definition of grace is this moment of stillness in time
when you say now it will move, now it will move.
And you look at someone who isn't moving and say now they will, and that's grace.
Everybody understands it, even if they see the concept of grace behind
the woman who travels, the woman who lives in New York,
the modern French woman and whatever one sees behind it.
But you start from something that talks to you in your higher level.
And now to Asia.
I don't know if you see Greek references, but in a campaign
to set up one of the first truly Chinese brands,
universal references were very easy to find.
It doesn't matter if it sells cosmetics, it doesn't mean that she's only standing,
that there is someone by the piano, and it has some culture etc,
but the message it passes has also nothing to do with cosmetics.
Or does it?
"I hold my future in my hands" was written on the big banners we put
in China, when women for the first time -and it still happens -
took their future in their hands.
Or "I look for enriching experiences in life".
It is the same.
You speak in another level, even in a culture
which is still not infected by consumption, but runs towards it,
even in this civilization,
speaking with the universal symbols, you pass the exact same messages.
Because at times we see and understand the same things all over the world.
And I will finish without many explanations,
with a last thing, hoping that you don't find any reciprocations in what you see,
like I said "eat as much as you want", "wear this and you will look nice",
but here the elements are derived from icon painting.
And to make the desired uplift to work,
as the specific company did indeed talk about philosophical,
social, religious, political matters,
- the owner of the company had this obsession, not making fashion -
for these messages to be put across
I will give you one detail and leave you.
There are nine legs missing from under the table,
which was not invented now, but many years ago.
That's all I had to say.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)