On My Radar: Gilles Fichteberg

What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

I don’t watch a lot of ads, I’m kind of like a football player who doesn’t watch other games once they’re off the field. Usually it’s other people who show me something or, of course, if I’m on a festival jury. In saying that, I like The Crash Billboard from Serviceplan, which I discovered as Outdoor jury president at the French Club des AD. I’m lucky and much-honored to be President of the Art Direction category at D&D this year, that’ll be my next big gig in advertising. I can’t wait!

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

Amazon. I spend a lot of time looking for rare pearls throughout the world. Contradictory as it may seem, I’m absolutely for localism. In our neighborhood, in the 11^th arrondissement we give a lot of work to small merchants, we have a special bond with them. Actually, our agency wrote and published a book about the area. But when I can’t get what I’m looking for nearby, I hop on Amazon right away. That’s where I get very specific things that I can’t find elsewhere. My two last orders were Venom skate bearings and a very rare book, absolutely impossible to get in France, by Sinjin Smith. Kings of the Beach came out in 1988 and talks about the early days of beach volleyball in California. Hard to find that at your corner shop.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

A Nintendo Switch. I can play the best game created to date; Zelda, Breath of the Wild. It’s been out for awhile but I don’t have a lot of time for it, even though I’m a gamer at heart. And I really can’t wait for Red Dead Redemption from the phenomenal Rockstar Games!

What’s your favoured social media platform?

I’d say Instagram even if I’m on it much less these days. I find that social media is becoming more and more chaotic, it gives everyone a pretext for spitting out rage, misery, and solitude. It’s just not as fun anymore. Instagram is the most low-key and least polluted. It’s visual, and I like that. I follow quite a few photographers, and people that I find very creative. The other big social media platforms give me a headache, I find them to be boring and aggressive.

What’s your favourite app on your phone?

Traktor Pro. It’s a mixing app. As soon as I get any downtime, I’m on my phone, headphones in, mixing. I like to compose playlists with friends or at the house. I don’t think I’m very good, but I love trying things out, like mixing Prince with A Tribe Called Quest to a good bpm, with a nice vibe, while coming up with some good transition loops. I admit it’s not usually very successful but I enjoy doing it.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

The Wire. A monumental, disenchanting show about a society in ruins, seen through the eyes of a police unit who’s tracking down drug traffickers in Baltimore. You start out with guys at the bottom of the ladder, and wind up in the world of politics. Beautiful, brutal, dirty, realist. A narrative weave that’s incredibly powerful. I haven’t found anything nearly as powerful since. Maybe Oz… but that was around the same time. The golden age of HBO.

What film do you think everyone should have seen and why?

Well, everyone should definitely see The Night of the Hunter, Dr Strangelove, Contempt, Jeremiah Johnson, Clockwork Orange, La Strada, Vertigo, Mulholland Drive, Citizen Kane, DogVille, Solaris (Tarkovski’s version), The Dictator, Assault on Precinct 13, Apocalypse Now, The Big Lebowski, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Earrings of Madame De…., The Dark Night, Carlito’s Way, Taxi Driver, It’s a Wonderful Life, Deer Hunter, Goodfellas, The Bicycle Thief, Tokyo Monogatari, Once Upon a Time in America, Shining, Pierrot le Fou… and many others.. But I think what everyone absolutely has to watch is Brazil by Terry Gilliam, for it’s inventiveness, its vision, subversion, enchantment. Brazil will always be at the top of my list and – it was a big punch in my face!

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

On the suburban train I take everyday. I live pretty far out and I come in on the RER train in the mornings. It’s a pretty long ride and I take advantage of my commute to think, search for new ideas, write (exactly what I’m doing right now). When I’m at the agency I’m constantly fixing problems, putting out fires, pushing projects… I value this ‘me’ time.

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

Interactivity. It’s changed the way we tell stories. When I started out, the relationship advertising had with consumers was narrative. Today those consumers are actors of narration. They’ve taken it over, changed it’s course of history, and will be those who write what’s next. Social engagement has made it so that the content we create doesn’t belong to us anymore, as soon as we send it out on the pipeline. That’s going to be more and more the case with the VR revolution coming in strides. Engagement will only be virtual, and social will be just as physical and immersive, and more and more personalisable. Our industry hasn’t been this exciting for a long time.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

More diversity. I don’t think the agency population represents our society as a whole, especially in France. You don’t have to go to an Ivy League school to be creative and have ideas. We have a huge responsibility as advertisers to make our industry more accessible to the larger public. The more talented people there are from all sorts of different places, cultures, backgrounds, the stronger and more creative an agency will be.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

Terry Gilliam, he was the basis for my wanting to be a creative. He’s a free spirit, no matter which support, it’s imbued with imagination, whether his movies, or, in the beginning, with Monty Python. He gave me a craving to tell stories and create different universes. I try to express my inventiveness in my work, as well as in my world outlook and how I go about my daily life. Gilliam convinced me that you have to always be an iconoclast.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know.

I play volleball (I’m 1m 94 cm, so that helps). I play in a championship league during the week, with a team of friends whom I’ve played with for 20 years. JF Sacco, one of my colleagues and fellow co-founders, also plays. But everyone in advertising knows I’m all about volleyball, the last three years in a row my team’s won the YouTube tournament on the Google beach at Cannes.