The early bird doesn’t just catch the worm, it also regularly welcomes photographers and agents, such as at Wirz Werbung in Zurich. To meet the high demand for portfolio appointments, the Art Buying team of one of the largest proprietor run advertising agencies in Switzerland regularly holds cherry-picked ‘Portfolio Mornings’ in its Art Buying lounge.
Nicole Suter, Head of Art Buying, and colleague Fabienne Huwyler and team are responsible for the refreshing and high quality selection. GoSee spontaneously stopped by the agency at the last portfolio event in the early morning.
Nicole explains the procedure to GoSee: ‘to date we have held these Portfolio Mornings every two months. One week before we present the photographers and agents that register in a PowerPoint presentation to our Creation department. ADs and next generation ADs from all our Wirz Units.’
Nicole adds, ‘Wirz Werbung (advertising including Digital), Wirz Corporate and Wirz WietlisbachDialog are invited to attend and have a look at the portfolios or to just have a look at specific portfolios that took their fancy. At our Fri-Fri (end of week Friday meeting and round up of the week) the creatives, who weren’t there, get to hear all about our highlights and what has ended up in the databank.’
Established in 1936, the successful agency now employs over 150 staff. The individual Wirz companies are all grouped under Wirz Partner Holding, which the management group holds the majority of and over 20 leading members of staff hold shares in. Satisfied clients include businesses such as Migros, Toyota, Mobiliar, Mars, Ikea, Bayer, Nestlé, Bundesamt für Gesundheit, Bank Sarasin, ... They are also proud to work with smaller businesses, which they dedicate the same amount of attention and care to, such as tibits, Travel Book Shop and Heilsarmee (Salvation Army).
Nicole elaborates: ‘we also work with really small budgets and really small clients and have attached a recent example, which we created for a language school: ‘Small World’ (Brush up your English und Brush up your French) – we all collected a lot of material for the photo shoot’s concept of rusty foreign languages’.
We asked her if all this effort was the norm, to which she replied, ‘we know how important the production is throughout its entire process and know the ideal circumstances for creating something ‘magical’… which isn’t always a question of budget’.
In addition to classic portfolio viewings and online research, art serves as an important source of inspiration to Nicole and her Art Buying team. So she is particularly excited about new and unusual visual styles. We realise just how important art is on location at the agency, when we see the vegetable artwork on display in the Art Buying Lounge.
These were created for TIBITS for the previous Art Basel. Since art enthusiasts come to Basel from all over the world, the restaurant chain wanted to draw attention to their vegetarian dishes. Wirz and creative mastermind Philipp Skrabal came up with accompanying artwork: ‘Aubergine Dog’, ‘For the Love of Pumpkins’ and ‘The Physical Possibility of a Carrot in a Hungry Mind’ were on display in print media, at POS and in hotels during Art Basel.
Additional eye catchers include the quick sketches of staff portraits. These caricatures were inspired by the MOBILIAR insurance risk assessment sketch campaign, which has been running for a successful 15 years(!) Originally developed by the Aebi, Strebel, advertising agency, the campaign was then handed over to Publicis WA in 1998 and then finally switched over to Wirz Werbung in 2005, where the sketches were then transformed into interactive ideas, apps and PR activity. The campaign was recently awarded the rare ‘Evergreen’ distinction by ADC Switzerland, for its particularly long-lasting appeal.
And since all of Zurich is currently covered in the colourful images of the MIGROS TWISTIES campaign, we are delighted to present the accompanying TV spot here on GoSee… 48 different spinning tops are in stores until 27 May 2013 just waiting to be collected, spun and swapped… For more artwork and information get in touch with Wirz. Nicole and her team are happy to deal with all ‘Portfolio Morning’ registrations via their GoSee Account.