The Way I See It: Olivier Altmann

Olivier Altmann is the chief creative officer of Publicis Worldwide, based in Paris. He joined Publicis in 2004, six years after launching his own agency, BDDP & Fils. His award-winning work includes campaigns for Orange, PMU (race betting) and Renault, as well as a raft of other worldwide brands. Altmann talks to Diana Goodman...

I’m 48, married to Hélène for 17 years, with three children (Léonard 15, and Samuel and Joseph, 13, non-identical twins). I live in a small village called Marnes-la-Coquette in the west of Paris.

I would describe myself as passionate, stubborn (I’m a Taurus), obsessional, a control freak, friendly and a bit paranoid.

When I look in the mirror, I see some grey hairs, a little belly and, sometimes, rebellious eyebrows.

I am very fortunate to have been born into quite a privileged family and I had a great childhood. Despite my parents divorcing when I was eight, they managed to maintain a good atmosphere for us kids.

My mother started as a dentist but later on decided to become a psychoanalyst. My father originally wanted to be a painter but had to take over the family steel business, which he ran with his brother. He proposed that I join him and when I was 16, I worked for three months in the factory. I instantly realised how important it was to follow your dream; to study the thing you want in order to have a life that really suits.

My father retired at 54 to concentrate on his life-long passion, painting. Sadly, he died of cancer two years later. Even though I was only 18, I had to take the big decisions about money and family life and be the man of the family. To face all the realities you have to protect yourself from being sad and it’s only later on that you let your emotions come back.

Sometimes, with the death of a parent, you can be tempted to work less and spend the money – buy a Ferrari, etc. But it had the opposite impact on me because I thought my father should be proud of me. So that pushed me to mature quickly and move from 18 to 35 in my mind in just one year.

I got on very well with my parents. My mother had a difficult time raising my sister and me without a man at home. My father was luckier; he did all the fun things with us on the weekends: going to movies, and the flea markets where he could shop for antiques, and doing something cool in Paris.

To be honest, at around 15 I was a bit bored of those kinds of weekends and my real pleasure was to go into the countryside with my best friend. His father had a very big, beautiful forest in the countryside with a lot of animals, and hunting and horse riding – all the wild stupid things that young boys like to do.

It was a sort of Huckleberry Finn for me, because my education was really bourgeois in Paris and this was a totally different life. I had a hunting permit, so some days I was waking up early, walking in the bush, hunting wild boar and ducks, spending the night with binoculars; being really connected with nature was the best moment.

I wanted to be both a movie director and a veterinarian. I saw Daktari, a TV series about a vet in Africa, and later on I read all of Michel Klein’s books (a famous French vet also seen on TV). It seemed to be a fantastic job, living in the wild with nature and a 4x4, taking care of big animals.

Then, around 14, I started going to movies (almost three times a week) and felt passionately about the art of storytelling. I made my first short film with my mother’s camera and later on wrote a short synopsis about Errol Flynn’s life.

My biology teacher at school always used to say to us, “Never forget that we are animals”. We have the same needs to feel secure, to protect our family and to establish our territory. Look at what can happen if a fire breaks out in a stadium or during a concert. Everybody running like crazy, crushing people – even children – to get to the exit. Even though staying calm and following procedure would save more lives.

I think humans are crueller than animals. We don’t kill each other out of necessity, but for revenge or opposing ideas. Look at what is happening now in Syria.

I got into advertising because my French teacher in high school asked us to write a one-page essay on an ad. I wrote 17. I was mostly an average student, but when I started studying communications at university I instantly loved it and became the best in the class. When you’re passionate, everything is easy. One of my tutors offered me the opportunity to be a trainee at Y&R, and then everything else followed.

I hope my work cannot be recognised as mine, because this would be a failure on my part to embrace each brand’s tone of voice and style. But what I really like is to find very simple and strong ideas based on a human truth. I also love films, as they are still the most powerful way to build and share emotions.

The part of my working day that gives me most satisfaction is when the creatives come in my office either to tell me an idea or to show me the execution of it. I’m the first audience and I can help them to make it better, but only if needed.

I am not proud of any ads in particular, but more the ability to maintain a reputation for creativity year after year. We, the creatives, are not sprinters but long-distance runners and must be judged on our ability to deliver not once but continually. We are always judged on our latest work.

In advertising, you tend to forget the worst experiences and remember mostly the good times. The worst for me is when you have to deal with politics, to compromise your values, to look at yourself in a mirror and feel ashamed of what you see.

For example, what is difficult in our business is that the bigger the clients, the more you have to swallow some pills and keep being positive with some very difficult decisions. There is a moment when you look at yourself and say, “Am I really sticking to my true values or am I compromising too much in order to make sure the job is being fulfilled?” So there are tensions between your responsibilities and what you want.

The best experience was being able to launch my own start-up, BDDP & Fils. It was truly enriching. What pleases me even more is that most former employees who have gone on to have celebrated careers still regard it as the best place they ever worked. Creativity is important but an agency should also be a place you want to go to every day.

In terms of advertising adapting to the changing media world, the challenge to me is the timing. We should be a little bit ahead of the consumers and the clients, but not out of reach. A few years ago the danger for agencies was to be outdated, so most of the big networks had to buy digital companies. Publicis was smart to do so before the competition.

Now, we need to deliver strong ideas that really use the full potential of this new media landscape. On the other hand we should, as creatives, be careful not to fall in love with technology for the sake of being cool and upfront. What really counts is to touch the hearts, brains and stomachs of real people, using true human insights, and not just to impress five bloggers or ten social community managers.

