The Tastemakers Society

Remember the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I sure do it’s one of my favorites and I’m referring to the original not the Johnny Depp disaster remake. That movie encompasses fantasy and creativity at a level you can only imagine, a place where inspiration never sleeps, and fun is trying to figure out something new. I’ve searched for that place my entire life, but can’t seem to find find it, well not the Wonka I loved as a child filled with candy. But I did find a Wonka Factory that possess that feeling I did as a child just minus the chocolate river and oompa loompa’s and I found the counterpart to Willy Wonka, he’s Stefan Boublil, half candy maker and all french. In place of the Factory is the Apartment, filling in for the oompa loompa’s who went back to oompa island, is a band of misfits, who all reside from the island of funlarious. At the Apartment you will not find candy lick able wall paper, shrinking rooms and everlasting gobstoppers but you can find the creative equivalent to what the godfather did for the film industry and gooses that do lay golden eggs. What they do can’t really be described, it has no name, no explanation, they just do, and it just works. I may not have found my Wonka factory, my land full of candy or gotten my lifetime supply of Wonka bars, but I for sure did find the Apartment, the land where anything can happen, a place where dreams are real and rules don’t exist, it’s almost being able to find utopia at 101 Crosby St, NY. If you ever ask Stefan he’ll tell you Disneyland changed his life, if you eve ask me, Willy Wonka changed my life, and if you ever ask any of their clients I’m sure they’ll say, the Apartment changed their lives.

Name, age, location 

Stefan Boublil, 37, New York City, The Apartment

What exactly is it your company does for its clients?

The apartment is a place where ideas live and where people come looking for them. Ever since we opened our retail store in 2000, we have provided people with context, whether it was for objects or behavior, and ended up in a space, the agency, that we had no idea how to structure or manage. Still don’t… but the net result is that people have been coming to us for the past 7 years because we hadn’t done much of anything in the space they wanted to hire us for. That’s why we have been able to come up with fresh perspectives each time whether it was for a chain of sandwiches, a Broadway show or planning a whole eco-city in the Ukraine. About directing an opera in Los Angeles, Woody Allen said “I have no idea what I am doing, but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm,” and that is exactly how I feel about our practice and what we offer our clients.

What do you think of the current state of media and how technology has effected it?

I’m probably the wrong person to ask this to because the obvious answer is ’saturation’ but I LOVE SATURATION! I can’t say one bad thing about it. I know we all want to simplify our lives and that, to a certain extent, my delicious iPhone is trying to help me do that, but of course it’s doing the exact opposite; I know that but I can’t get enough. I’m an early adopter of culture and recklessly grab any idea or product that comes out provided it fits my philosophical constraints, and run with it. As a teenager, I would be a freudian one semester before being pulled into a vegetarian cult the next. My parents worried a lot…

With your website you seem to be building up a community was this done strategically or it grew naturally? Do you think having a community based following of some sorts can affect a business, and what effects has it had directly on theAPt?

We started pouring our brains out our website in 2004 mainly to keep in touch with each other about what we would find on the web that felt interesting. Subjects ranged from design to porn, from a detail in a sculpture to the dates for the next Hanson show. What usually happens when you do something selfishly like that is it feels meant, it fills a void for you and it often is the case that that void also exists in other people without the knowledge. And so They flock. And so they did. A few 100,000 visits later, we wanted to keep the ‘we’re doing this for ourselves’ vibe alive but wanted to expand it, make it more fun as well as give people the opportunity to be selfish themselves (it is a wonderful feeling in this age of overbearing generosity…) anyway, we created a cultural bank of sorts which will always be a work-in-progress and aims to dump thoughts on a virtual table in an innovative way. Much like we try to do in the real world with the architectural and graphic projects we auto-finance (like the ymca or theapt LIFE magazine,) we wanted an experimental lab on the web to try things out without anyone telling us what to do; we have pretty big authority issues here… so theapt.com evolved into what it is today and continues to be tinkered with on a daily basis, not to arrive at a certain place, but merely for the pleasure of trying things. The effect on the business is the gathering of a community of like-minded people which in turn effect like-minded clients.

