Mihnea GHEORGHIU

1. What was your very first job?

Junior Copywriter, Leo Burnett Bucharest. I was 19.

2. Please describe, in your own words, what your job is and what work it entails.

I like to find new things to say, or new ways to say the same things. The rest is a sweet mix of problem-solving, well-crafted entertainment and doing good business.  

3. How did you discover that the creative world was right for you? Was there a time in your life that you credit to this discovery? What was there train of events that brought you to where you are today?

I was 11 or 12 years old and I was watching TV with my mom and dad. Commercials came on. I remember this spot for Ajax window cleaner in which Prince Charming came and cleaned the top of Snow White’s glass coffin.

Snow White wakes up from her long magical nap, gets up, only to bang her head, hard, on the invisibly clean glass lid of her coffin and then she faints back. My parents were laughing their asses off every time this was coming on. That’s my earliest memory of falling in love and wanting to do short, entertaining things.

Then, in high-school, my best friend and I were doing posters and leaflets for our sports teacher who was doing a bit of real estate biz on the side. We got paid in beers.

And after that, when I was a bit older, I saw Honda Cog, Guinness Dreamers and Xbox Mosquito work – that’s when I realized that there are no limits to what you can do in advertising. So that’s when I knew, ok, this is what I want to do. Screw business school. So I quit university and became the youngest creative in the Romanian advertising.

4. In your constantly growing and expanding industry, how do you find inspiration to keep your work fresh, innovative and relevant?

People make me curious. I like talking to as many random/weird/interesting people as I can. Bartenders, tourists, cab drivers, the guys selling lighters and Autan, etc. Any person who can make me step out of my bubble for a bit is a huge inspiration.

5. If you had to pick one piece of work or project that you are most proud of, more for the creative work and innovation it required, rather than its recognition or industry “success,” what would it be?

Recognition and industry “success” should be equivalent with breakthrough creativity and innovation, right? But I know what you mean.

Ok, let’s rewind it a bit. It’s 2016, Romania. Same sex marriage is illegal by law. No surprise there, for a heavily Christian-Orthodox country that has more churches than schools and hospitals combined.
However, the Romanian constitution is a bit more open and chill, defining marriage as a communion between “parts”.  

A dubious organization called “the coalition for traditional family” managed to gather 3 million (!!) signatures from people all over Romania to start a referendum to change the definition from the Constitution and turn it into “marriage is a communion between MAN and WOMAN.” Which is a very dumb and useless effort in a country that has so many real things to fix.

Anyway. They dumped all those signatures on the parliament’s steps, next to a big sheet of paper where the organizers left other signatures, for everyone to see.

So, a few friends and I gathered (advertising creatives, typographers, jewelry makers, photographers, web designers and programmers), took those public signatures and turned them into an engagement ring that anyone could use to propose to anyone. The profits all went to support ACCEPT, the Romanian LGBT NGO.

This was a rollercoaster from start to finish. Turning the signatures into one “signature of hate”, then turning it into a silver ring, then photographing it, building the website, promoting it, PR-ing it and making sure all the deliveries go as planned was a hell of a challenge for six people to handle, in parallel with our day-to-day jobs. But once everything was done and the media took notice and huge companies started ordering the rings by the dozens, it was all worth it. Besides the infinite satisfaction to bring something like this to life, it made us all say “we had no idea we could do that”. 

Here’s the project.
http://acceptromania.ro/inelulaccept/index_en.html