Heads of the week: Bernese sky striker
René Walker, Olaf Pilleri, and Claudia Connor-Jordi have founded an agency in Bern and are now calling themselves Wapico.
René Walker, Olaf Pilleri
and Claudia Connor-Jordi have founded an agency in Bern and now call themselves Wapico.
It was a medium-quick decision, not matured for seven years, and also not stomped out of the ground in seven weeks. "In the middle of last year, it kind of took shape for us," the Wapico partners explain. All three were working at Burson-Marsteller in Bern at the time. René Walker was a CD, Claudia Connor was a consulting group leader, and Olaf Pilleri was the agency's head of copywriting. Pilleri was there for nine years, Walker for eight and Connor for seven. "The time was ripe for a change. But we didn't want to just go to the competition, and we didn't want to lose each other either." So over lunch and later late at night, they talked more and more about the idea of their own agency. The decision was made easier for the advertisers because Burson-Marsteller specializes primarily in public relations. The team at the new Wapico therefore felt a bit removed from the company's core competency. "At Burson-Marsteller, our very good PR brand didn't help us much as traditional advertisers. Now we want to fully distinguish ourselves as creative advertisers. We are open to everything. But we prefer to do classic advertising. Good quality work that can also be submitted to an ADC," says Pilleri, explaining his ideal ideas.
Today's Wapico has already functioned as a team in the past and has always worked together on presentations. The team's successful work for Swiss farmers is still well-known. In the image campaign, personalities such as Michael Schumacher, Stephan Eicher or Stephanie Glaser have been involved as sympathizers of Swiss farmers. The current spots for Gerber fondue or the rapeseed oil campaign with the yellow rapeseed fields are also proudly referred to. Every year, a new image campaign for the Berner Kantonalbank has also attracted attention in Bern. "We are convinced that we can also develop such ideas in the new, smaller team," reckons Connor.
At the old location, the advertising department had around eight people. Now that they are self-employed at wapico, there are four. They want to grow "slowly and healthily," as the somewhat more mature young entrepreneurs put their goal in a down-to-earth and realistic way.
In this context, Bern as a location is obviously more to be reckoned with in the future, as other agency developments there also show. The wapico team feels at home in the federal capital in terms of quality of life and deliberately does not want to move to Zurich. However, they want to win national campaigns and, above all, look after important clients in French-speaking Switzerland from Berne. René Walker is from Fribourg, which opens up access to clients such as the current French daily newspaper La Liberté.
Wapico has been able to take over a few of the former major customers in agreement with the old employer. In addition, there are already three new ones, such as Yellowworld, where Wapico won all offline measures in a pitch.
With Wapico, the new Bernese competitors are positioned to offer all operations in-house. "With our background, we cover all needs."
After studying German and making his first attempts at writing as a local journalist, Pilleri ended up in advertising. He got into advertising because, among his various odd jobs, he had written an apparently useful brochure for the "Eigerblick" hotel in Grindelwald. This was followed by an internship at an agency with the beautiful name WellCome Advertising. He didn't learn anything there, but eventually realized that he had to switch to a real agency. So Pilleri ended up working for ten years as a copywriter and concept developer at Christian Jaquet's then respected agency in Bern. The last two years he acted as managing director after the agency was sold to Herbert Seiler's network. In the final phase, Pilleri was also in charge of the worldwide Bally mandate as well as the then first cell phone budget of the Swiss Post and its telecom, which later evolved into today's Swisscom. After a year of independence together with Daniela Camponovo, Burson-Marsteller finally followed. Still with Dieter Jäggi, Pilleri started as a concept developer and was appointed to the executive board after just eight months. Pilleri still works as a lecturer in the graphics class at the School of Design in Bern/Biel.
René Walker graduated from art school in Geneva and then started working in a small advertising agency in Berlin. After this entry via direct marketing, he moved to GGK international Paris as an art director and later worked as a freelancer for various GGK agencies as well as Weber Hodel Schmid or Atelier Jaquet. It was there that René Walker finally met Olaf Pilleri, who brought him to Burson-Marsteller in 1999. In between, Walker worked for two years in Montréal as a freelancer, for example for Young & Rubicam. In his spare time, he still does a lot of work for cultural organizations such as the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris, for which he oversees all graphic work as CD. He also works for the Fribourg cultural festival Belluard.
Claudia Connor, whose name was still Jordi until February, graduated from high school in Bern and trained as an advertising assistant at Sawi in Biel. Her first job followed for two years at Rüegg Fontana Heiderich in Zurich. Then she wanted to explore the world a bit more and traveled to North and South America for a long time. On her return, she spotted an ad in Werbewoche and thus joined Burson-Marsteller in August 2000 as assistant to Olaf Pilleri. Connor also completed her two-year training as communications manager here from 2003 to 2005. In her free time, the soon-to-be wife of an Australian still loves to travel to visit "friends all over the world".
All three Wapicos assess the time for a start-up as "fantastic". They say they sense a trend toward smaller, owner-operated agencies. "Anyway, a lot of people we've told about our plans already want quotes."
