The one behind “I will what I want” and “Rule Yourself”. With over a decade spent at Droga5 New York, Felix Richter joined Mother London in 2022 as Chief Creative Officer and Global Creative Partner.
So that’s why we’re so hyped to have him on stage at the IAA Global Conference, in Bucharest, this 31st of October.
From Kummerfeld to Wrexham
Felix comes from nearby Hamburg, a smaller town named “Kummerfeld”, which would translate to “Sad field”…but there’s nothing sad about his path, from Hamburg’s Miami Ad School to New York at Y&R, Droga5 NY and now back to Europe, in its creative “headquarters”, London.
Get an Uber, go to Wrexham, in the Welsh countryside and discover “The Wrexham Tastecourse”, a fusion menu presented by the famous TV Gastronaut Adam Richman. It is a new Uber Eats campaign, part of the brand’s creative strategy reframing takeaway as a “dolce far niente” art of living, instead of mere laziness. “Do Less”, 2022’s integrated campaign, won a Gold in Cannes Lions Film this year. You can read all about it here.
👉 Watch Do Less.
More recently, guess what! It’s Reese’s season as Halloween is right around the corner! Under Mother’s care, the brand keeps filling up all kinds of chocolate items with its lush peanut butter deliciousness. IKEA goes big in London, for its grand opening with a humongous, arresting blue bag, marking its flagship location on Oxford street. Check out the fully integrated campaign, here.
Talking about putting it all out there… that’s the wonderful thing with Felix. He’s not the CCO whose ego would take over the room, but rather the (rare) creative leader who lets the work speak for itself and boost the merits of his team.
Chris Gallery, partner at Mother London, described Richter as “very humble, considered and inquisitive” – and here it is, totally transpiring out in this brief interview he offered us.
Let’s dive in!
How does a day in the life of Felix Richter look like?
We’re in the office three days officially, but I go in most days. There’s something lovely about the calm open space on a Friday. Of course there are lots of meetings and still a lot of Zooms. A bit of reviewing work, some people things, some agency management chats. There’s more travel again now as well. I love the days that are the most varied best.
What was the most challenging brief you ever worked on and why?
I’m not sure I can think of a ‘most challenging’ one. Making an American football-native brand like Under Armour appeal to women was a challenge, launching Google’s first handset was another. Rebranding Facebook to Meta and talking about the Metaverse in its infancy was also tricky to maneuver.
“I find that in the end there’s something in each brief, big or small, to be excited and terrified about. There’s also always my inner voice wanting to make something that solves the problem in an original way.”
👉 Watch The Tiger and the Buffalo ad for META
👉 Watch Google Pixel 2 “Ask more of your phone”
What’s your most valuable failure?
I find that advertising generally is a sort of constant failing, with little bits of success in between. And, of course, there’s value in finding out something doesn’t work.
What’s your creative leadership style, what would be a few vital pointers in keeping a creative team motivated and inspired?
I believe the strongest creative departments are true polyphonies.
“I don’t think my creative voice needs to, or even should, come through strongly in our output. So I try to set up each creative to find the thing only they can do better than anyone else.”
That can mean being supportive or demanding. As with clients, everyone needs something different. The only constant I think is that ambition needs to be sky-high at all times. The minute there are no outrageous dreams for what the work can be, it all becomes a drag.
What’s your take on the AI hype and has it become the new “make it viral” in briefs?
I think AI is going to lead to an entirely new way of creating things – in the same way photoshop, or more broadly computer programs did from the first Mac onwards.
“Our current means of production are like cutting out images from magazines with nail scissors compared to what will be possible soon. I’m excited about that. I think where the hype is misleading is when people start believing AI is going to replace everyone, entirely, five minutes from now.”
It could happen at some point, but there will be a lot of interesting hybrid human-AI creativity before that, and a lot of interesting, new things will come into the world as a result of that.
Creatives at Mother have adopted AI quite naturally just by playing around with it, with most of its use in early development,since the legal realities of it are far from fully defined.
What’s your all time fav campaign OR recent campaigns that got you that “damn, that’s smart!” feeling?
I like whenever advertising starts to feel like poetry, in the sense that it articulates what can’t be expressed through everyday language. Among my all time favorites are things like Guinness Surfer and Cadbury Gorilla. Also old Quiznos Rat ads. In terms of recent things… Barbie’s Airbnb listing is pretty good.
For Instagram creators, the top few that inspire me would be: @coelcanthe, @Killvrboy, @bradtroemel, @sarahbabah
“Make Our Children Proud” is the current philosophy of Mother.
I guess that resonated so well with you, as a dad. But in this looming climate crisis, how much can we, actually? And how big an impact can advertising actually have upon such global, societal aspects?
Ha, that’s what I want to talk about more. In short, that’s a good and very difficult and very fair question, but like Pandora’s Box – the solution often is found inside the problem. There’s no denying that advertising has been a driving force behind over consumption, advertising of days gone by.
It’s important to remember that advertising professionals are the right people to help change behaviours at a mass scale, or improve opinions of new ways of doing things that may seem alien at first.
We’re finding more and more clients that want to be on the right side of the climate emergency, and we’re happy to help them accelerate the positive impact they have.
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So, are you already over the moon to join us on the 31st of October in Bucharest, to listen to Felix’s keynote, alongside other amazing creatives, founders, data scientists and artists?
Discover the full line-up of speakers and secure your ticket here.
