An informal look at where we’ve been working.
(Click on an image to enter the slideshow.)

Garden of George Hotel, Hamburg, 8am. The first sign that the day wasn’t going to go well. Very picturesque, but I had to get from Hamburg to London to give a presentation later that day and the hotel receptionist had just told me that Hamburg airport was shut because of the snow. To make matters worse, the internet was down, so I couldn’t even email the debrief and present it over the phone, which is what multinational clients often want. But this was a local client, who didn’t like the thought of that anyway. The weather meant that most of the clients couldn’t make the few short miles from home to their office for the meeting either, but that made no difference: we were persona non grata for not getting there and we haven’t worked with them again. The trials and tribulations of agency life! Actually, for exactly that reason we have a policy of not having a meeting on the same day as we are travelling, but sometimes that just isn’t practical.

Malaga, Spain. A very nice place. Presenting at an annual conference we present at most years. It’s usually great fun but this year I was working on a pitch at the same time and so spent most of my time stuck in the hotel working while James gadded the night away with old friends from previous years. We won the pitch though.

The Glasshouse, Vienna. We were in Vienna presenting at a conference. I don’t think we made ourselves popular with the organisers as we held a party for the delegates in the Glasshouse. The organisers were holding a sponsors drinks at the same time elsewhere and most of the sponsors came to our event and not theirs. (We haven’t been invited back!)

We’ve never worked in Iceland actually. Never even set foot on Icelandic soil. You can find out how we came to receive this message HERE

Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, living up to it’s stereotype. Beverly Hills also has some very elegant areas indeed though. One of the most amusing moments of my career took place during a meeting at my hotel in Beverly Hills. That story is HERE

No rest for the wicked, Romania. In a hotel room in Bucharest, planning the schedule for the project in the US I was on my way to next. I took this because my colleagues think I spend my time lounging around expensive restaurants when I’m away. It will do nothing to dissuade them: they’ll say I fabricated it whilst lounging around in an expensive restaurant.

Harvard Business School, Boston. I haven’t been to Boston for a while, but it is a very cultured American city. Americans I know say one can quickly tire of it’s conservatism though.

New York. View from my room at the Hotel on Rivington, Lower East Side. The view is considerably better than the hotel. Quite how it is rated as one of the most desirable hotels in the world, beats me.

Brussels. It was a surprise to find myself taking this picture as I wasn’t supposed to be here. I left a sun drenched Los Angeles to arrive many hours later in a snowbound Europe. Heathrow was shut so we were delivered to Brussels instead. Thanks go to my Amex travel service and the concierge at the Amigo Hotel (from where this picture was taken) for sorting out the mess and no thanks go to American Airlines for one of the worst service experiences I’ve ever known. (Nevertheless, and because of all that turmoil, in one respect that extraordinary journey changed my life for the better…but that’s another story!)

Charles Bridge, Prague. A city I have spent many happy months in. Rather remarkably I was once suspected of being a terrorist here! My own fault.

Doges Palace and St Marks Square, Venice. Taken from a vaporetto on my way to the curious island of San Servelo to present at a conference. The conference was fine. The night out with some Scandinavian delegates afterwards was much better though. So good that they missed the last vaporetto back to their hotel…which was on another island!

Neuer Zollhof, designed by Frank Gehry, Dusseldorf, Germany. One of the country’s many underrated cities. I spend a surprising amount of time here: generating insight, testing concepts, evaluating scripts.

Bratislava, Slovakia. Enjoyably, one of the best ways of getting there is to fly to Vienna and sail down the Danube on one of the boats in the foreground. We were here for a meeting with the General Manager of Nestle Slovakia, a very entertaining Frenchman.

Philadelphia, USA. It’s strange how time gets used on international projects: fourteen hours flying and three days away from home for a thirty minute meeting. Worth it though. But sadly Philadelphia isn’t America’s most interesting city.

L’Hotel, St Germain, Paris. One of the world’s most refined hotels, and where Oscar Wilde died. It’s cultural and aesthetic associations live on. I was in Paris evaluating advertising concepts. Quite straightforward. Unlike the Eurostar journey home. The journey wasn’t cultural or aesthetic either. It was hilarious in one respect and very disappointing in another. You can find out more about that journey of conflicting emotions HERE

Red Square, Moscow. I’ve been here lots of times, but it still impresses me. That’s not to say the rest of Moscow does. There’s a constant sense of being close to trouble. And usually you are: I once arranged for a cab to collect me from a viewing facility late at night. A cab was outside and they said, yes, they were there to collect me. They weren’t. The correct driver saw what was happening and approached. The opportunist dealt with matters by locking me in his cab whilst getting out to argue with the driver I had booked. They shouted at each other and pushed each other about a bit while I scrambled out of the cab window and made my escape. What a ridiculous state of affairs. Some of the restaurants are great though. And it’s much better than Ukraine.