Beginner's Mind

A.K.A. missing 15000 Euro

In 2011 I came across a competition of the Art Director’s Club Germany (ADC). The Art Director’s Club was initiated in 1920 in New York with the goal to ensure that advertising was judged by the same standards.

The question isn’t why. The question is why not.

My friend and I discussed startup ideas at that time. I saw an ad for this competition and told him we should give it a try. We had nothing to lose. So we created a video for the application, and even if we weren’t particularly skilled in video creation, we made it to the final pitch in Frankfurt. It took place at the annual ADC festival and was live streamed to hundreds of participants. We had 2 minutes in a freight elevator to convince the jury consisting of the Chief Creative Officer of Saatchi & Saatchi, the Global Head of Brand Communication and Corporate Citizenship of Deutsche Bank and a board member of the ADC.

The idea

Our idea was to tackle the loneliness of seniors. The need for purpose is deeply embedded in the human DNA. A lack of it affects every human being, but especially the elderly. This gets even worse if the partner passed away. In my experience first, their mental and consequently physical condition declines.

We thought about what we could do about that and came up with this: Older adults bring skills to the table which are in demand by the younger generation. They often posses crafting skills like knitting, tinkering or drawing. At the same time, young people have the desire to express themselves with unique fashion or furniture items. In an increasingly globalised world with H&M and Zara people everywhere look the same. So why not bringing both groups in an atelier together to let the elderly teach the younger people how to create something unique.

We pitched our idea, and the elevator started going up. We had 120 seconds until it stopped and we had to be finished. It was a testimony to the notion that it’s as equally important to be able to tell your story as to come up with the idea itself.

The outcome

We made it to the final with two other teams where one of the other won the competition and received 15000 EUR. I was delighted to find out that the winner still operates. Click here to find out more.

Even if people approached us later expressing their interest in our idea, we ended up not pursuing it further. We were both not passionate enough about it. I was fascinated by scalable business models at the time.

I've learned a valuable lesson though. It's about trying out new things. Even if you don't win the prize, you've made a unique experience which leads to other good things. I doubt I would have been able to do stand up comedy without these experiments like the elevator pitch. So don't ask what the instant reward is, ask what you have to lose and could learn from it in the long-term.

Check out the video. Our part starts at second 25.