How the ADC got me into advertising
After winning countless awards, Ruf Lanz stepped away from submitting work to the ADC and many other festivals in 2024—but not from his passionate creative work. To mark his «farewell,» here is a tribute by Markus Ruf.
When I held the first ADC Yearbook in my hands, Paul Wolfisberg was still the coach of the Swiss national football team, Elisabeth Kopp was still a Federal Councillor and Martin Suter was still a copywriter.
It was 1984 and the book was lying untouched in a corner of the Meili bookshop in my home town of Schaffhausen. I had no idea what kind of director this club consisted of. Out of curiosity, I opened the book. And it opened my eyes. A Reinhold Weber wrote the grandiose line "Eiger, Mönch and Toggenburger" for the Toggenburger construction company. And had the highest crane in the building company rise out of the sea of fog next to the peaks. An agency called Aebi & Partner sewed a Toni yogurt jar onto a polo shirt instead of the Lacoste crocodile and wrote: "There are global brands. And there are environmental brands." And two gentlemen called Stalder & Suter sold people on being intelligent with literary Emmentaler texts.
The campaigns that were honored here were worlds more surprising, entertaining and witty than the ones I had to endure in my everyday life. The raisins in the dust-dry advertising cake. After reading it, I knew: I want to do that kind of stuff too! I was currently training as a typesetter and enjoyed experimenting with language, typography and graphics at the Zurich School of Applied Arts. The prospect of being paid for it was great. Just like Andy Warhol: "Creativity is the fun you can sell as work." Over the next few months, I tore the large-format ads out of the Tages-Anzeiger and the magazine every Saturday, improved them (in my eyes) and sent them to the agencies responsible. That's how I got my start in the advertising industry.
The first ADC cube
In 1989, I won my first laurels at the ADC: the special text prize for an international Swatch campaign for Farner Publicis, which for once was not about fashionable design, but about timeless quality (claim: Swiss mad on the outside, Swiss made on the inside). I told adventurous stories that showed what a Swatch can survive. The consultant hated the campaign because the texts had to be translated into 28 languages, but Creative Director Claude Martin loved the unconventional approach. And fortunately, so did Swatch patron Nicolas Hayek. The cube almost slipped through my sweaty hands with excitement on stage.
"Ideas are like sperm. Many are produced, but only very few have a fertilizing effect."
Since then, countless cubes have been added, and hardly a stone has been left unturned at the ADC. But the essentials have not changed in all these years: We have to package our clients' messages in a surprising way if we want to be heard by the public. Ideas are like sperm. Many are produced, but only very few have a fertilizing effect. And these few are worth celebrating once a year.
With this in mind, I wish the ADC many more fruitful juries and glittering galas.
This article first appeared in the m&k print edition 1-2/2025.