One example is a new commercial that we have just done for Orange. It’s for the 4G high-speed network and there’s a couple in the same restaurant using a laptop and an iPod to exchange video contact and fancy each other. It’s a charming illustration of a way to connect people together, quite emotionally.

Another spot we have done that is very popular is a parody of an Opel ad that has a salesman speaking in German to sell quality. In one week we managed to take the same white background, replace the Opel with a Renault Mégane, and use a French salesman speaking very, very bad German, ending with “Ich bin ein Berliner”. On the web, in only one day, it had 300,000 clicks; people love the idea of making fun of the competitor with a smile.

Why are so few advertising creatives women? I guess that at some point in your career you have to decide to spend some time at home raising your children, or to go back to work after giving birth and be ready again for the hectic pressure: meetings at 7 p.m., long nights, work over the weekend, travelling away for the shoots, etc. [It’s] not fair, I admit, as most of the men would not feel so torn between their private and professional life.

Another explanation is maybe that most of the top management in the advertising industry are men, so perhaps there is a kind of macho way to promote people from your own gender. What I can say is that the women who succeed in the business are really hard workers and very determined.

I watch very little TV outside work. I return home around 9.30 p.m. and I watch the news channel to see what happened in the day. At 11 p.m. I have just the time to watch 45 minutes of a TV series before falling asleep.

To be honest, on the rare occasions that I catch ads on TV I realise how most of them are boring. I am impatient to see the film or programme. So it’s clear we have a responsibility to entertain.

As a professional in this business your brain is trained to analyse and decode advertising. The first time you watch it maybe you are charmed and laugh, but instantly your judging instincts return.

Awards are important not as a goal, but as a way to measure [pieces of] work against each other. They motivate and energise. But everyone remembers a great idea whether it has won an award or not. And some awarded work is forgotten instantly. Collective memory is the ultimate award to me.

As a judge, I first [use] my instinct and my emotions. The work should touch me as a human being and feel sincere. In front of a great piece of work I usually think, “I wish I’d done that”. And when it’s outstanding, I feel great about working in advertising.

There are too many “best” advertisements I have seen to choose just one. The beauty of our job is that you can play with so many different emotions: humour, provocation, intelligence, sensitivity, simplicity. For me, it is like asking what is the best song I have ever heard.

As a creative you don’t necessarily need to ‘believe’ in the product you’re working on, but you need to be curious and understand all of the background and the motivations. But a good ad will never sell a shitty product. Maybe once, but not twice.

If you compare the amount of money spent in advertising to what you could do with the same money to help people who desperately need it, you might feel ashamed. But if big companies are willing to spend this much on media and content there’s no better proof that advertising works.

I think those who say money is not important are the ones who have enough of it. Money is not a goal in itself, but it helps you to feel free in your life choices. But having seen death from close quarters, I can guarantee you that there’s no point ending up as the richest man on earth if you have not lived life to the full.

I do not regard advertising as an art form, not at all. It can be really artistic sometimes, thanks to a great photographer, director, or composer, but if it’s an art, it is the art of imagination at the service of business.

I admire people who managed to build a reputation of great creativity over time: Bill Bernbach, John Hegarty and, of course, Steve Jobs.

Drink and drugs have never been a problem for me. I never took drugs and I have never been really drunk. Control freak, I told you. For my wife, I’m already addicted enough to advertising.

My vices are Cuban cigars and from time to time a beautiful car.

My greatest achievement is being able to build a happy family over 17 years. I cross my fingers I can make it last as long as possible. Professionally, I try to avoid becoming an arrogant prick.

My nationality means to me a sense of cynicism and a rebellious attitude towards authority; the French are the most difficult people to manage and we always complain.

We are also very demanding about food. It’s as though food or wine were our specific competencies – like Germans speaking about cars or Americans speaking about business. I don’t drink wine at all, or very little, and I try to lose weight. So I try not to eat too much, even if I come home late and open the fridge and look at the cheese.

Where I stand politically, varies. I believe in meritocracy and not in egalitarianism. I think those who want to earn more should be able to do so, and we should encourage them.

My parents are Jewish but not strictly orthodox. I married a Catholic wife and we came to an agreement where the kids are baptised but at the same time they have done their Bar Mitzvah. For me, it’s a way to transmit some culture, some values about where they come from, and to learn what tolerance means. When they’re adults they might say, “My father was Jewish and I’m a bit Jewish too”, and they might react in a different way, for example against acts of racism.

I do care too much what others think of me, I’m afraid. If only I couldn’t care, I would be stronger. But maybe less people would be happy to work with me.

My favourite emotion is humour coming from self-derision.

My greatest weakness is that I don’t like open conflict. I’d rather try to convince. My greatest strength is that I am very good at convincing.

What makes me really angry is disorder in my kids’ room. Or discovering something bad that people tried to hide from me.

The greatest human invention is love.

My view of marriage is that it’s crazy to believe that you can spend 50 years of your life with the same person. But it is a crazy dream worth trying.

Becoming a father means you no longer live just for yourself. You have to learn a new job all the time because each child is different and their attitudes change as they grow up. I think what’s important is to make sure you transmit the right values so that they will become happy adults later on.

I believe that what children need most is love and limits. Saying no is sometimes much more proof of love than saying yes.

My greatest regret is that my dad never lived to meet his grandchildren.

I want to be buried close to my family. Near a big tree. Please make sure my hair is well combed (if I still have any) before closing the lid.

What gives me real pleasure is watching the kids playing in the water, with my wife smiling at me on her deck chair.

In the end, what really matters is making sure that you had a great life without hurting the lives of others.