“The first time he saw it, he hugged me,” says Kurt Blanckenberg, creative director at Dubai advertising agency Mojo. He’s recounting how the charismatic Thomas Lundgren, CEO (that’s chief emotional officer) of The One furniture store reacted when he saw the “Guru” concept the agency pitched almost two years ago. Mojo had competed with a slew of other agencies during a controversial full-day session held by the eccentric Swede to find the one that would launch the store’s new campaign.
With the hug, Blanckenberg and the team thought they’d bagged it. But Lundgren pulled the mojo from under their feet and chose Lowe MENA, who launched a, well, strange campaign that involved pillow fights, and the core values of “believer, brave, love and alive.” The ads were moody and pretentious and prompted Communicate’s reviewer to come to the conclusion that, “The brand deserves better.” (see “The One that got away,” page 50, Communicate, July-Aug. 2007). Lundgren read the review.
Summoning our writer – who he called “an asshole” upon first reading the review – to a discussion, Lundgren said he realized the Lowe campaign was just not what The One needed (see Regional News, page 12, Communicate, Nov. 2007). So he called on Mojo again.
“When they came back to us, we were very cautious,” explains Blanckenberg. “That’s not to say there wasn’t trust, because I’ve known Thomas for years, but we had to make sure when we went back in that they would accept the idea for what it was.”
Not only did The One accept Mojo’s idea, they ran with it – and it’s still running. The campaign features the “Guru,” a chilled chap with an afro worthy of the Jackson 5 and an iPod firmly plugged into his ears, speaking words of décor-related wisdom such as “Come on baby, light my aromatic, deliciously perfumed, sweet-scented fire,” and “Some seasons are so groovy, you just have to invite them home.”
“The Guru is a combination of things,” explains Blanckenberg. “He’s quite retro but still relevant today. He’s street-smart, he’s got a sense of humor, and he can be deep just as he can be funny. He’s very flexible from a copy point of view. The Guru is a representation of Thomas in a way. It allows him to impart how The One feels about things. If you read the lines, they are all about feelings in some way. Thomas sells the feelings you get when you buy his products.”
“We needed to give The One some sort of voice,” he continues. “Thomas is a very opinionated, multi-faceted guy; he’s larger than life and he’s not shy about things, so we felt we would give him a means to express some of these thoughts. At the same time we needed to bring the furniture back, because I think the furniture had gotten lost with the previous campaign. The ads had to be beautiful and very flexible so the campaign could work online, on trucks, on print ads, shopping bags and television commercials.”
Blanckenberg, a former creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi and Impact BBDO in Dubai, has worked with Bob Pedder, Mojo’s copywriter, for 11 years. They moved agencies together and decided to found Mojo almost two years ago. Their campaign for The One brought the Guru to life with lines like, “Empty your mind and repeat slowly: ‘Up to 70% off, up to 70% off…’” and “Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. Show it some respect.”
“We have ‘Guru speak,’” explains Blanckenberg. “We measure our copy against that. We ask if the Guru would speak like that. Sometimes we hit it 100 percent; sometimes it’s not quite there. It’s tricky because when you want to do tactical stuff like saying there’s a 70-percent-off sale or buy-one-get-one-free, you need to find ways of incorporating it into a language that’s credible and keeps it real and entertaining.”
“We have huge flexibility in the art direction of the campaign, but the consistency is the Guru,” he continues. “We mix it up with things like photography and graphic elements, but the corporate touch point does not change with every ad. There’s a lot of the brand promise that comes through with the art direction, and we manage to put prices in there too, so they’re hard-working ads. They work on a brand level, and they are entertaining people – hopefully. Plus, I don’t mind putting prices in the ads, whereas most creative directors shy away from that.”
And Blanckenberg isn’t reticent about touting how Mojo’s campaign has helped The One’s bottom line. “We can’t claim all the glory for where Thomas’s brand has gone,” he says. “But the fact of the matter is that since we started working with them about a year ago, they’ve had phenomenal growth.”
While The One is the “most creative and most fun” of Blanckenberg’s clients, Mojo also works with clients including ADCB, Dubai Multi Commodities Center, The Executive Office, Dynasty Zarooni, Axiom, Jumeirah, and Mont Blanc. Blanckenberg and Pedder set up the agency with Mark Rogers, who runs its strategic marketing and planning. “Overall, there are about 19 of us now,” says Blanckenberg. “You’re going to get all the cliché words, but we are truly integrated.”
Mojo has recently moved in to its new offices in the Al Quoz area of Dubai, where the agency will also set up an art gallery. “We engage a lot in art, and I personally paint a lot,” says Blanckenberg. “It is a commercial enterprise, and it’s a lot of what we are. I’m not saying we’ll change the world, but if we get it right, there’s a gap in the market that needs to be filled.”
Blanckenberg studied design in his native South Africa, and worked there before migrating to the US, then moving back to his homeland. He visited Dubai in 1994 and moved to the emirate in 1995 to work with Saatchi & Saatchi, where he eventually became creative director. In 2004, he moved on to Impact BBDO for a couple of what he calls “interesting years.”
“I learned a lot, mainly about what I didn’t want to do with my life,” he says of his time at BBDO. “At the time it was hell, I was creative director maybe in name only. Bob [Pedder] and I both left; we decided it was not what we wanted, and that we would work with people we wanted to work with. So we started our own company but ran into some problems. Then we launched Mojo in 2007. We’re a small company, but we have a nice track record behind us, and we’ve worked with big clients who followed us.”
And what does Blanckenberg think of the state of the industry in the region – and where it’s going? “We’ve still got extremes,” he says. “There’s not enough good work out there. You get some real crap and some really good stuff. One thing that bothers Bob and me – and I’m being very careful with what I say because people will say I’m not involved in it – is this whole awards culture. You get it all over the world, but it’s extreme here, where people are just producing ads for that. I think we need to mature a bit. A lot of creative directors are starting to say that too. We at Mojo stay out of the limelight in that sense. But I think it will mature, and this period will be interesting. I think clients will demand return on investment, and we’ll be measured a lot more. Hopefully it will be a good thing, and the good ones will survive.”