Germany: LABAMBA

“I am not a sailor, I am a captain” is a repeated lyric in the Mexican folk dance ditty that gave its name to agency LABAMBA. It  could also be the mantra of founder Felix Schulz, a man who likes to be his own boss and follow his own philosophy of advertising.

It takes balls to leave a cosy job and go it alone. Having won scores of awards as an art director on interactive creative for work for clients like Nike and Google at a large, well-respected independent agency, you wouldn’t have blamed Felix Schulz for cruising along on the standard career path and working his way up to ECD.

But the 32 year old, who grew up in Lübeck near Hamburg and studied communication design in Berlin, wants to do things his way. In 2012 he left Kolle Rebbe to set up Felix und Lamberti in Hamburg with René Lamberti, whom he had worked with at Jung von Matt’s digital unit in 2006. Although successful, with major award wins and shortlists, that partnership ended earlier this year when Lamberti decided to move back to Berlin. Schulz didn’t go knocking on agency doors to look for another job working for someone else though. Instead he morphed the agency into LABAMBA.

“I want to be my own boss and create my own philosophy of advertising,” he says, squinting into the sun reflecting off the water in Hamburg’s harbour, a couple of streets away from LABAMBA’s office. “In German agencies we traditionally split digital and classical (media) but my generation thinks in a borderless way.”

Campaigns with benefits

Schultz seems very chilled out, answering most questions with a gentle, relaxed shrug. However don’t let the casual persona fool you, he’s driven, assured but not arrogant, and he works hard to achieve what he wants. “I want to do advertising as entertainment, not just selling products; campaigns with real benefit that say ‘thank you’ [to the consumers] and give them extra. I want to do classical ads too, but mainly focus on digital storytelling; creating content for people who use more digital devices than consume TV. I have a good feeling for these stories, what people will share. Clients want this stuff.”

Schulz is one of five full-time staff at the agency, only one of whom is non-creative, and he has ten regular freelancers at his disposal. Winning pitches as a tiny new shop competing with huge rivals might sound troublesome, but Schultz believes LABAMBA’s nimbleness makes it the perfect unit to tackle the ‘special add-on’ elements, like interactive films, that clients often want to accompany campaigns. “We’re ‘special forces’,” he says. “We’re small. We don’t need big clients with big budgets. If clients work with a small agency like us the people in front of them write the scripts, it’s not the CEO presenting the junior copywriter’s scripts. The whole team is in the brief so we can see the story that the client wants to tell. If they go to a big agency, maybe the fourth-best team works on it.”

The system is working so far, says Schultz. “It’s comfortable at the moment. We haven’t had to call clients, they’ve come to us.”

Those clients include Nivea, for whom LABAMBA completed its first two projects, starting with Stresstest, a stunt where unsuspecting travellers were covertly photographed in an airport departures lounge. Their images were immediately inserted into TV news stories and newspaper articles about them being ‘dangerous fugitives’ that were played on nearby monitors or read by fellow passengers. The panicking subjects were then confronted by ‘security guards’, asked if they were stressed and then presented with Nivea Stress Protect deodorant. The web film achieved eight million views within a few days.

For the same client, Mama followed; a touching film with the subtitled thoughts of a baby explaining how much he appreciates his mum’s efforts in raising him. It was released for Mother’s Day with an e-postcard to send it out to loved ones and earned 1.9 million views in Germany and 350,000 shares.

Brainstorming on the Baltic

With a small team, Schultz currently finds himself doing a lot of the work at LABAMBA. “I hope to hire more creatives who can do viral marketing but it’s hard to find people who understand how it functions. I know a lot of good copywriters who can’t jump from classical thinking to online virals,” he says, suggesting that Germany is failing to educate youngsters in new media. “Ad agencies don’t have teachers to train [young creatives].”

However, Schultz believes this could change soon. “Most creative directors at big agencies come from a time before digital. I think in the next five years all the people from digital backgrounds will get those positions and it will change.”

While its boutique size is proving effective so far, does Schultz want LABAMBA to grow bigger? “The most important thing is to create good advertising and do what we love rather than earn more money and compromise, but of course we want to be bigger so we can do more work.”

The name of the agency is designed to create a good feeling, says Schultz. “It’s nice to hear when it’s said by clients and project managers and we want to transform that spirit into our work. Advertising shouldn’t be so serious,” he grins, explaining how the hard work he’s putting in at his own shop is preferable to working at a big office for “three weeks without a day off” when he was younger. “I work a lot but it’s a different kind of work, it’s not as horrible as I thought it would be. I’m thinking about taking the team on a ferry and working for a week or two on the Baltic Sea!”

On land or sea, it’s pretty hard to imagine Schulz ever going back to work for somebody else. It seems he was destined to do things his way.