Erik Kessels is a man after my own heart as far as his love for flea markets is concerned. But more than just a shared love of whiling away many hours searching for unknown treasures, there were other things he spoke of which struck a chord with me. Having set up KesselsKramer out of the frustrations of having to continually compromise their work while in big ad agencies, he now maintains to have never produced work he hasn't liked.
The campaign ideas he shared were, as later pointed out by a question asker, ones you would expect most clients to recoil from in horror. But these campaigns got results and the extra publicity received due to the originality of the ideas would leave even the most straight laced marketing manager gleeful at the stretching of their marketing budget. One campaign included was 15 years worth of work for a hotel he describes as 'a total shithole'. The entire body of work is borne out of the sole strategy of being honest and actually playing up the hotel's awfulness (see above). They say the best ideas are the simplest. This is certainly testament to that, with the hotels occupancy rate more than doubling and it acquiring a cult-like status simply by it's advertising and definitely not by refurbishing or improving facilities.
Dry humour and irony run through the work shown and also in his delivery as a speaker, meaning at the end of the lecture I had very much warmed to Mr Kessels. He spoke a lot about being independent and avoiding cliches and stereotypes. He also admitted those same cliches often first pop into his mind, so giving us some hope that if we really put our minds to it, we too can produce ideas like these that will stick in peoples minds.
He also showed examples of his myriad of other enterprises and interests including curating exhibitions, publishing books and even organising an international football match. His 'in almost every picture' series of books sharing collections of photos found either via his rummages or online were both hilarious, touching and absolutely fascinating.
Erik mentions throughout about the diversity in design today and he undoubtedly embodies this, with cross overs in art, design, publishing and much more. He also makes the point during the Q&A that he doesn't think any designers are born with a great talent, but it is through trying things and working that the great pieces are produced. This echoes what I heard form all the speakers at the Manchester Design Symposium about the 'perspiration' being the key element. But heck, I already know this and always think I could be working harder!
I see the KesselsKramer and Erik Kessels work as another benchmark to strive for, and how integrity, passion and determination can succeed.
P.S. if you clicked on the link to the KesselsKramer website and were confused, it is intentionally terrible looking. Refresh the page and another example will appear. Exquisitely daft.
