Yvonne Ba­boolal

Lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ing firms have been feel­ing the pinch from the eco­nom­ic down­turn, Pep­per Ad­ver­tis­ing founder and Chief In­spir­er Den­nis Ramdeen says. "Be­cause the glob­al and lo­cal econ­o­my are down, com­pa­nies are down. In turn, ad­ver­tis­ing is gen­er­al­ly down," Ramdeen said at Pep­per's of­fice at the cor­ner of Wood­ford and Warn­er Streets in New­town, Port-of-Spain. "By how much is any­body's guess. I am speak­ing from gut feel­ing. I have no sta­tis­tics." Ramdeen said if an ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­ny los­es one ma­jor client which ac­counts for a large amount of its busi­ness, there could be cause to send peo­ple home.

Pep­per, found­ed in 2005, con­tin­ues to sur­vive and has top clients like Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd and the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness (Lok Jack GSB). "We've had to look at oth­er ways to at­tract busi­ness and two years ago we launched Pep­per E, our on­line dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing arm. "That's how we've re­spond­ed to a tough mar­ket," Ramdeen dis­closed. Pep­per al­so does events plan­ning. "When Col­in Pow­ell (for­mer US Sec­re­tary of State) was here we han­dled the launch of the men­tor­ship pro­gramme at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts," he re­called.

It is Ramdeen's will to make Pep­per sur­vive when com­pa­nies are crash­ing all around that in­spired him to bring to T&T one of the world's most re­spect­ed ex­perts in the field of ad­ver­tis­ing cre­ative. Pep­per and Lok Jack GSB will host two work­shops that will be con­duct­ed by renowned Is­raeli In­ter­na­tion­al Cre­ative Train­er Yonathan Do­minitz, founder of Mind­scapes. Lok Jack GSB is recog­nised as the pre­mier in­sti­tu­tion for busi­ness and man­age­ment ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices in T&T and the Caribbean. "I en­coun­tered Do­minitz for the first time on­line at Linked In, busi­ness peo­ple's Face­book," Ramdeen said. "He reached out to me and we start­ed talk­ing."

Ramdeen ap­proached Lok Jack GSB for help to co-host the work­shops which will be held at the school at Max Richards Dri­ve, Uri­ah But­ler High­way, North West, Mount Hope. The first, which runs from Oc­to­ber 28 to 29, is ti­tled "The Rules Be­hind Break­ing the Rules." "Peo­ple think that cre­ativ­i­ty is about break­ing the rules and what is in­ter­est­ing is that there are rules to help us break those rules," Do­minitz said. "So what I do is try to un­der­stand the com­mon re­cur­ring pat­terns be­hind dif­fer­ent cre­ative ideas and trans­form those pat­terns in­to ac­tive think­ing tools." In an in­ter­view with Sofia News Agency, Do­minitz, asked if cre­ativ­i­ty is a gift from above, replied: "It is not a philo­soph­i­cal mat­ter, rather a spir­i­tu­al one.

"The ori­gins of cre­ative ideas are still, to a large ex­tent, a mys­tery to hu­mans. "Maybe you can­not teach cre­ativ­i­ty but you cer­tain­ly can open the mind and spir­it to be more at­ten­tive and re­cep­tive to sparks of in­tu­ition or ideas and thoughts." The sec­ond work­shop is ti­tled "Dig­i­tal, In­ter­ac­tive & In­te­grat­ed Com­mu­ni­ca­tion" and is de­signed to fa­mil­iarise dig­i­tal, in­ter­ac­tive and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als with these in­no­v­a­tive think­ing pat­terns to en­hance their cre­ativ­i­ty. Over the past three years, more than 15 Cannes Li­on awards have been giv­en to cam­paigns cre­at­ed by agen­cies trained by Do­minitz us­ing the cre­ative think­ing tools he taught.

Ramdeen said the work­shops will be shared with oth­er ad­ver­tis­ing and cre­ative com­pa­nies (who are re­spond­ing well) but his aim is to make Pep­per's staff hap­pi­er. "My em­pha­sis is to make peo­ple whis­tle when they are com­ing to work," the found­ing board mem­ber of the Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment of Life said. Learn­ing and shar­ing (via blog­ging) are part of the work life of Pep­per's staff. Train­ing Pep­per's cre­ative tal­ent (copy­writ­ers and artists) is part of the rea­son for Do­minitz' vis­it to T&T, Ramdeen said. "We are in­vest­ing in our cre­ative peo­ple who are so cen­tral to what we do. "At Pep­per we be­lieve noth­ing is more im­por­tant than the qual­i­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness of the cre­ative prod­uct we put out."