Finding Florence

For those readers who don’t already know, Imagewest is living and working in Spain. We’re settled into our temporary home (thanks Mariela), we’ve had a good Spanish meal, bought groceries in the supermercado and discovered just enough about local transportation to be dangerous.

Things we’ve learned so far…

The Catalan language is not “almost like” Spanish.

The Sant Andreu Arenal railway station cannot be reached from the San Andreu

Metro station (get off at Fabra i Puig instead to catch a train to La Garriga).

Food is either really expensive or really cheap.

Pasta is “fantastico” with pesto, chicken and out-of-date mozzarella.

Flip-flops slip—and slide—on wet cobblestones.

Our hometown…

La Garriga is a Catalan town of about 15,000 in the province of Barcelona—and it is our hometown for the next month. With special thanks to the Catalan version Wikipedia, I can include a little information about the town:

La Garriga is renowned throughout Catalonia for its most important industry, furniture making, for its thermal waters, for its Art Nouveau buildings, and carpets that are made during the festival of Corpus Christi.

The town of La Garriga adjoins the national park of Montseny.

La Garriga was a favorite vacation spot for the Catalan bourgeoisie in the early twentieth century.

La Garriga was one of the Catalan towns bombed by General Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

The Roman villa of Can Terrés is located south of town. It was built in the first century B.C.

Imagewest’s office in Barcelona…

The agency is currently installed in the College of Industrial Engineering in central Barcelona. The buildings here are massive brick structures with high arching ceilings, tall windows, and iron gates. Our office is small but accommodates all of us with a little room to spare.

Our first big adventure…

We had an amazing adventure this week. Our agency team visited a phenomenal digital Ad Agency called BG Media in Badalona, Spain.

Badalona is a beach town about 20 miles north of Barcelona.

Our commute is usually about 1.5 hours, but Thursday morning it took a little longer. We left our home in La Garriga and took the train into Barcelona, as per usual, but detoured—via the metro and another train—to Badalona, about 20 miles north of Barcelona.

Thanks to excellent directions, all of us arrived unscathed and on time, in spite of angry skies, wind and rain (unusual considering the time of year).

Agnieszka Rosicka, the marketing director for BG Media, met us at the door. Agnieszka, originally from Poland and recently from Tenerife, presented BG Media with passion and energy. The agency is 8 years old and successful, in spite of a difficult economy. BG Media focuses on digital solutions and demonstrates special skill at communicating effectively with each clients target audience. We were especially excited to learn their clients include Formula 1 and motorcycle racing teams.

BGMedia’s working process is very similar to how agencies work in the US. An account manager works closely with a client and represents the clients’ needs to the agency creatives. One trend is for web design to affect direction of print media rather than vice versa.

Agnieszka—and the agency Director, Victor Betran—were gracious, helpful and very generous with their time. We learned a lot. Thanks BG Media!

After our visit, the team explored a small portion of beachfront Badalona (in the rain) and dined at Sala 2 before returning to the office for an afternoon of research and brainstorming.

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