Andreas Panzeri
and Claudia Connor-Jordi have founded an agency in Bern and now call themselves Wapico.
It was a medium-quick decision, not matured for seven years, and also not stomped out of the ground in seven weeks. "In the middle of last year, it kind of took shape for us," the Wapico partners explain. All three were working at Burson-Marsteller in Bern at the time. René Walker was a CD, Claudia Connor was a consulting group leader, and Olaf Pilleri was the agency's head of copywriting. Pilleri was there for nine years, Walker for eight and Connor for seven. "The time was ripe for a change. But we didn't want to just go to the competition, and we didn't want to lose each other either." So over lunch and later late at night, they talked more and more about the idea of their own agency. The decision was made easier for the advertisers because Burson-Marsteller specializes primarily in public relations. The team at the new Wapico therefore felt a bit removed from the company's core competency. "At Burson-Marsteller, our very good PR brand didn't help us much as traditional advertisers. Now we want to fully distinguish ourselves as creative advertisers. We are open to everything. But we prefer to do classic advertising. Good quality work that can also be submitted to an ADC," says Pilleri, explaining his ideal ideas.
Today's Wapico has already functioned as a team in the past and has always worked together on presentations. The team's successful work for Swiss farmers is still well-known. In the image campaign, personalities such as Michael Schumacher, Stephan Eicher or Stephanie Glaser have been involved as sympathizers of Swiss farmers. The current spots for Gerber fondue or the rapeseed oil campaign with the yellow rapeseed fields are also proudly referred to. Every year, a new image campaign for the Berner Kantonalbank has also attracted attention in Bern. "We are convinced that we can also develop such ideas in the new, smaller team," reckons Connor.
At the old location, the advertising department had around eight people. Now that they are self-employed at wapico, there are four. They want to grow "slowly and healthily," as the somewhat more mature young entrepreneurs put their goal in a down-to-earth and realistic way.
In this context, Bern as a location is obviously more to be reckoned with in the future, as other agency developments there also show. The wapico team feels at home in the federal capital in terms of quality of life and deliberately does not want to move to Zurich. However, they want to win national campaigns and, above all, look after important clients in French-speaking Switzerland from Berne. René Walker is from Fribourg, which opens up access to clients such as the current French daily newspaper La Liberté.
Wapico has been able to take over a few of the former major customers in agreement with the old employer. In addition, there are already three new ones, such as Yellowworld, where Wapico won all offline measures in a pitch.
With Wapico, the new Bernese competitors are positioned to offer all operations in-house. "With our background, we cover all needs."
After studying German and making his first attempts at writing as a local journalist, Pilleri ended up in advertising. He got into advertising because, among his various odd jobs, he had written an apparently useful brochure for the "Eigerblick" hotel in Grindelwald. This was followed by an internship at an agency with the beautiful name WellCome Advertising. He didn't learn anything there, but eventually realized that he had to switch to a real agency. So Pilleri ended up working for ten years as a copywriter and concept developer at Christian Jaquet's then respected agency in Bern. The last two years he acted as managing director after the agency was sold to Herbert Seiler's network. In the final phase, Pilleri was also in charge of the worldwide Bally mandate as well as the then first cell phone budget of the Swiss Post and its telecom, which later evolved into today's Swisscom. After a year of independence together with Daniela Camponovo, Burson-Marsteller finally followed. Still with Dieter Jäggi, Pilleri started as a concept developer and was appointed to the executive board after just eight months. Pilleri still works as a lecturer in the graphics class at the School of Design in Bern/Biel.
René Walker graduated from art school in Geneva and then started working in a small advertising agency in Berlin. After this entry via direct marketing, he moved to GGK international Paris as an art director and later worked as a freelancer for various GGK agencies as well as Weber Hodel Schmid or Atelier Jaquet. It was there that René Walker finally met Olaf Pilleri, who brought him to Burson-Marsteller in 1999. In between, Walker worked for two years in Montréal as a freelancer, for example for Young & Rubicam. In his spare time, he still does a lot of work for cultural organizations such as the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris, for which he oversees all graphic work as CD. He also works for the Fribourg cultural festival Belluard.
Claudia Connor, whose name was still Jordi until February, graduated from high school in Bern and trained as an advertising assistant at Sawi in Biel. Her first job followed for two years at Rüegg Fontana Heiderich in Zurich. Then she wanted to explore the world a bit more and traveled to North and South America for a long time. On her return, she spotted an ad in Werbewoche and thus joined Burson-Marsteller in August 2000 as assistant to Olaf Pilleri. Connor also completed her two-year training as communications manager here from 2003 to 2005. In her free time, the soon-to-be wife of an Australian still loves to travel to visit "friends all over the world".
All three Wapicos assess the time for a start-up as "fantastic". They say they sense a trend toward smaller, owner-operated agencies. "Anyway, a lot of people we've told about our plans already want quotes."
Andreas Panzeri