What are your thoughts on the marketing/branding/advertising industry, and how do you think it could be better?

I am wholly disheartened with how people in those industries hardly ever invent anymore. It seems that repeating with a hint of change has become an art. Whether it is to sell beer or design a logo for an airline or craft an event for a new condo, most agencies stand on the shoulders of those who came before, and a much ballyhooed twist and call it a day. And so many resources have been wasted in the process. There was a time when the customer mattered, there was a time when art mattered, there was a time when life had an impact on products and vice-versa. How could it be better? Shit, I don’t know, I’m just going my merry way, I know what’s good for me, is to not consider any project as anything other than an opportunity to contribute to culture. For the industry at large? Go to Disneyworld for a week, it’ll change your life. It did mine!

What is your plan to grow or head down different directions than others?

one word: zyrtec

In this new age of media and marketing their have been many new business models being implemented to turn profits. How does your business bring in its money?

By and Large, that’s none of your fucking business, but I can tell you that other than the children in our basement making Christmas sweaters all year long, we attempt to create an ecosystem by which the intelligence created during project work is filtered to the cultural side of the company (blog, magazines, etc…) in order to create larger conversations available for sale to our clients. And around we go…. that way, we never stop thinking about something.

What do you believe is one of the most important focus points when you are starting on a marketing campaign?

“Who is this for?” Is the single most important question we can ask. It’s not rocket science and every agency starts that way but that’s a question you can’t just ask at the beginning, it’s one to ask at every step of design in order to make sure that you have a stick against which to measure your every decision. People matter more than anything and they’re the ones buying your product in the end. Care, god damn it!

How do trends affect your business?

Trend, is not a four letter word (it’s five) because one would be stupid not to look around to see what people are liking. One doesn’t have to follow trends to acknowledge them but it’s always fascinating to see what attracts people in mass numbers, that tells you something valuable about mass hysteria human behavior. So it’s not really a matter of affection, rather of study.

What do you think about the growth in the awareness and sudden high demand for design?

Design, in the way you mean it in your question, means nothing in my opinion because it is design-as-marketing. The design which has value is engineering for better ease of use. And so, does it surprise me that people are starting to understand that they can have a better toaster if it is designed? No. And of course, it’s splendid because our experiences with products, brands and entertainment are getting richer and, in turn, so is our culture. I’m getting really sick of people talking about braun and dieter rams? Have people forgotten about Saul Bass? Good design is simply good communication and that has been going on since, uh, the wheel.

How do you build up your own companies name and image?

Basically just trying to have fun. It may sound trite but everything you can see on the outside coming from us is merely a reflection of someone here waiting to try something which made it out. Our identities, websites, magazines, all are consequences of stroking our many and varied pleasure centers. As always, we are hard pressed to do for ourselves in terms of promotion what we get hired to do for others, strategically, we could/should do a lot more.

What do you see as the future or next progression in the ad and marketing world?

Unfortunately, since the word of the moment is ‘experience’ and environment’ (to replace last year’s stellar ‘lifestyle’) you’re going to see a lot of agencies creating ‘the tide house’ or ‘the dental hygientist from planet zurg’ comic book from oral B to be distributed in high schools all over the country. And it’s unfortunate because these are not really experiences, simply tactics. I see  far-flung future in which you are made aware of a product’s new and improved lavendar scent by smelling it, not by being told that it’s improved again and again until you believe it.

What do you think is a great work environment to ensure that everything gets done but doesn’t cause everyone to hate each other? And how would you describe theApt office living?

I don’t know. What we’ve done here is, well, nothing. We’ve let people be who they are in life because that’s what’s interesting to me. We are in the business of hiring people, not skills, because anybody can use (or learn to use) photoshop but nobody else has had the life experiences they’ve had and that’s what nourishes their lives and hence their work. So life in the office here is populated by a circus company of unbelievably talented misfits who blow me away day in and day out with what they bring to the table. That and our motto: you’re hot, you’re hired!

What’s in the future of theApt?

Lots of great stuff on the cultural end of things. A city. A vasectomy.

The Apartment