Trigger Happy: School of Imagination

Based at an old kindergarten and known for its fun installations, from polar bear mosaics to Hornbach’s House of Imagination, there’s a warm, cuddly glow to the family-style set up at Trigger Happy

Ask executive producer Stephan Vens what Trigger Happy is and he’ll tell you in three words: “a production company”. Ask him what Trigger Happy does and he’ll need a few more.

“We represent creative people. We come from a film background and that’s still our main goal but I try to see my directors as creative people and not just film directors. You can have a creative idea and not need a camera for it,” he says. “What we don’t want to do is call ourselves just a film production company. If someone has an idea we try to solve the problems and bring it to life. I love film, but if I have a good idea I don’t care if it ends up as a film or an installation. I don’t care what the end format is.”

Trigger Happy was born in Stuttgart to Ralf Schmerberg and Eva Maier-Schönung in 1996, but they moved things to Berlin shortly afterwards to be around the creative folk who flocked there after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Around ten years ago Vens, who was working as a freelancer at the time, met Schmerberg and joined the ranks. Originally from Düsseldorf, Vens explains the attraction of the capital. “Everything felt so restricted in Düsseldorf. There was no ad agency in Berlin and it felt cool because it could be started fresh. People came here to do nice stuff first and make money second. Of course you want to make money but the priority is doing great work.”

Hot igloos

When he talks about not caring what the end format is, Vens is referring to projects like the Stromfresser (power hungry) installation Trigger Happy built for green energy provider ENTEGA, which saw the construction of a giant igloo from 322 old refrigerators. The public could walk inside and feel the heat that the appliances were generating through wasted energy. It was just one of a series of innovative installations they completed for the Food For Thought campaign through DDB, which bagged them six ADCs (including a gold). A polar bear mosaic made from more than 6,000 dustbins of various colours for waste disposal company BSR on a Berlin airfield in September was another project that grabbed headlines in the press. Probably their most famous, though, was the 2009 House of Imagination campaign for Hornbach. It involved a traditional TVC, but also an elaborate exhibition where 10 artists each decorated an apartment in an abandoned building however they chose, using materials from Hornbach stores. Although the public knew it was a Hornbach production, the branding was subtle, says Vens. “You need to take care not to annoy your visitors. People try to avoid places where you’re trying to sell them something. This was fun. There weren’t hostesses running around in Hornbach caps and shirts. People enjoyed it and felt connected to the brand.” The campaign won Germany’s first ever Integrated Lion and a Eurobest Grand Prix.

“I really like creativity, so why should I restrict myself to film? I like to go to exhibitions, so I like to do exhibitions. If there’s something you can’t communicate in 45 seconds, you can do an exhibition and get a lot more content into it,” says Vens, adding that the benefits aren’t just the clients’. “We have to listen way more to what the client really wants to communicate and then find the channels to do this, and it makes it way more interesting for us.”

But despite all this Trigger Happy does still make great commercials, thanks in part to its impressive roster of directors, which includes Pep Bosch, Sam Brown, young local Daniel Harder, and of course, co-founder Ralf Schmerberg.

Trigger happiness

They’ve also just made a promo for TNT’s new Spielberg-produced US TV show Falling Skies. The spot was directed by Portuguese street artist Vhils, who plants explosives in his works and literally blows them up. The shoot took place at a working power plant in Berlin, and Vens likes to stay local as much as possible. “If you do advertising for German people why would you go elsewhere? Of course we do sometimes if the budget forces us to or if the storyboard isn’t made for Germany, but I think German people enjoy even the rain sometimes,” he says, laughing.

The company is based in a former kindergarten that they’ve renovated into a charming workplace with its own garden. It feels more like a home than an office. “It’s too big for us but we want to have a creative space for creative people,” says Vens, in reference to the companies they rent space to. Currently VCCP occupy one floor and @radical.media is one of several previous tenants.

That homely feel is something that Vens extends to his directors too. “We’re not aiming to get 50 or 100 directors. We know our directors, we’re friends and we’ve worked together for years.”

So while Trigger Happy is definitely a production company, its diversity makes it hard to describe what they do in a few words. But when it comes to summing up the creative atmosphere, Vens has that covered; “we’re a family,” he says.