ADC Jury Chairwoman Corinna Falusi im Interview

Your Project for Amnasty International „The Refugee Nation“ is exhibited at the Design Museum, at MOMA and at Victoria & Albert Musem. How does it feels?

A very good feeling! It’s easy to come up with a good idea, but it’s so hard to make it become reality. In this case the question was, will people use the flag? And they did. 2016 was the first time a refugee team participated in the Olympics as a nation. All the other nations and teams were proudly waving their nation’s flag, so we thought the refugee team needed a flag that they could call their own. The flag of the Refugee Nation was designed by the artist Yara Said, a Syrian refugee who found asylum in Amsterdam. As a symbol of solidarity with all those that had to wear life vests to cross the sea to look for safety in a new country. We started by reaching out to the Olympic committee, but they shut us down immediately. We did not give up and reached out to the refugee athletes directly, which culminated with a group of them using the flag during the games. The flag has since been displayed by refugees, world leaders, activists like Ai Wei Wei, at protests, and on products. I am proud for the flag to be displayed in museums, but what I am really proud of is that the flag has been displayed by real people around the globe.

What I am really proud of is that the flag has been displayed by real people around the globe.

You are CCO & Partner at Mother Agency in New York and you are working for international companies in general. How does creative work varys to german work flow?

What I always liked about the US is its endless optimism and desire for the new. There is no place in the world where trends appear and disappear with such speed. This fast paced environment and the willingness to try out the latest technology or social platform is fantastic for generating new ideas. The US is a very large market. Budgets are bigger and there is more at stake, especially for global brands.  That’s why the process of selling an idea can be extremely lengthy and complicated. It is even that much harder to persuade massive brands to buy ideas that are brave.

Your created campaign for „Heineken“ ran in over 100 countries for the Champions League. Do women maybe know more about beer than men do?

I say that in general women know more about everything. But that aside, I always struggled with the cliches of having certain people type cast for certain brand or projects. There is something to be said about getting to different ideas from different minds. Sure if you absolutely hate beer, yes, you probably should not work on beer. But there is still a lot to learn from why people dislike the things they dislike.

Where do you get your creative input? What inspires you the most?

I am living in one of the loudest and most hectic cities in the world. To me, inspiration comes from silence and nature. In the search for the “not been done before”, I always avoid looking at inspiration from the now. I like looking back to the past. We are currently producing work that is inspired by cheesy 80’s music videos and films by Jean-Luc Godard from the 60’s. The older I get, the further I look back. Soon I will land in Midevil times. What made me better as a creative is social media and the use of social platforms. There is so many opportunities for combining media and using these platforms in completely new and exciting ways. For example, we just did a project for the New York Public Library where we transformed Instagram Stories into an e-reader for entire works of classic literature.