Chatvertising over a cup of coffee, with Adam Ambrozy from GPD Idea
Fridays are considered by many as lighter days and the moment when everyone is counting minutes to finally get to week-end. Still, this day tends to be different in advertising agencies, being usually dedicated to clients meeting and final preparation for the next week activities.
Last Friday, GPD Idea office in Bucharest was my stop for a meeting with Adam Ambrozy, agency’s planning director, and a cup of coffee combined with a conversation on advertising. Useless to say GPD’s Friday looked to be a busy one: everybody at their computers, concentrated on the work to be done, no sign of boredom or time watching to run off the door.
GPD Idea Bucharest is the Romanian branch of GPD Advertising, biggest Polish independent agency created in 1991 as a creative boutique by 3 Polish creatives. Over the time, the agency grew and developed to cover more than one country and, today, it handles many important accounts, such as Lidl, for which it works on 5 markets.
According to Adam, GPD started to work with Lidl in Poland, then expanded its relation with the client in other markets, among which Czech Republic and Slovakia and also Romania.
Considering Lidl is an important client, the agency doesn’t just simply advertise on the brief it is given, but also runs its own marketing researches to see how the brand and its offer is perceived on the market, and comes up with best possible tactics and strategies to answer problems or requests.
Because GPD has 3 offices: Bucharest, Poznan and Warsaw, the daily activities involve also remote working.
I am a fan of face to face meetings. Of course, sometimes it seems to be difficult to work remotely, but normally everything runs smoothly, as we work on strategies and applied tactics. Besides that, I am going to Poland pretty often and get input from the teams there.
Adam Ambrozy
When asked about the working way in GPD Poland, Adam said the agency there has a team of quite experienced people, who can deliver good creative work in a short time.
Romanian office of GPD was launched last year and has now a team of 13 people, working on the clock from 9 a.m. to 6.30 pm.
Clients and pitches are a thing of interest for all agencies all over the world, so the subject couldn’t go untouched during the discussion: how do you participate in pitches, how to you proceed, which are the budgets you would work for.
As for what it goes as proposal to the client, Adam explained that his agency usually starts with “home-cooked” thorough research, including interviews, focus groups, netnography and desk research.
We usually start from strategic assessment and our clients highly appreciate it, because, as a result, we all understand the role of communication in delivering business results, which is the clue here. No missed shots.
Of course, there are pitch situations when more strategies are offered, as client’s problems can be solved by applying more approaches and the chosen solution has to be the one the client is the most comfortable with.
Although somewhat of a new entrant on the market, GPD is already taken into consideration by marketers to compete in pitches along with some of most respected Romanian agencies, present on the local market for many years.
The discussion also went to production capacities and that’s how I found GPD has its own production studios, equipped with around 5 work stations (each on 600 – 850 sq.m.) capable to deliver good quality work at a “cost-effective” budget.
Adam also mentioned his agency works with clients capable to invest proper budgets in order to create campaigns that have great chances to sell. Asked how the budget should look in order to be OK for GPD, he explained that, for an image campaign that includes movies, that means high costs for spots and content production, the minimum creative & production budget should get somewhere to Euro 50,000.
Of course, there are clients who only want to build awareness and, as their categories are very rational, they don’t need to focus on the image. For such clients we also have cost effective solutions based more on animations, pictures etc. and the production budget can range between Euro 15,000 – 20,000
Campaigns are aimed to generate awareness and likelihood, most of the times, but Adam thinks the hard work starts after that, when it comes to loyalizing clients.
It’s not a job that communication itself can do. It’s a mix of what we experience in a shop, quality of products we eat with our families, branded content that we see in the internet, etc. As an example, the work for Lidl includes the mix of 360° image campaigns, tactical campaigns, production of creative content (such as movies for cooking portal, photo shooting sessions etc.) weekly TV spots and radio ads to present the offers, with the long term objective being to position the chain as the one that provides all the time something new, of quality and at an affordable price.
Who is Adam?
Adam Ambrozy is Polish guy that has Ukrainian roots and lived in Poland, Germany, UK for a while and now Romania. On career front, he worked in Poland and Romania and cooperates with creative teams from Netherlands and UK.
He likes traveling and visited around 30 countries, spent 5 months in South America and explored different cultures and people.
The travel, the different jobs he had (DJ, party promoter and radio reporter) and eagerness to understand what makes people tick are the core sources for his inspiration as a strategist.
He is used to work for big clients, such as Lidl (5 CEE countries with focus on Poland and Romania), FMCG brands (Miller, Grolsch, local brands), Banking and Insurance (BZ WBK – part of Santander Group, Crédit Agricole, PZU – the biggest Polish insurance company / BTL).
He likes people & cultures, creating identities, creatively use of research, brand documentaries and new thinking.
