Heads Up: Oli Rimoldi and Sigi Egedal

Sigi Egedal was due to study religion until she saw the light and Oli Rimoldi did a psychology  degree, but then, luckily, they both found advertising and formed a formidable creative duo. Now at BETC London, the twosome talks to Danny Edwards

BETC London creative team Sigi Egedal and Oli Rimoldi are creative geniuses, advertising legends in the making and innovators of the highest order. OK, so we may be biased because of their fantastic work on last year’s shots Awards advertising campaign but, come on, that campaign was pretty bloody good and definitely justifies a certain amount of high praise.

If you didn’t see it they managed to turn the usual celebratory and self-congratulatory tone of awards-based advertising on its head with a set of print ads and an online film that highlighted the losers of the night, rather than the winners. ‘Advertising’s Biggest Night of Disappointment’ was a line that, initially, some in the shots office had issues with – for obvious reasons – but Egedal, Rimoldi and the now departed BETC London ECD Neil Dawson and head of copy Clive Pickering adeptly accentuated the positives and helped the awards embrace a creative, and ultimately very successful path.

The set of brilliantly designed and written print ads instructing non-winners what to drink, when to depart the celebrations and how to shake hands with the winners would, on their own, have been perfect but the accompanying online film, The Good Loser, was the icing on the cake. The 48-second spot featured the likes of AKQA’s James Hilton, Stink’s Daniel Bergmann, Joint’s Damon Collins and a host of other London ad execs as they flexed their acting muscles by pretending to be disgruntled losers at an ad awards event. Shot by MJZ’s Stephen Johnson, it was a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed and, it has to be said, seemed quite cathartic for some of those in front of the camera. “I guess the brief was quite clear, that the shots Awards is very selective,” says Rimoldi, “you go to many of these awards and can sit there for hours and there are so many winners it feels like everyone wins. So when we were told there are only 14 categories and 14 winners, we thought that was unique. We went on to think, ‘well, I guess there’ll be quite a few losers’.”

Rimoldi, 26, and Egedal, 29, met at the Watford Creative Advertising Course in 2008 after both initially travelling down quite different paths to advertising. Egedal signed up for a religious sciences degree in her native Denmark before quickly realising that wasn’t an ideal choice. She left and got a job as a receptionist at BBDO Copenhagen, which piqued her interest in the industry. Rimoldi’s journey started at BBH London where he undertook work experience at the age of 16 which “gave me my first taste for it but then, randomly, I went and did a psychology degree, just so I could go to university”. 

Eventually though, both found their way onto the prestigious Watford course and soon paired up as a creative team, though even that nearly didn’t last too long. “We wanted to break up the whole time,” explains Egedal, “because Tony [Cullingham, who runs the course] hated our work.” “We used to do so badly,” continues Rimoldi, “and we each thought we should work with someone else but Tony told us to stick it out.”

And that, it seems, is why Cullingham runs the course. He was right, and stick it out they did, graduating from the nine-month course in June 2009 before moving on to various placements, notably at VCCP, after which, at the end of 2010, they moved to DDB. They were there for three years before BETC London came calling and the rest is, well, a seemingly bright future.

Campaigns for Gü and Volkswagen [above] came at DDB while they have recently been working on the Bacardi account at BETC. On their partnership they say that they are very close – as their accompanying portrait photo attests – both working as art director and copywriter together and sparking ideas off each other. “If Oli were a girl,” explains Egedal, “we’d have our periods simultaneously. That really describes how close we are and how closely we work.” Their working practice also seems to involve a fair amount of people-watching outside of the office, and the occasional tipple. “We tend to work a lot in different locations,” says Egedal. “That’s probably our biggest inspiration.” “And if things get tough” adds Rimoldi, “we go for a sherry down the road, that’s our latest thing; an inspirational sherry.”