Champions Breakfast No. 16
The 16th Champions Breakfast was special because it involved three distinguished gentlemen who told tasty stories in English.
The first to appear before our friends and audience members was the chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Chuck Porter. He launched his advertising career before many of the breakfasters were born, and so it was safe to say that the man knew what he was talking about. Some of Chuck’s lessons: Pop culture is a currency, consistency is a good thing, but surprises are even better. Chuck quoted the famous adman Bill Bernbach, who once said that advertising is not a science. Science can help advertising, but science cannot tell a story. It is an art. A video of Chuck’s presentation can be found here.
The main course came from TechHub Riga board chairman Andris Bērziņš, who served up a story about his experience with Riga’s “Silicon Valley.” He discussed start-ups and how they are born. This is not a simple form of art. Take a risk. Allow yourself to fail. Take another risk. Fail again. Take on even more risk and die. Keep at it until you succeed. This may sound harsh, but it is a hopeful process if you can learn from mistakes and focus on your strengths. Andris also noted that if large companies want to be successful, then there are lots of things that they can learn from start-up enterprises.
Dessert this time came from Chef Mārtiņš Rītiņš from the Vincents restaurant. He talked about the world’s best restaurant, the strengths of restaurants in Latvia, and reasons why a restaurant reviewer from The Times has diametrically opposing views to those of the average Latvian. Mārtiņš’ presentation can be found here.
Bon appetit!
