"Turn Grey into Gold"
As the new CD, Enrico Bachmann wants to lead the network offshoot Grey Zurich back into the top creative league.
As the new CD, Enrico Bachmann wants to lead the network offshoot Grey Zurich back into the top creative league.
At the beginning, you learn and listen. Then you form your own opinion, but you are not always listened to. And then there comes a point when you want to make your own decisions. At this point, Enrico Bachmann has now joined the management team of Grey Worldwide in Zurich as a new CD. After five years as a freelancer, he is returning to being an employee. He used to enjoy coming and going, "with the requirement to do something well, but without having to worry about the agency stuff". At some point, however, he realized that his work should also have a perspective. "I no longer wanted to just deliver. But you can only make a change if you stay in one place a little longer."
As Enrico Bachmann describes himself as an "impatient person", this was not always easy for him in the past. His CV is correspondingly varied. After leaving school, his father wanted his son to study medicine. Enrico gave it a try. After two years, however, he realized that there might be another life beyond pipettes and tweezers. At the Basel Autumn Fair, he saw the Clio roll more by chance than anything else. "That's cool," he said to himself. And because he would have had to go back to school as an AD or consultant, he took a different path and became a copywriter. With success.
After just nine months as an intern with Roger Mayer, he is said to have told him: "You've learned everything we can give you here." So the junior copywriter moved north and transferred to the Communications Academy in Haburg. "You don't learn how to do it there. But you realize whether you've made the right choice. For yourself and for others."
Back in Switzerland, he ended up at a "very important school", the legendary creative floor at GGK Basel. The new Grey CD characterizes his former colleagues as "horny bastards". And the best thing about the story is that Enrico Bachmann was also there. "At the end of the 1980s, GGK Basel was top in Switzerland." One consequence of this: "You had a status, so customers didn't always want to talk you into it - there was a lot of trust."
When the GGK era in Basel came to an end, Bachmann was drawn back to the waterfront. This time to Scholz & Friends. The now award-winning copywriter was asked to work on a large BMW budget. At the same time, Springer & Jacoby was realizing creative advertising for Mercedes. Bachmann was therefore looking forward to competing with the best. Far from it, as he sums up today: "The agency didn't want to take any risks. So they didn't change anything." His further path led him via GGK Zurich, Lintas Hamburg to Weber Hodel Schmid, where he won the German Media Markt account with the claim "Ich bin doch nicht blöd.
What attracts him to Grey is the fact that this agency network is undergoing global upheaval. Grey London, for example, has poached a renowned chief strategist as well as highly decorated copywriters and CDs from well-known creative agencies such as Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
Bachmann has therefore made "Turn Grey into Gold" his inner leitmotif. Business was going well, but the company wanted to improve. And the only way to achieve this is through creativity. "There are no customers who have anything against good ideas," Bachmann hopes again - just as he did in his younger years.
Bachmann, a passionate reader and motorcyclist, thinks it's a good idea for Grey to move from Rüschlikon back to Tödistrasse in Zurich: "An advertising agency belongs in the city, where things happen," he says with conviction.
Andreas Panzeri
At the beginning, you learn and listen. Then you form your own opinion, but you are not always listened to. And then there comes a point when you want to make your own decisions. At this point, Enrico Bachmann has now joined the management team of Grey Worldwide in Zurich as a new CD. After five years as a freelancer, he is returning to being an employee. He used to enjoy coming and going, "with the requirement to do something well, but without having to worry about the agency stuff". At some point, however, he realized that his work should also have a perspective. "I no longer wanted to just deliver. But you can only make a change if you stay in one place a little longer."
As Enrico Bachmann describes himself as an "impatient person", this was not always easy for him in the past. His CV is correspondingly varied. After leaving school, his father wanted his son to study medicine. Enrico gave it a try. After two years, however, he realized that there might be another life beyond pipettes and tweezers. At the Basel Autumn Fair, he saw the Clio roll more by chance than anything else. "That's cool," he said to himself. And because he would have had to go back to school as an AD or consultant, he took a different path and became a copywriter. With success.
After just nine months as an intern with Roger Mayer, he is said to have told him: "You've learned everything we can give you here." So the junior copywriter moved north and transferred to the Communications Academy in Haburg. "You don't learn how to do it there. But you realize whether you've made the right choice. For yourself and for others."
Back in Switzerland, he ended up at a "very important school", the legendary creative floor at GGK Basel. The new Grey CD characterizes his former colleagues as "horny bastards". And the best thing about the story is that Enrico Bachmann was also there. "At the end of the 1980s, GGK Basel was top in Switzerland." One consequence of this: "You had a status, so customers didn't always want to talk you into it - there was a lot of trust."
When the GGK era in Basel came to an end, Bachmann was drawn back to the waterfront. This time to Scholz & Friends. The now award-winning copywriter was asked to work on a large BMW budget. At the same time, Springer & Jacoby was realizing creative advertising for Mercedes. Bachmann was therefore looking forward to competing with the best. Far from it, as he sums up today: "The agency didn't want to take any risks. So they didn't change anything." His further path led him via GGK Zurich, Lintas Hamburg to Weber Hodel Schmid, where he won the German Media Markt account with the claim "Ich bin doch nicht blöd.
What attracts him to Grey is the fact that this agency network is undergoing global upheaval. Grey London, for example, has poached a renowned chief strategist as well as highly decorated copywriters and CDs from well-known creative agencies such as Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
Bachmann has therefore made "Turn Grey into Gold" his inner leitmotif. Business was going well, but the company wanted to improve. And the only way to achieve this is through creativity. "There are no customers who have anything against good ideas," Bachmann hopes again - just as he did in his younger years.
Bachmann, a passionate reader and motorcyclist, thinks it's a good idea for Grey to move from Rüschlikon back to Tödistrasse in Zurich: "An advertising agency belongs in the city, where things happen," he says with conviction.
Andreas Panzeri
